The Good Samaritan - Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 10: 25 - 37

It’s a big question. One of the experts in the Law of Israel, asks Jesus;

“Teacher what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Too often today, we interpret those words as a request for information as to how to have life beyond death. And indeed there is an element of that in the question. But what we too often miss out on in our “Me, me me” world, is that “eternal life” would have been understood as being not just about continued existence beyond the grave, but as being about a quality of life in the present - a quality of life that is about sharing in the life of God. It is about being all that God would have us be in this world as much as beyond.

So what does Jesus do? Well, firstly, he points the expert to the Law which he has studied.

“What is written in the Law? How do you read it?

At this, the expert replies by affirming the same pieces of Old Testament Law which Jesus is recorded in the other Gospels as affirming as the greatest of the commandments;

“ ‘Love the Lord your God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind,’ and ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ ”

So far, so good. But the expert wants to delve further and to question Jesus as to who is his neighbour. And it is at this point that Jesus tells what we know as “The Parable of the Good Samaritan” - a story which would have challenged the expert’s worldview. A story which if we will but dare to release it from familiarity and being made safe, potentially completely change how we see the meaning of life.

Let’s for a moment consider the characters in this story.

Firstly, there is the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. We know nothing about him. His race and background are blank pages. All we know is that he would seem to have been foolish because the road from Jerusalem down to Jericho was a road that was very steep with plenty of twists and turns. It was the happy hunting ground of brigands, a place of danger. And it was on this road that the traveller received a mighty beating.

Yes, this traveller can be seen as any man or even as a nobody with all the markers as to his identity taken from him by his assailants And too often then as now, those without the trappings of status so often counted for precious little.

And yet there would seem to be hope. We are told of two men who see this injured man. Those listening would expect a happy outcome for both of these men were the religious professionals of that time - a priest and a levite. Why they didn’t help we are not told. It may be because they feared that the battered traveller was a decoy to enable further injuries to be visited upon them, something we know all too well in the stories of terror that we hear of today. But I think it is more likely that the reason for their failing to help the battered man is more likely to be religious. You see, the priests served in Jerusalem’s Temple. They had to be ritually pure to perform the services that were required of them in two week shifts. To return home as “unclean” would have been quite some embarrassment. Yet, this would have been the case if he had contact with a dead body.

And then what about the levite? Well, all priests were levites but not all levites were priests. Still, even those levites who were not priests tended to be men of high religious standing, often rabbis. They were part of Israel’s religious elite. And yet, following the priest, the levite goes a little closer but ultimately follows the example of the priest in not helping the traveller.

And here we find ourselves encountering a dilemma that has reverberated down the years. It is the dilemma when people feel that what God wants should have priority over human kindness and compassion. We all know of religious wars waged by earnest religious people down the centuries. We all know of cruelties meted out by devoutly religious people upon those who in some way especially in the field of sexuality, have not conformed to what these religious people see as truth. We all know of sincerely religious people who put the institution of the church or forms of observance ahead of basic humanity and compassion. Yes, the example of priest and levite is an example that has all too often been repeated.

But this is an example that is in no way applauded by Jesus in his story. At the end, priest and levite alike have failed to be good neighbours. For one of the messages of this parable is that loving the “neighbour” is not secondary to loving God. On the contrary, this parable reminds us that the most helpful picture of God is of a Being who is all loving and who is constantly engaged in pouring out such love. So love and compassion for others is not so much about an obligation as it is about our being invited to participate and share in the life and being of God.

But back to the parable. There now appears another passerby. This person is a Samaritan. Imagine for a moment, the horror that this would have struck in the mind of those who were listening to Jesus. It is as if the pantomime villain has arrived upon the stage. For there was a long history of enmity between Jews and Samaritans going back several hundreds of years to the time when Assyrian invaders deported the elite in Northern Israel leaving behind the less important people who eventually mingled with the foreigners who the Assyrians brought in to repopulate the land. Inevitably, there were wrongs on both sides. There were rival temples. There were wrongs done by both peoples and ultimately the conflict was in part religious and in part racial. Indeed, in John’s Gospel, when the enemies of Jesus wish to discredit him, they say;

“Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?”

Whilst when a Samaritan village does not receive Jesus, his disciples, James and John ask;

“ Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them.”


Oh yes, it was a bitter conflict all right! But in this story, we find that the Samaritan does what priest and levite fail to do. He shows compassion and attends to the man’s needs. He, the outsider, fulfils the role of neighbour.

So what does this story say to us today? Like ancient Israel, we still erect barriers. Day after day, we see the reality of racial exclusion. Just look at what some of our newspapers spew up in terms of hatred of asylum seekers. Day after day, we see the reality of religious hatred. So often, we see attempts to increase divisions between different faiths - many increasingly becoming experts in an Alf Garnett sort of way regarding Muslims. And the list could go on! But Jesus in this parable defies our traditions of building walls between insiders and outsiders. For all the rainbow people of our planet are in the light of this parable to be seen as neighbours. We need to see, to appreciate and to embrace the whole human community which we are called to be in relationship with.

But finally, there is one more subversive twist in the story. Not only is the Samaritan a neighbour in our story. He is also the Christ figure in our story. See him bandaging the wounds and pouring oil and wine upon them. See the limitlessness of his compassion. And is that not a picture of Jesus. For when we feel battered, down and out, Jesus reaches out in loving kindness to us, to put us right and to fix us that we might once more embrace life and participate in the cycle of kindness of which he is the author.

In Christ we have the ultimate good neighbour. And in kindness, he invites us to share in his life.


This sermon was preached at Alwington on Sunday July 15th 2007