Readings: Psalm 82 - A Contemporary
Reading from Grant us Your Peace by
David Grant Luke 10:25-37
We pray: Loving
God, we have heard your word for us from scripture for today – we ask for open
hearts and minds as we find our place the story of hope and love that you bring
to us in Jesus Christ. Amen.
The story of the
Good Samaritan is very familiar to most of us – a story that clearly has
victims, villains and heroes.
The victim is
obvious.
Villains - those people
who beat and robbed, and definitely those who passed to the other side of the
street. Although we also know they can be victims too.
Hero - the unexpected, unlikely Samaritan who
stopped and cared for the victim – and cared for him generously.
To help us get
into this story many have written contemporary narratives – the farmer robbed,
the church people walking by, late to a meeting, the bikie being the hero –
such we wrote for our children’s church in Amberley.
But there is
nothing like having something real happen to make you realise the compelling
teaching that Jesus has for us in this story.
I was coming back
from the market a couple of Saturday’s ago and drove into Frederick St to one
of my favourite coffee shops – the Fix.
No parks so on down the road to turn into Great King. And there as I drove past was a body slumped
down on the road – feet in the gutter, face down – with another chap standing
on the path laughing his head off. In
the time of driving, parking, walking back I went through a million scenarios
in my head of what had happened and what to do, thinking ‘this is where the
rubber hits the road!’ When I got there
someone else had intervened – had the drunken man from the road held up by the collar
(I swear he was standing at 45º) and was talking to the other chap. It was quite sobering to acknowledge the
relief I felt. Would I have walked by –
I don’t think so – but I would have called for help – which is sensible.
I heard another
tell the story of a similar situation (before cell phones) where seeing a
situation where someone needed help, this person knocked on the nearest door
for someone to call services and were told quite firmly ‘it is not any of our
business and no we will not phone for help.’
Maybe another way
in to this increasingly uncomfortable story is to ask an equally sticky
question – do we identify with any of the characters?
Is it the lawyer
asking the questions – so tied up with debating the issue that he cannot see
the need before him?
Is it the people
who pass by – the church people who preach love and care –too busy with their
religious duties and choosing to judge rather that give mercy
Are you the beaten
one – accepting help from someone you perhaps wouldn’t eat a meal with?
Or the one who
responded to the need despite risking rejection, of being seen as incapable of
good.
To tell the truth,
I have no problem with placing myself in all of these roles at different
times. And I suspect I won’t be
alone. So I believe it is worthwhile
thinking about some of the things that get in the way of our ‘Good Samaritan’
responses to need, to mercy, to love and kindness being shared with those in
need.
One thing to think
about is how our life style and culture impacts our responses. And I would share something we heard at our
meeting here on Tuesday night – one speaker shared a story of an experiment
carried out at a university – where a group of theology students were divided
into two groups and sent to one of the two lecture theatres that were on either
side of the campus. Here they both
received a lecture on the Good Samaritan before being told that they then
needed to get across to the other lecture room for their next lecture – the
difference being that one group was told they would have a good half hour
before the next one started and the other that they were late already and would
have to move it. Both groups came upon a
person lying on the ground, obviously needing help. The group with time to stop almost all
stopped to help. Of the group that were
running late – no one stopped. The
cultural imperative to be timely can make us blind to times when our compassion
needs to rule.
Another barrier to
compassion and care would be jumping to conclusions about what has happened –
with a healthy dollop of judgement in there to justify our non-action. And a lack of courage to enter the unknown.
Yet Jesus consistently and in so many ways speaks to us of how, through
compassion and mercy, the love of God is made known in the most unexpected ways
and through the most unlikely people.
Yet we are loathe, as David Grant suggested, to enter the messiness of
the world, and we fail in courage when you ask us to move towards conversation
with the fringe folk, those we prefer to avoid.
He uses words like
embarrassment, nerve, courage, shaky – but he also follows the psalmist in
reminding us that we are frail, of shaky resolve, and fearful duplicity – we
are learners, faith-bearers learning faithfulness, flawed human being learning
to stand alongside you – and asks God to take us as far as we can go in
obedience, without guilt paralysing us and with the courage that we do have.
In reflecting on
how to be a person who knows what it means to love your neighbour, to be a
giver as well as a receiver of mercy and grace, it seems to me that we should
also be kind and merciful to ourselves – as we do our best to follow in Jesus
path of being obedient and courageous in loving our neighbour. Because it is not always going work out.
The important
thing is that we turn our faces away from justifying prejudice and apathy and
exclusivism as the proud foundations of our Christian living and instead look
towards the ways we can be more like Jesus – where we can offer a helping hand,
be slow to judgement, be willing to share our time, our ear, our hand to those
who have need of someone to come kneel beside them and love them. For in doing
so, even when it is a little thing we do, we are bringing our neighbours,
whoever they are, into the care and mercy of Jesus.
Perhaps there is
one more person in this story that we need to acknowledge – and that is the
innkeeper, the one to whom the Samaritan took the broken and wounded man for
healing. Are we innkeepers do you think?
Hear these words
as we finish from the pen of Elaine Gisbourne – titled ‘Called on to be an
innkeeper.’
I bring you my wounded ones;
the beaten, broken and messy,
the weary, the traumatised,
precious, wounded ones.
I bring you the ones from whom
others turn their gaze,
out of fear, disgust, shame;
rejected when most vulnerable,
I bring them to you.
I bring them to you because I trust you.
To see beyond the blood and dirt,
to look deeper than the bruises and scars,
and hold them,
stay with them,
attend to them and care for them.
I know this work will cost you,
cost you more than you think you can give,
but I know you:
you will give to them from the depths of your own
generosity,
and you will continue to hold them
until I return and set them on their way.
I trust you because I know you,
that my promise is enough for you,
and that you know that it is our love that heals.
In our acts of
mercy and love for neighbour lie the seedlings for transforming this world, so,
as Jesus says, let us go and do likewise. Amen
Margaret Garland
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