Samaria

Tuesdays aren't generally a 'school day' for me at present.

But today I was along at an Easter assembly which one of the schools was holding. Not the local primary school. Another school nearby. The speaker they'd had lined up to come was now no longer available.

I got the call as a late-in-the-day substitute and was happy to oblige. The children were all P4 and P5 and the theme was, appropriately, 'Easter'. A great opportunity - a chance to make clear what Easter is really about.

Jesus: back from the dead.

Good news. A message that needs to be heard.

And yet, it's not without its challenge, a time like that. I don't get long and they're still just 9 or 10. And their backgrounds are very mixed.

But I'm getting to preach the gospel. Jesus and the resurrection.

When Paul went to Athens and spoke to the people there, that was the sum of his preaching. Jesus and the resurrection.

It's not exactly Athens where I'm speaking, the assembly is not in any sense the 'market-place'; and I'm certainly not the apostle Paul.

But the thrust of what I'm trying to get across is pretty much the same. In language that the people whom I'm speaking to can understand. Jesus and the resurrection.

First thing in the morning it's to children that I'm trying to share that message. Last thing in the afternoon it's a lady at the other end of life that I'm addressing.

The message is the same. Jesus and the resurrection.

She's now in a home. Failing quite fast. She's deaf. And to make matters worse, her hearing aid has disappeared. I have to speak directly into her ear. Slowly, and at quite a volume.

Communication isn't easy. She's sitting with the others in the large, expansive sitting room. The television's on, and the size of the screen is matched by the volume control. The screen is huge and the volume is loud. They're watching some sort of western, puncutated by eruptions of song.

The bustle of the market-place in Athens seems singularly attractive. I'm thinking Paul got the easier deal.

I'm trying to convey the message that this lady needs to hear - Jesus and the resurrection: while blaring away in the background the heroine on the TV screen is singing that she "wouldn't change the love I've found for all of Illinois".

I know next to nothing about Illinois, so I haven't a clue if the lady has got a good deal. All I know is that just at this minute I could wish Illinois, the heroine and the TV screen far enough removed.

It's not exactly helping me in the mouth-to-ear, slow and laboured preaching I'm engaging in. But I persevere. I want to be getting my message across.

Jesus and the resurrection.

Most of the time it's there in these varied 'market-place' environments that we get our chance to be sharing the good news of Jesus.

Not, perhaps, the context that we'd choose. Sunday worship, pulpit preaching, attentive congregations. That would get our vote.

But we don't get the chance to vote on the thing. The Lord sends us out.

Out. Out into the market-place. Out among the people where they are. Out into the local schools. Out into the nursing homes. Out into a noisy, clamouring world. Out to the places where voices from all walks of life are competing for people's attention.

Eugene Peterson has an interesting book called 'The Word made Flesh'. In it he looks, in his own inimitable manner, at the lengthy, ten-chapter 'travel narrative' Luke inserts into his account of Jesus' ministry.

This whole section is prefaced by a note that Jesus and his companions are leaving Galilee (Luke 9.51) and concluded by references to their arriving in Jerusalem (Luke 19.11, 28, 41). It's narrated, therefore, as a journey through Samaria.

"They are away from their familiar Galilean synagogues and their beloved Jerusalem temple," writes Peterson.

And he goes on to suggest that "Samaria is the country between Galilee and Jerusalem in which we spend most of our time between Sundays."

It's a helpful and thought-provoking analogy that he draws.

"What began as a 'Travel Narrative' has devevloped in the telling into a metaphor, a metaphor for the way Jesus uses language between Sundays, between the holy synagogues of Galilee and the holy temple in Jerusalem, places and times in which language about God and his kingdom are expected. ...

"Luke gives us Samaria as a metaphor for the way Jesus uses language with people who have very luttle or maybe no readiness to listen to the revelation of God, and not infrequently are outright hostile. This is the way Jesus uses language when he isn't, as we would say, in church."

How to share the gospel when the TV's going full blast. When Illinois or who knows what in Athens are the things on people's minds.

Most of our lives are lived out there in 'Samaria'. The bit between the Sundays.