“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’”
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”
In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked byrobbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
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| By Balthasar van Cortbemde (1647) |
Then Jesus said, “which of those three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
The parable of the Good Samaritan is probably the most famous of Jesus' parables. Even people who never go into a church, who know very little about the Bible, will understand who a 'Good Samaritan' is: a person who makes the choice to help someone else, particularly a stranger. You have hopefully heard of the charity called 'Samaritans', where people volunteer to speak, by phone or email or text, to anyone who calls, particularly people who are suicidal or depressed. The Samaritans were founded by a vicar of the Church of England in 1953, after a young girl in his parish committed suicide, and the name was given in a newspaper reporting on his work.
It has led to a worldwide network of organisations that provide someone to listen, for people who have nobody else. On my phone today, I have an app called GoodSam, which was used during the Lockdowns to connect NHS volunteer responders with people who needed help, whether with collecting prescriptions, getting shopping, or whatever. GoodSam is slightly snappier, as names go, but you can see where it comes from.
The name of the Good Samaritan is so recognisable after 2000 years because this short parable gives such a clear and challenging view of what it means to serve others, amid the reality that it is something we must actively choose, when it is so easy to find reasons not to. And, if that was not enough, it challenges us to confront our prejudices about who may be in need, and who might turn to help. Jesus tells this parable to answer a question from an expert in the Jewish Law. This lawyer has correctly recognised the two most important commandments in the Old Testament Law: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind"; and, "Love your neighbour as yourself".
He thinks he knows who God is, but he is left with one crucial question, "who is my neighbour?". Of course, the man isn't asking who lives next door to me? He is asking who is near to my heart, who do I need to care for? Who should I love? Who is my neighbour? Now that is a question that still obsesses us today, it defines our politics and our international relations. Where do we draw the line for who we support through our healthcare and welfare system, and how generously do we support them? Do we regard lives in other countries as precious as our own, if they are threatened by poverty or war?
These are not easy questions. And Jesus does not try to give us a precise answer in each and every situation. How could he? Not in a thousand pages. Rather, with a few words he gives us a clear illustration of the principles and values that must guide us, and he leaves us to use our judgement and our conscience, I hope with the help of God's Holy Spirit, to decide what we must do in our own lives. I pray we will take that responsibility seriously, and approach it with care, each and every day, because we never know the impact we can have, for good or bad, in small ways and large ones, as we make our choices.
"A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers". Now, when Jesus said the man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, he means it quite literally, because to travel from Jerusalem up on Mt Zion to Jericho by the Dead Sea involves descending by about 1000m in altitude over a 20 miles journey. That's quite a long way down. And for 20 miles the road passes through land that is steep, rocky, barren and deserted. It was also well-known for being a dangerous route, where robbers often did strike in remote places. A man attacked and beaten here would be far from help, unless a kind soul came upon him along the road and took pity on him. Otherwise, naked and hurt out in the desert, he would surely die.
The man is unspecified, he could be anyone, though since Jesus is talking to a crowd of Jews, I think we are meant to assume he is a Jew. But it is important we know nothing about him, he stands then, for anyone in trouble, anyone in need. And there are times when we are all in need; times when we have all been set upon by troubles, not for all, by armed robbers, but certainly times when we are in deep need of the kindness of others. This man, beaten and alone, is us, in our worst moments, and we are him.
And then who comes along the way, a priest and then a Levite, who both "walk by on the other side". I know there have been times also, when I have been that priest, or Levite, and walked by on the other side. Times I'm not proud of, maybe I was too busy, or too afraid, or somewhere I didn't know, or maybe I was hurrying to some other good deed, but I thought I saw someone in need, and I walked by on the other side. Jesus does not say it, but the priest and the Levite surely too have good excuses for not helping the man lying half-dead. The priest is coming from Jerusalem to Jericho, maybe he has served his term in the Temple, and now is returning to his family, who will be waiting anxiously for him. The Levite maybe fears that the robbers are still around and threaten him, or maybe even that the man is merely pretending to be in need, to trap him.
