Sermon 4th March 2012

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adrian Parkhouse, preaches based on the reading from Luke 10: 25-33

“Jesus replied, “You go, then, and do the same.” TGN

“Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” NIV

1. I looked very hard but I couldn’t find one. I was convinced there would be one. I thought Maplins - the electrical shop – would have one: they seem to stock gadgets for almost every conceivable eventuality and the thing I wanted covers a much more pressing gap in the market than many of gzimmos they did have the shelves. But I looked around very carefully and I couldn’t find one so I am afraid that this morning I must preach without one. Which is a shame, because, today one would have been very useful. I apologise.

What was it? Well it seemed to me, thinking about today’s sermon, that there had to be some form of automated indicator that the preacher was re-using material from previous sermons – that he was saying something he had said before. I imagined that it would involve an orange flashing-light on a pole and perhaps a short burst of a selected alarm. I assumed it would need to be triggered by my pressing a remote-control button on the lectern – but did not rule out the possibility that its development might have reached the point when it could detect “a repeat” from a nervous voice pattern or a slightly elevated outbreak of sweat on my forehead? I am genuinely surprised not to have located one; if there is an investor in the market willing to back the development of what seems an obvious money-making invention perhaps we can talk afterwards?

2. The point is that our readings in Lent bring us today to one of the most familiar passages in Scripture, the parable of the Good Samaritan – so familiar in its detail and its message that we use its title as shorthand to indicate that help came from an unexpected source (it came from a “good Samaritan”) or to encourage one another to give help when we might not expect to (won’t you, we ask, be a good Samaritan?); and the name Samaritan itself has, through the organisation set up in the early-1950s by Chad Varah, come to mean availability, listening, concern, help at times of desperation when not only do those things seem impossible but when it seems that there is no possible person who can provide them. The Samaritans are there.

So what else is there to add to what we know already and what can I say that I have not said before?

3. An interesting angle is that we are coming to the story in the season of Lent and in the context of our learning about discipleship and in particular recognising the cost of discipleship. Our readings this Lent are all from Luke’s gospel: but I suggest that today’s reading is of a different character to the passage which Cameron used to kick-off our studies last week (Luke 9 “anyone who puts his hand to the plough and them looks back behind him is useless for the Kingdom of God”) or Gill’s passage for next week (Luke 12 “don’t worry about life ... about what to eat, ... about clothes..”). They sound like “Lent” passages – they sound like they involve giving things up; they are obviously addressing the question of the cost of following Jesus. In contrast the parable of the Good Samaritan is not about cost but about benefit; not about giving something-up but about taking something on, about taking the love which we have that is small and making it bigger. That doesn’t sound very Lenten? What’s the cost in that?

4. When James came to write the letter which we have towards the end of our Bibles the commandment that we should love our neighbour as we love ourselves had become known as the “royal law”: he wrote if you really keep the royal law found in scripture [and quotes the law], you are doing right” (James 2:8). And clearly at the time that Jesus was teaching, the formulaic answer given by the lawyer to his question was a recognised summary of the essence of the obligations under the Jewish Law: love God and love your neighbour. The lawyer was not the only person who posed a similar question or test of Jesus and this was not the only occasion when the royal law is repeated in the reply: Jesus included it in reply to another

lawyer, whose own reply led Jesus to comment, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God”. And he used it in his response to the Rich Young Ruler who went away sad at the demands made on him by such a law.

What is a little odd about this is that when you go to find the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself in the books of the Law in the Old Testament, it is easy to overlook it. In contrast to the command to love God with the whole of ourselves, which stands out at the head of key passages, this royal law appears only as a fragment of the expanded text of the key commandments in Leviticus 19:

“17 'Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbour frankly so that you will not share in his guilt./18 'Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the LORD./19 'Keep my decrees. 'Do not mate different kinds of animals. 'Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed.”

I point this out, not to devalue the command, but to put in context the lawyer’s question: this central command to love our neighbour was given in the context of laws for a community. It is reasonable to suppose that in this context our “neighbour” is our neighbour, or a member of our village or of our tribe. Whatever the constraint is that is placed around the “class” of neighbours, however large or small, it is reasonable to suppose that the class of neighbours whom we are commanded to love is limited. Which is good - because, when we are honest, that fits our experience: our capacity to love (whatever that means) is limited; even our capacity comfortably to accept love is limited. The limits may be very small – our partner, our immediate family, our wider family, plus some friends, our favourite football team and, of course, people at Church. And isn’t this supported by all that research suggesting that when an organisation gets beyond a certain number of people (is it 100?) it is not possible to know everyone, let alone love them. And also, doesn’t fit with our prejudices? Yes of course we don’t want those prejudices to affect our response to people, but that is not to say we don’t have them? That would be nonsense. We all stereotype other people, don’t we? We all have our prejudices, inherited from parents perhaps, or borne of experience of life, good and bad. It is almost a feature of evolution – self-protective – that we are like this.

5. Ah. That is the cost. That is the cost of being a disciple – or rather the first cost. The way we think, our self-justification, the pride we take in where we have got to, how we are better than others, how even we are somehow different from others – that “way we think” must be surrendered. The Samaritan is every person left outside the line we want to draw to limit those who are neighbours; the Samaritan is every person from whom our upbringing and culture have taught us that we can justify maintaining a distance; the Samaritan is everyone we judge, everyone we criticise, relying on those judgments and criticisms to keep them beyond the boundary.

You know already (flashing light/alarm) the historic, cultural and religious divisions between Jew and Samaritan; you can read the Samaritan woman’s stereotypical description of the differences between them in John’s account of her meeting Jesus at the well – and a little earlier in Luke 9, we read of the time Jesus was not even allowed into a Samaritan village as he was bound for Jerusalem. The enmity was huge. By painting a picture of a meritorious, loving Samaritan, Jesus’ words aimed straight at the heart. But it shouldn’t be a surprise to us – because we know what he has done and said already – that he has touched lepers, worked with tax-collectors, eaten with prostitutes, healed the child of a Roman, reasoned with a lunatic and spoken of a mission to the poor, to the captives, to the blind and the bruised – and spoken too of loving enemies, against revenge and in favour of gratuitous service. That no conceivable limit can be placed on the love of our Master can be no surprise to us, his disciples?

6. And then there is the second cost: “Jesus replied, “You go, then, and do the same.” TGN/“Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” NIV.

Amen