The Good Samaritan

‘What we really need are some new slow cooker recipes that come in under £5 for a family of four’

‘Can you just pretend to be my friend for a minute so that creepy guy leaves me alone?’

‘I just want to be able to leave my house and use the toilet without worrying I’ll be interrogated’

‘We just needed food and medicine for our children, what have we done wrong’

These are our neighbours: The local parent running a slow cooker course for cash-strapped families on our doorstep. The young student on a night out who’s lost touch with their group of friends and now finds themselves subject to some very unwelcome attention. The trans woman who worries it could be them at the side of the road if they don’t ‘pass’ the critical eye of those who have decided to appoint themselves bathroom vigilantes. The family, made homeless by war, who just lost friends to a missile as they waited in line for aid.

Who is my neighbour? Asks the well-meaning lawyer in our story… as I too have naively asked myself so many times before. But these are our neighbours. Local, international….ordinary people who may be like us, or may be different; who may be friends or strangers; And will inevitably have needs – just like we do – but perhaps their need is especially acute at the moment.

The statements I began with are not fiction, they are the paraphrased (and sometimes direct) words of people who have shared, in open forums, something about their experience of life in the last few weeks. Their needs and circumstances are not sensational; one or other of those situations will almost certainly be familiar to some in this room and, if you recognise yourself in this, I can tell you with certainty that you are not alone. There are many more who share similar experiences too.

Who is my neighbour? Is not a question we can pretend we are ignorant of the answer to. It informs everything: our domestic and foreign policy, the shape of our communities, and the hope our children have to grow up in a world where discrimination and violence is reduced to a merely intolerable thought, rather than a daily reality. When we hear the all-too familiar story of the ‘Good Samaritan’ or ‘the story of the person just being a decent human being’ as a good friend prefers to call it, we can easily be drawn in to believing that we are the ones who have the power.

We can console ourselves with the pretence that we are bystanders (whether we are being good or bad neighbours) – because we have the power to choose to show benevolence and mercy towards a person, or we can withhold it, because we deem that the poor, beaten and bodied soul on the side of road is of the ‘undeserving’ kind.

This is a challenging position to imagine ourselves in, and it requires us to examine how we use our influence and power for good. Perhaps this viewpoint is in sympathy with the Lawyer who sincerely wanted to be righteous. The inquisitive and respectful tone is lost here in the translation of phrases such him standing up ‘to test Jesus’ and ‘wanting to justify himself’. We may interpret these as an inappropriate challenge to Jesus’ authority, or a selfish desire to get away with the bare minimum, when in fact, he addresses Jesus with respect (calling him ‘teacher’) and seems earnest to understand how to fulfil the law he upholds.

There is nothing wrong with a good, robust, and honest debate about what really matters in life. But what if we imagine ourselves out of the place of the hypothetical ‘helper’ and into the place of the one crushed or beaten up in this scenario, and subject to the ensuing racism, classism, and religious discrimination of those who used the law to protect their own interests (be that religious purity or simply convenience), rather than using the law in the spirit in which it was received: for the good of all people and the protection of those who find themselves vulnerable.

We don’t know the victim’s name in this Gospel – all we know is that he is in a desperate situation and reliant upon the mercy of passers-by. Maybe it is less comfortable for us to put ourselves in his place in the story, and acknowledge that any of us could also find ourselves at the mercy of strangers to help us in our hour of need one day.

Yet this is exactly what God did for us. He came in his humanity and was a victim of injustice which had him stripped, and whipped and hung on a tree. He didn’t just tell others to show mercy and play nicely before returning to his ivory tower… he chose to be vulnerable enough to live what he preached and he relied upon us to treat him with the kind of humanity that so many in this world are still denied. And he was denied it too. Some friends showed compassion, but others (most notably those like us) deserted him in his hour of need.

Jesus lived the full human experience and that is why we can trust him and know it is not just platitudes to say that God is with us in our suffering and is close to the broken-hearted, the broken-bodied, and the ones left bloodied by the broken systems buy which we organise our society. If we want to inherit eternal life, the message is clear… we cannot simply say that ‘life is precious’, we must treat it that way.  We must allow ourselves to contemplate the possibility that to love God and to follow his law, might also require us to attend to ourselves and our neighbours; extending the same love and compassion and healthy boundaries to those we encounter as we hope would be afforded to us.

So can you meet your neighbour’s need? Have you got slow cooker recipes to spare, or a moment to help someone out of a tricky situation? Can you reaffirm the humanity to someone whose dignity is being legislated against? Or lend your voice, and cash, and care to the fight for those who have lost everything?

The Good Samaritan couldn’t save anyone single-handedly, but he could offer support to get the wounded person to a place of safety where others could continue to tend to his need. He couldn’t stay and meet all his practical needs, but he could meet some and was lucky that he had the means to provide for the rest financially. He couldn’t see the journey through from start to finish, but he could play a small part at a critical point to connect that person with the support he needed.

The Good Samaritan did no more than a decent human being should. Not because he was a ‘hero’ or because he went above and beyond, but because he used the means he had available to him to bring comfort and healing and peace to a person in their most vulnerable and desperate moment. Maybe the road to salvation is just that simple:

Learning to love God,
Learning to love ourselves,
and Learning to love our neighbour too.

Do you hope to be treated with the Kingdom values of compassion, kindness, and mercy? I know I do… Let’s help one another to go and do likewise. Amen.