Either way, they make their choice, and hurry on, and the man is still lying hurt and in need. Their choice is made more stark, by the important roles they hold. A priest and a Levite are the religious and moral leaders of their day. I have a beautifully illustrated children's version of this parable, for my daughter, let's say, and in that version, it is a Bishop and a Judge who walk by. Today it could be another person as well: maybe a member of parliament, or a local councillor; maybe a doctor or a charity worker; anyway, a person in a position of trust and moral authority, who walks by on the other side. As sadly people in positions of trust and authority sometimes do, because it's always more easy to talk about doing good, than it is to actually do it. I felt very aware of that as I sat and wrote this sermon, I thought, if anyone asks me for help now, I will have to say yes, there's a limit to how much of my own hypocrisy I can live with.
So the priest and the Levite walked by on the other side, but now the Samaritan comes along, "and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him". The first thing to notice is the man's needs are very concrete, and so is the care the Samaritan gives him. One of the huge problems with Politics, is it can leave us so caught up in theoretical, ideological discussions, about who is responsible, and who is to blame, and who should pay, and why, that we lose track of real and concrete needs. I consider myself a patriot, I love my country, its people, its history and its land, but people can't eat patriotism.
The more abstract issues may matter in their own time, but we cannot lose track of the fact hungry people need feeding, and the sick need care, and people who are cold need heat, and once we have attended to those needs, we can argue about the theoretical issues. Jesus makes this point again and again, such as in the parable of the sheep and the goats. At the end of time, at the end of our lives, Jesus draws this distinction between good and evil: when I was hungry did you give me something to eat? When I was thirsty did you give me something to drink? When I was a stranger did you invite me in? When I needed clothes did you clothe me? Justifications and excuses are not enough.
The Samaritan crosses the road to tend to the stranger, he chooses to make himself involved; he puts the beaten man on his donkey while he walks, and he takes the man to an inn. At that point the Samaritan could have considered that he had done his good deed, he had completed his job, he had discharged his obligation, but he doesn't. He takes his involvement a step further, and says "Look after him, [...] and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have." He chooses to make an ongoing commitment to the man who was attacked. He sees it as his responsibility as long as there remains a need. He has given his time, his effort, he has already given money, and now he gives his ongoing commitment.
Jesus is making a point here. Any help is better than none, but many problems do not have an easy and immediate solution. Often the most important choices we make are not when we help someone once, but when we make a commitment to be there to help them again and again, for as long as they need. Now, that is a difficult commitment to make, and it's not something we can do every day, or need to do every day, but it is one of the most noble things a person can do.
Who is this Samaritan then, and why did Jesus pick him as the example of what it means to be a neighbour? Well, in our society this parable is so well-known that, as I said, a Samaritan just means someone who chooses to help a stranger. But the Samaritans were, and still are, a religious community in the Middle-East closely related to the Jews. Today there are sadly very few of them left, only 850, in Israel and the West Bank, but when Jesus was preaching, they were a thriving community. The Samaritans were closely related to the Jews, they lived in Samaria, which is now known as the West Bank, and their religion is very similar to Judaism. But the two communities separated hundreds of years before Jesus was born, and now there was a long-standing bitterness and hatred between them.
This was a type of division that is all too common in our world: a civil war, a lingering, smouldering conflict between people who lived right beside one another, and have almost everything in common, but sadly, hate each other all the more because of it. Many of the worse conflicts of our modern world are like this: in Northern Ireland, in Syria, in Bosnia, in Israel and Palestine, in the Congo, and elsewhere. In smaller, thankfully less violent ways, we suffer from polarisation like this in our society as well, for the last 5 years between Brexiters and Remainers; or in America over the rumbling culture war between conservatives and liberals.
As humankind we are so prone to these kinds of divisions, we seek them out, like the voice of the Devil whispering constantly in our ear, encouraging us to seek splits and divisions wherever we can. The narcissism of small differences, as it's sometimes called, where we obsess about our differences despite the fact we have so much in common, can be our greatest threat. These kinds of divisions can come in communities of any size, within churches even, or families; sometimes grievances linger for decades, even after the original reason has been forgotten. If we let these linger, before long it stops even being about the original grievance, it becomes about the things you did to me and I did to you, in all the years in between. And that can go on forever.
