Sermon at All Saints’ Farley Parish
Church, Trinity 4 – Sunday 10th July 2022
Deuteronomy 30:9-14; Colossians
1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37
I think that
the true and important teaching of Jesus, in the parable of the Good Samaritan
can easily be lost to us because of the familiarity of the story. I am sure, like me, many of you will have
heard it, and probably even play-acted it, at junior school. The word
“Samaritan” has become synonymous with the concept of doing good, of being a
person who comes to the aid of another in times of distress. The word is also
used as the name for that most important of listening organisation which has
saved the lives of so many disturbed and depressed people.
It is
important to go back right to the beginning of the story. Jesus is being questioned by a lawyer – his
purpose, a bit like Prime Minister’s Question Time – is to try and catch Jesus
out – to test him and God’s manifesto.
Referring back to our first reading where Moses emphasised to the Jewish
people the importance of obeying God’s law in order to prosper, Jesus asks the
young lawyer (who of course could be expected to know and understand the law
better than many others) what the law reveals about salvation and therefore
provides the answer to his question “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
The young lawyer is able to parrot the answer but clearly does not entirely
understand its meaning for he has to follow up with another question – “who is
my neighbour” and Jesus is compelled to explain the answer not by academic
legal discussion but by telling a story in the simplest of terms.
Before we go
into the parable in further detail let’s look at the historical context of the
story. The Samaritans were a people living between Galilee and Judaea who
didn’t follow the laws and customs of the Jewish people. They were, therefore,
culturally different and in the eyes of the Jewish people inferior in every
way. Accordingly they suffered dreadful
discrimination at the hands of the Jews.
You will recall the Samaritan woman at the well who engaged Jesus in
conversation after all the other women had already been and filled their
buckets. She was ashamed to be with them and probably suffered much abuse.
Having had several husbands too probably didn’t help! They were the “wrong”
people, with the “wrong” traditions and “wrong” theology and treated very much
as second-rate people. How often do we view others in that way? Not members of our club or society. It is that context which makes this parable
so powerful.
So, asks the
lawyer, who is my neighbour? Jesus does
not, as so often the case, give a clear unequivocal answer – for two reasons,
first, he is acutely aware that the question is a lawyer’s attempt at getting
him to compromise the Jewish faith and secondly, and more importantly, he wants
the lawyer to work out the answer for himself and to do this he sets out the
little scene so familiar to us all.
I don’t need
to labour the story itself as it is so well known to us all but it does also
reveal a couple of dark moments it. In
the story the poor victim, who is left injured by the side of the road, is
passed-by by two individuals who should know better. We are told in clear terms
that they are of the Jewish Faith – a priest and a Levite. Both would be well versed in the law quoted
by the lawyer – the priest by virtue of his learning and the Levite by virtue
of his learning and service in the Temple or other holy place. Levites were a
special class of Jew who assisted the priests in the Temple – a bit like LLMs I
guess!
And so it is
left to the third pass-by, a hated despised Samaritan to come along and give
assistance to the poor victim. The
lawyer correctly responds to his own question that it is this unlikely and
perceived unfriendly man who has proved to be the real neighbour of the victim
– who has demonstrated proper compassion and rendered practical assistance in
the circumstances and not the holy, pious clerics.
Let’s think
about that for a moment – especially in the context of Jesus’s parting comments
to the young lawyer – “now go and do likewise”.
How easy do we find it to go and give assistance or welcome to those who
are not like us.
Our first
reading this morning from Deuteronomy recalls Moses telling the Jews that they
must obey the law. As a lawyer myself I
have no problem with that. The rule of
law is what should bind up any nation and prevent anarchy and disruption. The
importance of Moses speech is that he is telling his people that in order to do
so it is not necessary to go to any great lengths or call upon any messengers
to go to heaven or across the sea. Obeying the law is by honouring God in the
here and now. By doing so and obeying
his commands and teachings – and we as Christians add the teachings of Christ
who proclaimed that he had not come to set aside the law but to fulfil it – we
can prosper. St. James reminded us that
although we are saved through our Faith that is not sufficient alone and that
we need to turn that faith into actions or deeds as he calls them.
Let me tell
you a personal story – how I have come to be wearing these robes and am
preaching to you this morning. I was brought up on the idea that in order to go
to heaven you needed to be good and that somewhere up in heaven there is a book
in which all your bad deeds are written down.
When you get to the gates of heaven the account is balanced between the
good marks and the bad marks; a bit like the scales of truth and justice
wielded by the ancient Egyptian god Anubis. That was simple theology and
resulted in God being an entity to fear, a truly frightening concept. Indeed, when we look at the Doom Painting in
St. Thomas’s Church in Salisbury we realise that this has been the ecclesiology
over many centuries. I think many people
even today are of this view and for this reason fear that becoming a Christian
is a joy-killing moment they want to avoid.
In the early
2000s I first attended a Spring Harvest event in Minehead – that great
Christian Gathering over a week long. On
the second or third night, in the Big Top I listened intently to a wonderful
Christian speaker who explained to us that being a Christian is not about us
personally climbing the stairway to heaven through our good deeds and generally
being good but that our principal aim should be to bring the Kingdom of Heaven
down to Earth so that we can experience it in the here and now and that by
doing this we are indeed good neighbours to all.
We live in a
globally aware today. Back in Jesus’s
day the world was much smaller in terms of known different cultures. We
integrate more and, in this country alone we have become multicultural in many
regions and cities. Never before have we
had the opportunity and needed to act as Good Samaritans. It has been heartening to see our response in
our local villages to welcoming in some Ukrainian families from that dreadful
conflict. That is a prime example of
being good neighbours. It also pains me
to know that there are still many who find it difficult to accept people of
different creeds and cultures but we can make a difference by the way we, as
Christians, show that love and respect to our neighbours.
So, in the
words of Jesus at the end of the gospel passage, “go now and do likewise”.
Amen MFB/172/08072022
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