Fourth Sunday after Trinity – morning
Sunday 14th July 2019
Trinity 4 – Proper 10 – morning
Amos 7.7 – end
Luke 10. 25-37
Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs
You have to hand it to Jesus – he did not believe in giving his friends an easy ride!
Last week, – for those of you who followed the gospel reading, Jesus told the disciples that they would have to accept the hospitality of anyone and everyone who was prepared to offer it – whether or not they were ‘quite respectable’ and obeyed the food laws, – nothing was more important than spreading the message of God’s love for all people!
Now today, we see a young lawyer trying to get him to be a bit more specific…. “But, who is my neighbour?” The person next door? In the next street? At the other end of the village? In the next town?
All of that and more, comes back the reply…. and to demonstrate his point, Jesus tells the story that we have come to know as the Good Samaritan. A very familiar parable and one that I am sure you know inside out!
But let’s just imagine it was told in a slightly different way….
A man was travelling late one night on a train, when he was set upon by muggers who beat him up, stole his mobile phone and wallet and ran off, leaving him bleeding and unconscious on the station steps, with a serious head wound.
Now by chance a priest was due to catch the early train to attend an important conference in London the next day. When she saw him, she said to herself, ‘I have no first-aid skills with which to help. I can do more for that man by praying for him – I could call in at the Cathedral and light a candle for him, and I will try to call an ambulance if I can get a signal on the train – which is due any minute and I must not miss it or my train ticket will not be valid!’ And she ran up the platform steps and jumped aboard the train.
So likewise a barrister, travelling to appear in an important trial, had much the same thoughts.
But a homeless drug addict – looking for a suitable spot to beg for cash, nevertheless took pity on the man. So he went to him, bound up his head with a filthy scarf – totally unsterile, shared his bottle of water with him and dragged him out of the station to where he could flag down a passing motorist. Between them they half dragged, half carried the man to the nearest hospital where he was left on a trolley in A&E for the next 10 hours… and died from his injuries!
It is disturbing and disorienting, isn’t it? To hear a familiar parable turned upside down. Now you could well argue that I am taking too many liberties with the text. But I would plead that this is just the sort of reading that those listening to Jesus for the very first time might have related to – even hoped for. Putting the addict (or the Samaritan) in his place and affirming the worth of the invisible religious sensibilities and common sense of the priest and the barrister/Levite.
Instead, just when we imagine his hearers began to relax their guard and settled down to hear a good story, Jesus delivers a shock and surprise that blows their settled world apart.
The story that Jesus told no longer has any shock value for us. Reversing the familiar story line and making a case for the defence of those we are expecting to be the baddies – demonstrates the outrageousness with which Jesus’ message was received. But then, parables are meant to blow apart the settled, predictable worlds we have created for our own security.
The young lawyer earned his living by being precise with words; defining facts and limits. How then could he cope with the unlimited, universal, unconditional – even untidy – character of the law of God? How, on that basis, could he ever be sure he had secured the eternal life which he so badly wanted? With his supplementary question to Jesus, he is looking for a watertight definition so he can know what precisely is expected of him and whether he can fulfil it.
And we can have some sympathy with this. The charity demands fall thick and fast through my postbox and into my email inbox… It can all get a bit overwhelming? We can’t possibly help them all! We may even get ‘compassion fatigue’ and find we are quite disabled even in the face of real and evident need – be it starving and sick children in war-torn countries, or mistreated animals, or elephants being decimated by poachers. And it can all become something to be avoided.
Because he spent his life defending others, maybe our lawyer wanted to defend and justify himself? He hoped he could define in advance the limited claims that he was expected to be set.
But he might have known from the radical message of the OT Prophets and of Jesus, that he could never hope to justify himself before God, and no more can we! But the good news is that we don’t have to try, because justification – is God’s work, not ours, secured through the perfect life of Jesus. All we have to do is love.
And it is not the obvious acts of charity – our annual subs to Christian Aid or the Children’s Society, our weekly or monthly contribution to the church, our caring for sick friends or relatives that catch us out. It is the unexpected, unplanned, unlikely people that cross our paths that challenge and test us and put our faith on trial. “When I needed a neighbour, were you there?”
We can’t be everywhere and give to everything…! But we are invited to be a neighbour where we are. Kindness to the stranger in need we stumble across as we are racing to catch the train or bus. Or the elderly slightly muddled person ahead of us in the queue at the Post Office when we are in a hurry. Being a neighbour is defined by where we, and those we have a capacity to assist, meet. It is being near, making time, staying where we are, rather than crossing over to be somewhere else. It is attending, loving, giving – being Christ’s eyes and ears and hands in a world that rushes by without a second glance at the casualty lying in the gutter. Amen.