Scripture - Luke 10: 25-37

Dan Joseph

This is a story that has been told over and over again - till we reach the point in our culture where the very word Samaritan has a completely different meaning. Say the word Samaritan to most people in this country and they'll mention the helpline organisation that deals with people who are at the very lowest they can be, and whose sterling work with people who need someone to listen to them. As a result, most of us will have the highest regard for people who volunteer for the Samaritans.

So this story is off to a bad start with its very title when we tell it in 21st century England. For so many of us this is a story we have heard since childhood. It holds no more shocks than the Sound of Music or the Wizard of Oz (though obviously the songs aren't as good!).

But the reality is that the story of the Good Samaritan sits very well in this series of sermons, because the truth is that this story isn't cosy. This is an X-rated parable.

Jesus telling this story of violence and fear would have sent shockwaves through his audience every time it was told, because of the twist in the ending. This would have been a whodunnit that no one would have seen coming.

It's hard for us to imagine just how this would have sounded to the people of that world 2,000 years ago; Samaritan was not a word that inspired admiration or regard in the Jewish nation. It was a word that inspired contempt.

The Samaritans were outsiders, unclean and not to be trusted; if the right wing press had existed back then, then I'm sure it would have been printing many articles about how the Samaritans were the cause of all the problems in today's society. It was a word used sometimes to describe heretics or people who broke ceremonial law.

In contrast the other characters were people that the listeners could all readily identify with, the priest and the Levite, the travelling man and unfortunately the robbers.

The priest - highly respected and trusted by the community; the Levite would also have been held in high regard.

So let's start by looking at the person who is central to the story - the travelling man.

It doesn't matter where you live; all cities have their dodgy areas. The places you would think twice about going after dark. I recall on one of my first visits to Manchester many years ago, being surprised that a cab driver refused to take me home because he wasn't prepared to drive through the area I was staying in. Every city is the same.

And yet, for whatever reason, our traveller found himself going through this area alone - the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. Perhaps he should have waited till the following day when it was lighter; perhaps he should have travelled with other people. Perhaps, you might say, he ended up bringing it on himself making such a dangerous journey by himself.

And so Jesus' parable starts off with him telling of a vicious attack. They didn't just rob him, they left him for dead, which gives us an idea of just how horrible the attack would have been. So this tale starts off like a Crimewatch reconstruction; however foolish we may think the traveller was for attempting this journey himself, we can only feel compassion for him left alone and wounded.

On the arrival of the priest, perhaps those listeners would have thought things were going to look up. But priests were forbidden to touch a dead body otherwise they themselves became unclean for a time and so he would be excluded from the temple. He wasn't prepared to risk that, so he stays on the other side of the road.

The Levite teases us that he would be the hero, as he seems to come closer, but he too crosses over to the other side.

And then the Samaritan turns up. For the crowd listening, this would surely have been the arrival of the villain of the piece; as if the traveller's misfortunes were not enough, now this dangerous outsider had turned up.

And yet, so surprisingly for the crowd, this is the point where the traveller's fortunes start to look up. And in this briefest of tales we learn quite a lot about the character of the Samaritan.

The first thing he does is feel compassion for him. Well frankly, that's the easy bit - I'm sure the priest and the Levite would have felt a pang or two of compassion - no doubt they would have told their friends what an awful sight they'd seen on the road to Jericho last night.

The Samaritan, on the other hand, his first instinct is to see what he can do, to administer first aid to the badly beaten man. If he was conscious then surely he'd have been afraid and confused, feeling that uncomfortable mixture of emotions that victims of crime feel. And yet the Samaritan was able to take him to the nearest inn, so he must have found a way of calming him, of assuring him that he could be trusted and that he was safe. At the inn we learn more about the Samaritan, his credit is good, clearly the innkeeper was prepared to trust him. And then the story finishes as we hear that the Samaritan was prepared to come back and make sure the traveller was all right.

And so there we have it - shocking and controversial at the time and with such a clear message for the whole church and the world at large.

Jesus challenges us that having good intentions and feeling bad about a situation isn't enough: that it's easy for us to be like the priest and the Levite; that we can always find an excuse not to do something. It's what we are prepared to do that matters. Saying we'll do something is all well and good - our willingness to actually do it is a mark of our character and our maturity.

But Jesus has a message for the whole Christian community - that we should not seek to demonise or exclude communities of people. That god's love will work through people of any creed or background because god makes his holy spirit available to all people.

We will live in a world where so many communities are seen as outsiders or are subversive in some way - it's such a part of human nature to fear or mistrust what we don't know or understand. We see it at work wherever we look - in newspapers blaming asylum seekers as the cause of so many of society's ills. At work where people who are different being bitched about behind their backs. These are the sorts of failings that Jesus uses this parable to expose - to hold up a mirror to society to challenge us to be different.

To say, if you look beyond the labels - you can find people of integrity and compassion. People who want to contribute to society. This is what Jesus calls each of us to be - many of us see ourselves as being part of misunderstood communities, our challenge is to roll up our sleeves and get involved - and if people are frightened or confused about our motives then we have to find the words to comfort and calm them.

Even if we see ourselves as outsiders, because of our age, our gender our nationality, we can refuse to act as victims and effect change beyond ourselves. In doing so, we help to change what society may see as "who is in and who is out" and even if we don't tear down the boundaries completely, we can at least help to move the goalposts.

One of Jesus' most radical challenges to us all is to think about how we identify not through our particular communities or labels, but to make us think about how we identify in our service of others.

'Who is my neighbour?' asked the person in the crowd. But this is not the only question that Jesus answers with his parable, he answers 'what sort of a neighbour do we want to be?' what sort of neighbours would we like to have?'

Amen

(Dan Joseph)