The text of a sermon preached at the Eucharist on 14 July. The familiar parable of the "Good Samaritan" is familiar, yet calls out readings which continue to challenge us. Deuteronomy 30: 9-14; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37
Writing a cover story for the New Statesman, Rory Stuart asks “What is wrong with us?”
Reflecting on his failure to translate his #RoryWalks campaign into success in the Tory leadership election, he writes that ‘our country has entered a midlife crisis. The answer cannot be to try to lurch back to an adolescent fantasy of being saved by superheroes, but instead to move forward into maturity’.
For Stuart, maturity means recognising that our democratic life isn’t about echoing prejudices, comforting abstractions or only talking about economics. Maturity celebrates success; it is angered by injustice in modern Britain.
Maturity, he argues, demands an urgent and ambitious response; a response that harnesses the energy across parties rather than gravitating to extremes.
To see what is around us.
To respond with urgency.
To reach out across political divides.
Seeing, responding, reaching out.
As we hear one of the most well loved of all Jesus’ parables. It feels familiar, safe and comforting. We know how it goes and it’s easy to miss how demanding it is. The challenges of our political and social landscape makes us different questions of this text - to appreciate afresh just how radical it is.
Our national midlife crisis leads to the headline, ‘what is wrong with us?’
A lawyer’s question about inheriting eternal life, leads to a lesson in love.
Jesus invites the lawyer to answer on the basis of his own expertise - what’s been written; what does he read?
His answer takes us to the heart of the commandments: to love God and neighbour.
Observing the commandments and decrees of the law is a source of blessing. God delights in this: human lives are more fruitful when love is at the heart of our undertakings.
Such obedience is life-giving.
We are to turn to the Lord; and to turn towards each other.
This law of of love leads to the fullness of life; it demands all that we are, in heart and soul.
This word of love is near to us: as intimate as every breath we take; every heart beat; every gesture.
We are to love with every fibre of our being; in thought and feeling, word and action. In a delightful phrase of Paula Gooder, we are to love God with all our ‘muchness’.
Do this, says Jesus, and you live.
But the lawyer, presses on probing the limits of neighbourly love: who qualifies, he asks?
The Hebrew Scriptures sets out commitments to two circles of neighbour: one’s own family, the bonds of kith and kin; and the stranger, the foreigner in your midst.
Jesus himself goes on to stretches our imaginations even further. Rather than defining boundaries and recipients of love he asks the question - who shows compassion?
This is a story of someone who was attacked and abandoned. We’re in the ditch with him - semi-clad, semi-conscious.
This is a story of people going about their business on that dangerous road. We walk with them weighing the risks; shouldering responsibilities; thinking about the consequences.
This is a story of someone moved with compassion; a stranger who sees, responds and reaches out. We look upon this outsider, the despised one who does the right.
There’s oil to sooth, wine to cleanse and cloth to bind up wounds.
A journey is disrupted; transport redeployed; time, money and energy are devoted to the care of another.
This is subversive because, as one writer puts it [Levine/Witherington on Luke]: ’It is one thing to learn that the command to love encompasses anyone who is in need, even the outsider or enemy; it is far more disturbing to have to acknowledge that the enemy or outsider may be more quick to show love than those who are certainly fellow “insiders”.
That we call this one ‘good’ challenges us too.
To see what is around us.
To respond with urgency.
To reach out across political divides.
Such seeing, responding, reaching out might mean that we recognise the goodness, compassion and energy in those with whom we disagree.
To say ‘good’ implies offence; as if this person is the exception within a group viewed negatively; yet even the apparent enemy can respond with mercy; can become friends; can break the cycle of violence.
The good Remoaner.
The good Tory.
The good Socialist.
To say ‘good’ challenges us to recognise acts of generous and costly love being displayed by those we see as ‘other’; those we disagree with; those society criticises.
The good Brexiter.
The good immigrant.
The good journalist.
Jesus doesn’t answer the lawyer’s question; he illustrates how to love.
Jesus doesn’t define who the neighbour is; he illustrates what a neighbour does.
Jesus presses us further in inviting us to see, respond and reach out.
The good Samaritan’s open-ended and costly commitment points us to the sacrificial love of God.
The God for whom there are no limits.
The God who is with us In Jesus.
The God who binds up and brings soothing balm; who cleanses and saves; who restores life.
In telling this parable, Jesus demonstrates the outsiders act of unexpected love to the wounded traveller; he also points us to the life-changing power of that love as he is raised up on the cross.
It is Jesus’ death and resurrection love reaches to the depths and transforms the universe. In the words of Paul, God has rescued us from the power of darkness; and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son. Life in Christ begins with the obedience of the one who restores us; in who we have redemption and forgiveness.
When we look at our nation and ask ‘what is wrong with us?’ we are called to see, to respond and to reach out. Our nation needs people who can be channels of mercy not hate; people who build up, rather than destroy; people who heal rather than harm.
The word of God is very near to us. As we take bread and wine, the word of in in our mouth and in our heart. We become one in Christ; and as his body we are to observe that word. By the power of the Spirit, worship and service are one act of generous self-giving.
Go, Jesus tells the lawyer, do likewise.
God and respond to the other with compassion and wisdom: on the Tube, in the supermarket and at work. Go and learn from those we’ve disagreed with or dismissed. Go and bridge the gap between us and the wounded, and pray for them today.
Paul’s letter is full of patience and joy; grace and strength; it is rooted in faith, hope and love. Our capacity to be fruitful is rooted in the truth of Christ and our maturity rooted in prayer for each other.
Nourished by the goodness of God’s word of self-giving love, may we bear the radical claim of love in seeing, responding and reaching out. Amen.
© Julie Gittoes 2019
