Stopping and doing what is required
Ordinary Sunday 15: 11th July, 2010
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
We are told that the context for this parable of the Good Samaritan was a series of questions from a lawyer. He began with a big one. What must I do to inherit eternal life? And he answered his own question by acknowledging the commandment to love God and love neighbour. But then though, who actually is my neighbour, he asked? There is the trick part of the questioning. There remains the difficulty, both then and now.
This is a really important set of very practical concerns. It has impact on the way we live and on what we might hope for. It is not only about what we might believe but also about how we might express such beliefs in practice. It involves the practicalities of how ordinary decent people attempt to connect the big issues of the here and now and the life of the world to come. It is also about posing challenging and confronting pressures on our very natural desire for a quiet life.
We should not be surprised that this teaching parable has some twists and turns. It is the way the Lord taught. It is the way he captured and retained the attention of those who were listening. By the time the parable is complete the question about who is my neighbour has been turned on its head. It is not now a question of the attributes or qualities or background of the person who might be the neighbour. It is a question of what lies within the heart, soul and mind of each person who would consider themselves a believer and a follower. So, the question becomes, therefore, 'Am I being a neighbour', 'am I being neighbourly to the other?' And the one in this parable who shows the appropriate response, indeed the only response acceptable to God, is an outsider. There he goes again.
While it is true that this parable stands as one of the best known in all the gospels, and the expression 'Good Samaritan' has become part of the language, the central and pivotal message remains very confronting. It is clear that being a neighbour to others can indeed be unpleasant, demanding, frightening, unwelcome, and hard; instead of, or as well as, being heart warming and rewarding. But if we are to receive the plain teaching of the Lord, there is no real choice in the matter for us. We do have to try. We have an unavoidable obligation to attempt to respond to need, or to assist in the shaping of social structures that will better address those needs.
So it is that Christians from the earliest times have been willingly and sacrificially associated with acts of care and charity and mercy. Shelters, hospices, kitchens, the helping and healing professions, have for all the centuries been the care and concern of the Church and of individual Christians. It is a question of vocation and of obligation together. This flows from the living and the explicit teaching of the Lord himself.
So it is then that individual Church communities seek to assess the situation within which they find themselves in their specific context, as well as being part of a wider regional, national or world community. So it is then that in actions and deeds, as well as in material support, Christians try to consider how they themselves stand as a neighbour for those near or far whose needs are so apparent. What a challenge. What an almost overwhelming burden. How hard it is. How disheartening it can be.
There has never been a time when St Peter's people have not had to confront the issues of people in need: but sometimes more than others. There have always been those worse for wear, on the edge of the law, mentally disturbed or just plain down on their luck around this place and, indeed, part of our community here. Some of these people have backgrounds strikingly different from their present sad circumstances. Each would have a story to tell. Each is a child of God. Each one could in other circumstances be you or me. Often this can be confronting and disturbing as well as saddening.
We can freely admit that sometimes our instincts are indeed to turn away, indeed to pass by, as it were, on the other side, to leave what ever needs to be done to someone, anyone, else. Sometimes the demands put upon us can be unreasonable or just plain fraudulent. There would be very few of us who have not felt angry, resentful or abused sometime or other. So of course do many of those in great need.
This, then, is where we are. St Peter's is a city church. This is our joy, our apostolate and our challenge. That does mean that, more than many Christian communities, these are very live issues for us.
Active social concern of course is part of a very long tradition here, and within our Anglo-Catholic understanding of the life and function of the Church. Consider the pioneering work in the slums of 19th century East End London. Consider our own Mission to the Streets and Lanes and the work of the Sisters of the Holy Name in the slums adjacent to this church. Consider the foundation of the Brotherhood of St Laurence from these very buildings at the height of the Depression of the 1930s. Consider our response to the wave of immigrants in the gold rush of the 1850s. Consider our daily breakfast program for the homeless now. Consider then through all these generations the steady stream of people, sometimes frightened and embarrassed, sometimes less than attractive, very often desperate, all coming to this city church for the help that they still expect to be able to find.
When all else fails, there is still a church. Some churches actually make a point of remaining open outside of service times. Some churches actually make a point of having clergy and others resident on site and available. St Peter's is a place like that. They will be able to offer something, surely. That remains the operating presupposition. Surprisingly, when whole sections of our society have given up on the Church, the poor and the needy have not. And the Church has not given up on them.
In the parable there were good underlying ritual reasons for the priest and the Levite to pass by on the other side. The man could have been dead. They may not have been able to do what they needed to do in Jerusalem. A lot of people would have been depending on them. They could have been in a hurry. They might have invited trouble on themselves. As it happens it was a foreigner — one who would not have been expected to show sympathy to Jews — who was the one who stopped and did everything that was required. It was an outsider who is presented as the one who is able to show the insiders the way forward; the way of God.
When we take a deep breath and are open to the needs of others as best we are able; when we do not respond harshly or with indifference, but rather with care and with appropriate support; when we are open to our own very natural fears of difference, our own needs and vulnerability, our own desires for security and hope; then indeed we are brought close to God. For this is how God would deal with each of us. Then we come closer to doing and being what is asked of us, then we are closest to that promise of eternal life with which that lawyer's questioning of Jesus began. The example of a compassionate outsider was used to show the way forward.
But in conclusion I want to pose this question to us all. What does this, perhaps the best known of the Lord's explicit teachings, have to say to us in the context of the present very disturbing debate over refugees and asylum seekers? We had 25 people at our patronal festival who have recently arrived here as refugees. As I said that night after their youth group had sung to us, this is the face of refugees coming to our country. In the context of a world where so many people are on the move, is this country going to take a fair share with generous hearts? There have been times when we as a people have been exactly that, with our political leaders showing the way. I think of immediately after the fall of Saigon for instance, some 35 years ago. There have, however, been other times, like in 1938 and 1939 when things were becoming desperate in Europe, when we as a nation were, in hindsight, appallingly meanspirited. What is it to be now?
The Good Samaritan stopped and did what was required.
"Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise." (Lk 10: 36-37)
The Lord be with you.
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