Responding to an expert in the Jewish Law, probably in front of a crowd of Jews, Jesus is making a very powerful point by having a Samaritan as the hero of his story, in contrast to the choices of the Priest and the Levite. We are prone to stereotypes and prejudices, that often involve us thinking we are better and smarter and kinder than some group we label as Other than us. But goodness does not involve belonging to a tribe or a side or a party, it is defined by the way we choose to act; by the love we show to our fellow men and women. The individual is not defined by their group: people we think of as Us, like the Priest and Levite, may fail when it comes to the test; and people we regard as Them, like the Samaritan, may surprise us with their pity and compassion. We all bear the image of God, and we all have the potential for good and evil. But when we let stereotypes and prejudices do our thinking for us, we make ourselves stupid, and we risk ignoring the good among people who are different to us, as well as missing the evil lurking on our own side.
This doesn't mean there aren't real rights and wrongs between groups or nations or in politics, there are. Before Jesus's time Jews had killed Samaritans, and Samaritans had killed Jews. His audience might have expected a Samaritan to not just ignore the man, but to attack him again. But Jesus went the other way. We cannot assume our prejudices about the group, define the individual; each person deserves the right to prove themselves, and to define themselves.
After the recent European Cup final there was, quite rightly, outrage about racist abuse directed at Black England player online. And as a community we should take pride in the fact 3 of those players: Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Raheem Sterling, have spoken out about their Christian faith. I don't doubt that they will have read this parable, they will have reflected on this parable, they will have heard sermons on this parable. And I wonder what impact that has had on their campaigning as role models for poor and marginalised people in this country. Racism is evil because it doesn't care about the choices a person makes, but defines them as good or evil based on what race they belong to. Martin Luther King, the great Baptist minister, a man drenched in the Bible, described this beautifully in his famous phrase, when he said he wanted his children to "live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character".
Too often, though, people who called themselves Christians have been responsible for encouraging racism, rather than defeating it. But I cannot open my Bible and possibly understand what book they were reading; as I cannot when people call themselves Christians but ignore their obligation to the poor and vulnerable. I think these cases are clear examples of when people have allowed their desire to protect their positions of wealth and power blind them to what God is saying in the Bible on page after page. The parable of the Good Samaritan tells us that we have a choice, we can choose to blind ourselves to our responsibility and walk by on the other side, or we can choose to prove what it really means to love the Lord our God, with all our heart, and to love our neighbour as ourself.
I believe that the Christian faith has a unique contribution to make in overcoming racism and prejudice in our world. We have a story, stretching back 3000 years to right to the present day, that can help all people see that they can be, and must be, brothers and sisters to one other. The Bible says that the entire human race are one widespread family, spiritual children of the same parents, Adam & Eve, created directly by God in his image. Centuries before Jesus was born the prophet Isaiah spoke movingly about a day when all the peoples of the world will stream to Jerusalem, united in worship of God, and Mt Zion in Jerusalem "will be called a house of prayer for all nations". The Gospels describe how Jesus sent his disciples out to the ends of the earth, "to make disciples of all nations". At Pentecost the first miracle of the Holy Spirit was to give the Disciples the power to speak in the many languages of all the people there. And, St Paul confirmed in his famous words, "there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus".
The result of this is a Christian Church that is today the largest and most diverse community in the entire world. A community that is real because it is based on sharing the most profound and important of things, a life defined by love and faith in Christ; not on belonging to a race or nationality or language or sex or age, and so a community uniquely open to all people to join.
But we deny that potential if, like the Priest and the Levite, we walk by on the other side from the troubles of our brothers and sisters both near and far, of every creed and colour and name.
“Which of those three [the Priest, Levite and Samaritan] do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
The lawyer replied, “The one who took care of him.”
Then Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
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