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The Children of Utu

15th Sunday : 14 July2013  : Colossians 1: 15-20 , Luke 10: 25-37

On a side road in the Taranaki there is a private museum with fascinating dioramas of the pre European history of the area. One in particular shows in its detailed figures a war party advancing in great strength through the region during the musket wars.

Inter tribal warfare was an endemic feature of life in these Islands before Christianity came to its shores. These raids and military expeditions were not just about plunder and territorial expansion. At times they were motivated by the passion for utu, the desire to re-establish a moral equilibrium for slighted honour, grave insult, grievous injury or loss. On the plus side utu was about exacting proximate damage appropriate to the original provocation, thereby limiting the amount of harm done in response. On the negative side it was hard to know in such a highly charged warrior honour culture, with such long memories, when enough was enough to bring an end to what could become an endless cycle of passionate revenge seeking on an escalating scale. Then the abrupt arrival of the musket sent utu into hyper drive since tribal chiefs who were first in with the new technology of killing had the capacity to wipe out their opponents and occupy their territories. By the time colonists arrived in what we now call New Plymouth there had been very heavy loss of life amongst the original inhabitants of those who lived under the great White Mountain.

It took decades for Maori to get seriously interested in the gospel. When they did turn to it with something like mass enthusiasm the part of the good news that engaged them was the prospect of stepping outside the endless cycle of utu. Oddly enough for a warrior culture it was Christ’s message of forgiveness and non-retaliation that held out the promise of rescuing tribal society from its downward spiral into fratricidal violence.

New Zealanders like to think of themselves as a quiet, modest, getting along sort of people. But consider the images of ourselves that we show to the outside world. I remember as a curate in Britain in 1981 my stunned surprise to see on the television news night after night footage of clashes between riot police and thousands of militant demonstrators. About that time the BBC finally got around to showing a New Zealand film. It was "Bad Blood," the harrowing tale of Stanley Graham’s shooting dead of many of the West Coast policemen who came to take away his guns. The parishioners of St Mary’s, Northampton began to ask me puzzled and troubled questions about a land they had assumed to be full of sheep and great scenery.

As our film industry has got into its stride, its more successful products have shown a side of our national character that must leave the outside world wondering what we are up to down here. "Once We Were Warriors," – the tale of a disintegrating contemporary Maori family destroying itself by its internal violence. Then there was "In My Father’s Den," – the saga of a Southland family, whose dark secrets lead to suicide and murder, pitting brother against brother. "Out of the Blue" – an account of the Aramoana massacre. One scene in particular from this film has stayed with me. Through the night of terror and confusion that follows the massacre the armed defenders squad sweeps through Aramoana Township seeking their quarry. At daybreak they locate him in a crib, and close with him, raking the holiday home with semi automatic fire. Then they toss in a tear gas canister, and when he comes out shooting they mow him down, and rushing up to him, they tie him up with a leather belt. Taking off their gas masks they light up and begin joking with one another, almost ignoring the perpetrator as he thrashes around in his death throes.

The source of all this violence is not just in us; it is there in the creation itself. Although we may have befriended many of our companion animals, the truth is that, "nature is red in tooth and claw." The way that evolution works is that successful species compete against one another, dine off one another, and are compelled to display a talent for hunting and killing. We are where we are today as a species because in the long slow process of our development we turned out to be successful carnivores. Except that we have rather over done it. Our programming has turned against us. Our instinct for hunter killer behaviour might put an end to us.

An atmosphere of menacing violence hangs over the story of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan himself is in the greatest danger because as a despised outsider he is the target most likely to attract attention in this journey through bandit country. And inns of the day were not like the motels and hotel chains of today with their privacy, comfort and relative security. The half dead pilgrim is recuperating in a place where the quality of hospitality would be very much luck of the draw.

What had started out as a speculative enquiry about the neighbour we are supposed to do good to, ends up as a personal question as to whether we are growing into the kind of people who would spontaneously offer this degree of risky, generous help. Jesus Christ is keen to bring into existence a new kind of person who doesn’t do good according to exact moral calculation, but who instead acts with great moral imagination to reverse the grim laws of self interested safety seeking, and ruthless despoiling of the weak. If enough Good Samaritans can be brought to mature participation in the affairs of our world then we too can travel down perilous roads and expect to find succouring strangers with a heart of gold.

The Patristic Church saw in the Samaritan a figure of Christ himself coming to our aid when life knocks us down, ready to pick us up and carry us to safety, to pour oil into our wounds, and to love us back into life. But there is more to it than just that.

Take a look at that wonderful hymn to Christ we heard in Colossians. It speaks of Christ who is our creator as well as our rescuer, who was present at the making of all the worlds and of all life just as much as he was powerfully present on the cross and at the empty tomb. Notice the key phrases – "in him were created all things in heaven and on earth"- and again- "all things are to be reconciled through him and for him." Christ is interested in the whole shooting box – all the interconnectedness of the creation, all life forms. He is intent on drawing all of the creation back to himself, and in the process straightening out all the crooked and cruel bits that at present put it out of kilter.

We are the children of utu, the product of an evolutionary system that programmed us towards the violence that might yet put us off the planet. Which is why those central parts of the gospel that deal with non-retaliation, non-violence, forgiveness are so essential to our survival. They are Christ’s gentle, patient instruction of us, his tutoring us out of our unhelpful evolutionary programming. And as he turns us into equivalents in our day of the Good Samaritan there are merciful consequences for the rest of creation.

The long partnership between humankind and the animals who serve us and companion us has now reached a turn where there are well-organised movements to stop human cruelty against them. They themselves are being changed by their journey with us. I learned recently that dog’s brains have grown smaller than the wolves they descended from, since in the securer lives they often have with us they do not need so much constant cognitive alertness as life in the wilds requires. We live too in a time when more and more human beings do not eat meat because they understand the ethical implications of eating at the expense of inflicting pain and death on other life forms.

But today’s Scripture readings are about more than a call to be gentler, kinder people. They are about the immense power of Christ constantly at work in his creation to complete it, to make it the place where, "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid." God’s mandate proceeding out of the story of the Good Samaritan, and of the hymn of praise to Christ in Colossians, is that, "They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."