To Hell With Good Intentions
The Parable of the Good Palestinian and Learning to Be Curious | Proper 10, Year C
This week I’ve been in Chicago for the annual gathering of the Ekklesia Project (their substack can be found here:
), which is always a nourishing and invigorating time. That said, I haven’t had time to get a fresh post written, so before the week is gone I wanted to offer this sermon I preached three years ago. Also, for paid subscribers, I apologize but I’m unable to record an audio version this week. Next week everything should be back to the usual schedule.
In the summer of 1968, a Catholic priest named Ivan Illich stood before a crowd of young people. These college students were taking part in a summer program, organized by the Catholic Church in partnership with John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress. The idea was to give young Catholics an opportunity to serve the poor of Latin America. Illich ran a center for intercultural understanding in Cuernavaca, just outside of Mexico City, where these young people were learning Spanish.
In the talk, titled “To Hell with Good Intentions,” Ivan Illich spoke with the fervor of a prophet, boldly unmasking the motivations and misunderstandings that had led these students to Mexico. I recommend you read the talk, but in short, Illich said that they were unlikely to do any good in Latin America. That in fact they were doing much harm by exporting American values and priorities to the people of a place they would never fully comprehend. If you want to serve the poor, he told them, go do it in your own country where at least you can understand the culture and language when they tell you to go to hell. Come to Mexico, he said, come to listen and learn, enjoy the mountains and the flowers, but do not come to help.
In reading our scriptures for this Sunday, I thought of Ivan Illich and his speech. In part, it was because Illich sounds a lot Amos as he bores into the self-satisfaction people who use respectability and religion as a cover for injustice, even to themselves. But more so, I felt like Illich provided a helpful way into understanding the message of our Gospel reading. That message is an invitation away from exhausted helping and into a curious and joyful listening. It’s a journey that begins by going back to the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Ivan Illich believed that the Good Samaritan story was central to understanding the good news of Jesus. For him one of the things that was important in the story was that the Samaritan, unlike the priest and the Levite, was under absolutely no cultural or personal obligation to help. If anything, he was an enemy to the man in the ditch. To drive this point home Illich often referred to the story as the parable of the Good Palestinian. That freedom from obligation is offered as a guide for our own love of neighbor, because true love and mercy are responses of the gut and heart. This is important, because Illich believed that we’ve far too often turned charity—having love for one’s neighbor—into an institution.
Just think about the change in language. If you hear that someone does a lot of charitable giving, do you think of that person as one who is frequently moved in their hearts to help those they come across, or as someone who cuts a check to an organization to help people they will never meet? Illich thought that this change in understanding was dangerous and undermined exactly the kind of freely given neighbor love that Jesus calls us toward, one that involves giving our own coat directly to the one who has none.
Luke, I believe, also saw the need to correct the potential misunderstanding of the call to charity. That’s why the Good Samaritan story is followed by Jesus’ visit to the house of Mary and Martha. The Gospels are not a random assortment of the teachings and events from Jesus’ life. Each Gospel writer has a clear and deliberate purpose for putting one story next to another. We should take note then, that our Gospel reading today is sandwiched between the parable of the Good Samaritan and Jesus teaching on prayer that we’ll hear next week.
The story of Mary and Martha is so familiar that I hardly need to go into the details. But I do want to call your attention to two key phrases. First is that Mary “listened to what Jesus was saying.” The word for saying here is logon, like the logos, the “Word” that became flesh in the Gospel of John. Logos was the name the Stoic philosophers of Luke’s time gave for the organizing logic of the whole universe. In listening to Jesus’ teaching, his logos, there’s the implication that Mary isn’t simply hearing a lecture on an interesting topic; she’s actively absorbing a whole way of life, a new world that she can inhabit.
On the other hand, we’re told that Martha was distracted by her many tasks. The Greek word used here for distracted has a nice metaphor of movement embedded in it. Perispao means literally to pull from around. Think of something circling a center of gravity and then being pulled away from it. That’s what distracted means in New Testament Greek. It’s also good to note that what is translated as “task” in our reading is the word diakonia from which we get our word deacon. We could accurately translate the phrase here as “Martha was pulled away from the center by her many ministries.”
In Mary, though, we find a different posture. There will be a time when she is called to minister, but because she sat at Jesus feet, her way of doing it will be rooted in the way he offered ministry. That way is one of love, not obligation, and it is always offered through deep and abiding relationship.
Jesus never enters a home unless invited. He never heals unless asked. When he encounters a blind man calling out on a roadside, he doesn’t immediately heal his vision. Instead, he says, “what do you want me to do for you?” In that question he acknowledges the autonomy and personhood of the one in front of him.
If we want to follow Mary in following Jesus, if we want to offer our help to those we encounter in need, then we must learn to hear and listen. We have to take the time to be develop relationships with particular people who have names and stories and gifts to offer.
I have had moments of seeing such a life lived out. One was in the church I served during seminary, a parish at the heart of downtown DC. There State Department diplomats worshiped alongside homeless people, and K Street lawyers prayed with night shift workers. This church offered a free hot breakfast and that was an act of organized do-gooding, but the heart of the place was rooted in prayer and mutual joy so that those meals often felt like the feast of God’s kingdom more than a handout. The rector there, who was my mentor in those years, made ample time in his life for prayer and creativity. I saw his calendar once and it had large blocks set aside just to make art. The first week of my summer internship at the church, my sole task was to walk all the streets within a mile radius and tell him what I saw and who I met. In his example and the example of that church, I witnessed a way of loving neighbors that was honestly curious about the gifts that God was bringing in each person present. Such a curiosity is what comes when we discipline our helping by spending time at the feet of Jesus.
So what is our call? If we give up being distracted by our many ministries, what are we supposed to do with the needs in front of us? If we say with Ivan Illich, to hell with good intentions, how are we to respond to the dire poverty and obvious suffering in our world? I don’t have a clear answer to these questions. I think not having an answer is part of the point. But I do have something with which I’m beginning my own discernment, a call that’s been echoing in my head.
A few years ago, John McKnight, one of Ivan Illich’s students gave a talk to a group of pastors. His message to them was simple: “Don’t be helpful, be curious.” It’s the message of his teacher in five words, and I think it’s a good beginning place for our response to a world in need. If we learn to be attentive, to listen like Mary, then we will be drawn into curiosity about those who are near us. What are their names and their stories? What are their desires and wants and needs? What gives them joy? What struggles do we share? What gifts can we accept from them?
Such curiosity is not a cure for the pride and power into which many of us were educated, but it is a start. And when the time for ministry comes, it will be more mutual, more convivial, more joyful, more deeply rooted in love. By being curious, we will find that we are more Christlike. And living into the pattern of that Logos, that Way, is the best thing we can offer to a world in pain.
Thank you for these timely insights. These are questions we are learning to live with. 🌿
Well done, Ragan, and Illich has been on my mind the last couple of days.