Hermeneutics are the disciplines of interpretation, especially of sacred texts. The hermeneutic or interpretive responsibility I was taught encourages a collective discernment of what we are called to be and do for such a time as this. The basic way we do this is by simultaneously holding, perhaps literally and certainly figuratively, the Holy Scriptures in the one hand, and the newspaper in the other (Karl Barth). In that process of interpretation of our social context, the sacred texts of our faith, and the challenges we are facing as active members of our body politic, we also bring our opinions and feelings. There is, simply, no way around it.
I also ask that we continue to remain intentional and committed to this sabbatical journey, identifying the things and experiences we must release, receive, and return to. And I ask that we do so intentional and committedly because interpretation, hermeneutics, requires intention. For us to develop and practice disciplines of discernment and interpretation about what our faith compels us to be and do with and for the world, we must also commit to relationship for and with one another. A good life of faith is not the fulfillment of requirements. I think it would be right up St. Paul’s alley to say that attempt checking of a list to prove faithfulness will only reveal out shortcomings.
Please, bear with the following redundancy – to life a faithful life of faith one must commit to relationship, empathy, engagement, presence, listening. Many of us who have been Christians for many decades will have heard multiple sermons about the Good Samaritan. That parable, however, is just that. A parable. An object for the larger narrative of St. Luke’s account of the Gospel. The subject of the story is the lawyer who, after having heard about how Jesus sent 70 to places, he wanted to visit to share good news of peace and of the kingdom of heaven drawn near, asked Jesus about eternal life. Jesus’ response, in the form of two other questions, are fascinating. He first asks what is written in the law. And then he asks, “what do you read there?” Do you see what happens there? Jesus places the Holy Scriptures as the central reference for the response, AND he also brings in the often overseen and always inevitable reality, it is I who reads. And reading, as in any other discipline of learning, is never objective. Whether we realize it or not, we bring our full selves – including our contexts, our experiences, and our biases into the reading of the Holy Scriptures and our discernment of our witness. What I think Jesus does here is, both, recognize and invite us to bring our full selves – biases, experiences, and contexts – into the pursuit of the question about a faithful living of the faith.
The lesson tells us that the lawyer wanted to make things a bit more complicated, perhaps event get into the rhetorical or debate game. He asked Jesus who was his neighbor whom he was to love as himself. I leave the response of Jesus to your reading as found in the rest of the gospel lesson. I do want to say something about the term “neighbor” as it relates to our call today to discern our witness and interpret our faith. In Spanish the word for neighbor is “prójimo”. A transliteration of the term could be “proximate”. I think that the challenge Jesus wanted to give the lawyer of the lesson was a challenge in hermeneutics and engagement.
We should understand that we can release ourselves from the burden to achieve eternal life, and allow for us the opportunity to live. That we can live by embracing the challenge and the opportunity of interpreting the world and our faith, and to do so intentionally in community. And I think that is where “neighbor” comes in. We will be better served in our pursuit to live and to live abundantly by receiving our proximate. If interpreting our times and our faith is a discipline to be engaged in community, we must begin with those who are more approximate to us, our neighbors. We begin with and among ourselves. And think about it: As we engage with each other as our proximate, we each have proximates outside this community that each one of us will be compelled to engage in. And as we continue to live up to our interpretative and discerning call and challenge, we will have a bigger community to live out our faith and to pursue it faithfully and wholeheartedly.
May it be so. Amen.