Deuteronomy 30.10-14 ‘The word is very near you, so that you can do it’
Colossians 1.15-20
‘All things were created through him and for him.’
Luke 10.25-37
‘Who is my neighbour?’
Who proved to be a neighbour to the man who fell among
the robbers?” The lawyer
said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.” (Luke 10.37)
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The
parable of the Good Samaritan is perhaps Jesus’ most classic parable.
It’s
the parable that lots of people have heard of, or refer to, even in our increasingly
secularised society that doesn’t generally revert to Christian language and
imagery.
Even
if they can’t recount every detail of the parable, they will know the phrase ‘Good
Samaritan’ as meaning someone who shows kindness to a person in need.
They
may know the phrase about ‘passing by on the other side’ to mean ignoring
someone in need, but not know where it comes from.
And
almost certainly they will know the word ‘samaritan’ from the charity
established by the Revd Chad Varah in 1953 after he took the funeral of a
14-year-old girl who had committed suicide.
The
Samaritans respond so powerfully to those who need emotional support.
Back
to the parable: we might think we know what it’s all about: snooty religious people who won’t help; the
outsider who will.
It
has the simple moral lesson help people in need, don’t “pass by on the other
side”.
And
that is a legitimate reading of the parable.
That
reading of the parable has power when one walks the streets of Croydon, where
all too often we see people lying in the doorways of shops, or around this very
church.
It’s
so difficult, isn’t it, to know quite what to do.
Do
I go over and help; or am I just ‘passing by on the other side’?
Hearing
this parable again should indeed make us reconsider what mercy looks like when
given to another person, especially the bruised and battered, and how we go and
do likewise.
Parables
have a knack of being endlessly generative, in other words, they generate more
and more meaning as you contemplate them, because they are taking you deep into
the character of God.
The
early Christian writers also remind us that the parable not only speaks to our
moral sense but our spiritual sense also.
They
give us a fresh perspective to ask what else might be said by the parable.
So
how about this interpretation by the Biblical exegete Origen, writing in the late
second and early third century?
One of the elders
wanted to interpret the parable as follows. The man who was going down is Adam.
Jerusalem is paradise, and Jericho is the world. The robbers are hostile
powers. The priest is the Law, the Levite is the prophets, and the Samaritan is
Christ. The wounds are disobedience, the beast is the Lord’s body, the inn,
which accepts all who wish to enter, is the Church. And further, the two
denarii mean the Father and the Son. The manager of the stable is the head of
the Church, to whom its care has been entrusted. And the fact that the
Samaritan promises he will return represents the Saviour’s second coming. (Origen
– Homilies on Luke, Homily 34)
I
wonder if you have ever thought of the parable like that?!
Now,
we could dismiss it as pious nonsense, or reading too much into the text.
It
certainly is not a practical reading to draw out a moral, or even political
message, but it is one that seeks to draw out of the parable things we often
miss.
What
we find with it is an entry into a symbolic world to nourish the spirit, but
that also has a direct bearing on our Christian faith and redemption.
So,
the Parable both speaks of the human condition in general, and you and me in
particular, and it tells us the nature of the Church, the place in which we are
received, restored and made well.
If
the man who set off from Jerusalem is Adam, the first human, then the man on
the journey is you; it’s me.
When
we move from the presence of God, of
which Jerusalem is a symbol, then we become susceptible to hostile powers that
assault and harm the body and soul.
Where
do we find comfort and healing?
It
is no longer in the Law and prophets, and remember the lawyer who questioned
Jesus knew both of them well.
What
we learn, with that lawyer, is that the Law and the prophets point us to
something more, and are incomplete until they are fulfilled in Jesus Christ: in
other words, the Old Testament needs the New to make all things complete, when
we can truly appreciate that, ‘the word is very near you. It is in your mouth
and in your heart, so that you can do it’. (Deuteronomy 30.14)
And
can Jesus Christ be the Samaritan?
Well,
in his humanity he is human, as we are; but, in his divinity, he is utterly
other than us, you could say foreign to us, as were the Jews and Samaritans in
his day.
And
let’s see how he acts.
The
wounds we bear are the wounds of the assaults of the evil one, and we bear the
scarring of Original Sin.
Into
our wounds Jesus pours the oil of unction and his divine healing: this is where
we very obviously see the mercy of God in Christ being poured out, soothing the
wounds we bear, easing the throb of pain in the scars of human lives.
And
remember the man on the road had been left for dead; yet Christ comes to bring
life, ‘life in all its abundance’ (John 10.10), the ‘life that really is life’
(1 Timothy 6.19).
So,
in this battered state we find ourselves lying in the gutter, as it were, until
Christ - who promises to share and bear our burdens - comes to us and lifts us
up, we who ‘are weary and heavy laden’ (Matthew 11.28) and bears us in his arms
to give us rest and healing and renewal (Deuteronomy 33.27).
And
where is the man in the parable taken? He is taken to an inn, which, in
Origen’s words, is the Church, a place of hospitality into which all the
bruised and battered, scarred and scared of the world may enter to receive
comfort.
And
of course, we have heard about an inn earlier in St Luke’s Gospel: Mary and
Joseph found no place to stay; and in the Parable of the Good Samaritan there
is an innkeeper.
The
irony is that no innkeeper is mentioned in the Nativity account, which would
ruin many a school nativity play.
In
fact, that word used in the text, κατάλυμα (kataluma), is often translated as
‘inn’ in English, but it more accurately refers to a ‘lodging place’, ‘guest
room’, or ‘upper room’.
So,
the Church must be a place to receive those broken and battered by all that is
hostile to our human flourishing, and does so knowing that Christ - the Good
Samaritan, the Lord - will return.
I
wonder if the two denarii, the two coins represent Christ’s body and blood; his
body broken on the Cross by hostile powers, his blood poured out from his
saving wounds.
After
all, as our second reading said, he came ‘to reconcile all things… making peace
by the blood of his cross’. (Colossians 1.20).
If
so, then the Church is where we meet Christ who comes to us again (as the Good
Samaritan promised he would) to feed us, nourish us, heal us, restore us and
get us to the Jerusalem of our hope.
So,
the Parable mirrors Christ's redemptive work in saving humanity.
It
is a powerful illustration of God's love and mercy which we receive, and from which our duty is to love and care
for others, even, or especially, those considered enemies or outsiders.
Jesus
Christ, the Divine One who could seem remote from us, as Samaritans were from
Jews, is closer to us than we can imagine: he is our true neighbour, the one
who truly shows mercy.
In
that light we cannot but reflect his compassion and mercy out in the bruising
world, and we cannot shut the doors of the church, the inn of hospitality, but
draw everyone in – as we ourselves have been drawn in - so that their wounds,
and ours, can be tended and their sins, and ours, can be healed and forgiven by
the Lover of our souls.
