Sermon for OS 15 - July 13th 2025

I have a great love of France.  The language, people and culture feel like a second home to me, and Caroline and I spent a great deal of time with our children visiting the country, and my French relatives.

Often, people who travel to France make the mistake of focusing on Paris.  Yes, its beautiful and romantic and historic, but the real beauty of France is found in the towns and villages outside of the busy urban areas.

One such place is Chartres.  It’s about hours drive west of Paris, and it is famous throughout the world for what is one of the most stunning Gothic Cathedrals ever built.  Le Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Chatres, or the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres, is a world Heritage Site and the current building dates back to 1205.  It took 66 years to build and is a marvel of architectural design and construction.

When you go inside on a sunny day, a particularly striking feature is the light.  The stained glass in these windows, created by artisans of the day, features a colour known as bleu de Chartres, or Chartres blue.  It is unique to the area, and is a deep, penetrating colour that even I with my limited colour vision can appreciate.

There is, in this cathedral, a window called The Good Samaritan.   It is unusual because it demonstrates a deeply theological understanding of the text, which we heard today in our Gospel.  What the Cathedral artisans understood was that the story of Adam and Eve is also the story of the Good Samaritan.  And thus, Adam and Eve are interwoven with the story of the Good Samaritan. When we compare the two stories, the story of Adam and Eve with the parable of the Good Samaritan, we can discover new and rich theological meaning.  

Looking at the picture we can see links between the two stories are as follows:

“Going down from Jerusalem” symbolizes Adam and Eve’s falling into sin.  “Getting robbed” symbolizes Adam and Eve’s loss of friendship with God. “Being left half-dead” symbolizes Adam and Eve’s spiritual death.  “The Good Samaritan arriving” symbolizes Adam and Eve’s need for a Savior.  This is Jesus, “the foreigner”, who will strike down the Serpent. “The pouring of oil and wine into the wounds” symbolizes the sacramental life. For sacred oil is used at baptism, anointing, confirmation, and holy orders.  The wine is Eucharist. “The coins paid to the innkeeper” symbolizes our need for Jesus to pay our spiritual debts. “The going away of the Good Samaritan” symbolizes the Ascension of Jesus, who goes away until his second coming.

The Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres stands as a witness to the fact that while the Good Samaritan story invites us to love our neighbour, the parable has more layers of meaning that must be understood and lived out in our Christian life.

What is most amazing to consider, is that, whoever designed these windows, had such a rich depth of theological insight.  Remember, that in the 13th century, very few of the people who visited the cathedral could read, and stained glass will have played an incredibly important role in helping people understand texts.

We know our orthodox brothers and sister put tremendous emphasis on the visual aspect of liturgy and buildings.  The iconography we see throughout their churches was created for exactly the same reason; they needed a visual way to tell the story of God and Our Lord to people who could not read it.

And people needed help with understanding the scriptures just as we do.

Look at the text we encounter today.  Notice that Our Lord is asking a scholar of the law a biblical question.  He literally asks – “how do you read it?”   Jesus’ question could also be translated as “How do you understand it?”

The problem of communicating the meaning of our sacred texts has perplexed the church since its origins, and here we see Our Lord evidencing the fact that the Jews also had trouble and disagreement finding the meaning of passages.

Exactly how to read Scripture was a problem for the Jewish people.  The many difficulties with written Hebrew often caused long debates about the meaning and interpretation of Scripture.   Accidentally, reading scripture out loud, which was necessary in worship and study, posed a unique set of problems which we encounter today when we study Hebrew.

 Firstly, There were no vowels.  Thus, they wrote with only consonants.  Imagine in English that to write the word for “person” would be “prsn”.  The problem happens when there is more than one way to add vowels to make different words.  For example, in English “novel” would be “nvl”, which could also be “navel” or “naval”.

Secondly, there was no punctuation.  In English, one misplaced comma can change the meaning of a sentence.  Now imagine a language with no full stops or commas!   In the time of Jesus, it was completely valid to have a debate about how to interpret a passage based on the way you read it.  Changing vowel sounds and adding pauses in different places would change the meaning of the text.    Most scholars agree that there was always a traditional way of reading a text, but the Scriptures could validly be read aloud in multiple different ways.   When we consider this, we can understand why Our Lord asked about how he read the text, and the reason for teaching and interpretation becomes clear.   

And that is what the church has been doing down the ages.  When we look at the window in Chartres, or an icon, or piece of religious art, or even a statue we are seeing an interpretation of text.  And this is how, for millions of people, they accessed our faith.

Nowadays, we a blessed with the gift of reading.  We can all read the texts.  Only when we are familiar with them can we start to see the complex and important meanings that are revealed in them.  One way we can do this is by learning together.  To this end, I am starting a monthly bible study and details of it are in the pew sheet.  The idea is not that I teach you, but that we learn from in other in fellowship, and in the love of Christ.

We begin a week on Tuesday at 7pm, and it will be an in-person event.  Our first session will be in the Parish Centre, but I hope, that in the future we might venture out of the confines of my office, or the parish rooms, and move into other spaces.  Perhaps our homes, or even a local coffee shop or bar could be the place where we share fellowship and study, which is exactly the way Our Lord and his followers began their journey.