Posts Tagged ‘Samaritan’

Who is my neighbour?

July 12, 2025

Pentecost 5 – 2025

Luke 10:25-37

Marian Free

In the name of God whose love knows no constraints. Amen.

I don’t know about you, but at the moment I am overwhelmed by the state of the world, and I feel utterly powerless to intervene or to make any difference at all. Gaza, of course, is the most demanding of our attention, but not us let forget Ukraine, South Sudan and all the other nations involved in on-going conflict or civil war. Then there is the changing geopolitical situation and the potential economic consequence of the US tariffs and aid cuts. All over the world innocent people are suffering the effects of climate change and the increasing unpredictability of the weather. Here in Australia the people of Northern Rivers have experienced once in a lifetime flood twice in two years. They barely have time to recover before they have to begin again. (And that in a wealthy first world country. Imagine trying to re-build one’s life and livelihood in a nation without the resources to which we have access.) I find myself paralysed with indecision. What difference can I make? Will my small contributions help at all? 

I’m not even sure how to pray. In the first instance, I do not have the words to use. Secondly, I am not at all sure that my prayers, however fervent, have made a difference.

It is tempting to throw up my hands and leave it all to God. It is equally tempting to narrow my focus, to decide who and what is most deserving of my help or to justify inaction because not being able to do it all I find myself not doing enough.

In order to rationalise my inaction, I find myself thinking about how different the world today is from Jesus’ world and wonder if some of Jesus’ instructions simply don’t translate into the  21st century. In the first century, there was no social service, there were (at least for those of Jesus’ faith) clear guidelines about responsibility for family, for widows and orphans. Smaller communities meant that people were more aware of other people’s business, and they would probably have known the background of the person who begged them for a small coin or two. Without modern forms of communication very few would have known the state of the world beyond their village or region.

In contrast, today in Australia we have social welfare (even if it is inadequate), six-foot fences separate us from our neighbours and in cities that number millions there is a limit to how much we can know about the circumstances of others. The internet and social media mean that we know about disasters all over the world almost as soon as they happen. 

The question: ‘Who is my neighbour?’ is even more pressing than it was two thousand years ago. I see my physical neighbours only when I make an effort or pass them on the street. It is generally impossible to know how I can be a neighbour to them.

Jesus’ answer to the lawyer’s question is important, but so too is the question, and the intent of the one asking. We are told that the lawyer is seeking to justify himself. He knows the answer to his first question “What must I do?” – he is a lawyer after all. He asks the second question because he wants to limit and confine the extent to which he has to follow the law. He wants to narrow down what it means ‘to love his neighbour as himself.’ 

No doubt the lawyer, and no doubt those who have gathered around fully expect Jesus to limit neighbourliness to fellow Jews. After all, they are the chosen.

Jesus however does at least two unexpected things in his story of the man who was a neighbour. Instead of giving a definition of neighbour, Jesus tells a story of neighbourliness. He subverts the expectation that it will be the good, pious Jews on their way to Jerusalem who will offer assistance to the wounded man, and he gives the starring role to a rank outsider, an enemy, a person considered unclean according to Jewish law! The example of neighbourliness is the person least expected.

The Samaritan did not consider political or social implications of helping a Jew, he did not withhold his help because of the deep enmity between his people and theirs, and he did not stop to consider his capacity to help. (What would he do if the inn keeper charged him more than he could afford?)

Jesus doesn’t directly answer the lawyer’s question. He doesn’t say that the Samaritan is the neighbour who should be loved. What Jesus does is to confront the lawyer with what it means to be a neighbour. Using the despised Samaritan as the example, Jesus makes it clear that there are no boundaries to “neighbour”. Shocking as it might be to Jesus’ audience, it is the outsider who demonstrates that being a neighbour doesn’t consider the race, religion, or economic status of the other. 

Love of neighbour cannot be limited or reduced to a simple formula because the definition of ‘neighbour’ has no bounds. God’s love, and therefore our love does not discriminate between worthy and unworthy, insider or outsider, but is extended to all humanity. 

The problems in the world are overwhelming, but we are not to be discouraged. We will do well if remain open-minded and open-hearted, sympathetic towards the suffering of the good, the bad and the deserving and the undeserving, the familiar and the unfamiliar and if we do all we can to alleviate that suffering through direct support, through volunteering, through political and social action and through prayer.

In this increasingly divided and fractious world. Who is my neighbour? might be the question most demanding of an answer.

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Wadi Qelt – a certain man (Luke 10:30)

July 4, 2015

I confess that this week Saturday has crept up on me so that with or without Internet, I have not thought of this reflective piece. The dig at Bethsaida was so all-consuming and tiring that time has simply sped past. It has been amazing to be by the Sea of Galilee for two weeks and to try to get some sense of the history, to wonder about what it was all like some two thousand years ago. The Lake has many moods changing with the light and the breeze. A particular treat was to see a boat from the first century which had been hidden in the mud and which has now been restored.

Today we have driven to Jerusalem through the Negev – a barren, uninviting desert. Along the way we stopped at Wadi Qelt, the ancient route from Jerusalem to Jericho. You can see from the photo how inhospitable it is and you can imagine that Jesus got the attention of his listeners as soon as he mentioned that a man was taking that route and doing so alone. Not only was the area full of brigands, but the very nature of the land is forbidding. To take the journey without the protection of a caravan would have been to be taking his life into his hands.

Jesus is a consummate story-teller. First he grabs the attention of his audience, in this case by choosing a character who is doing something outrageous, then he uses the classic technique of using three characters. (This is well known to many of us in the way that jokes are told – there were three priests, a Catholic, an Anglican and a Lutheran and so on.) Once he has established the scene Jesus doesn’t need to explain why the other travelers are on the road. The audience know that it is a story.

Of course we know the story so well that we are no longer surprised that the man takes the route alone, nor are we surprised that the Samaritan stops to help. In fact the expression “the Good Samaritan” has passed inot common usage and many people today would not know the origin of the expression. What is lost on many of today’s readers is how shocking it would have been for a Samariton to stop and offer assistance to a Jew and that the Jew may not have been particularly grateful for that help. Such was the enmity between the two groups that Jews would walk the long way to Jerusalem so as to avoid going through the region of Samaria. Both groups claimed to be the true faith and Jews considered Samaritans to be ritualy unclean, presumably because they did not observe the same purity laws.

As I said, Jesus crafts a great story. By using the same language for both the priest and the Levite, he creates a certain expectation in the minds of the listeners. The priest/Levite is “going down”, “he saw him”, “he passed by on the other side”. Jesus’ audience are expecting the pattern to continue, but they have gone ahead believing that they know how the story will end. They imagine that Jesus will continue: “a Jew (ie someone like themselves), was going down, he saw him and he stopped to help.” In their imagination, it is they who will be the hero of the story. After all the priest and Levite have simply behaved in a way that could have been expected of them, but they, the people would surely show compassion.

Jesus takes the ground from under their feet. The hero is not one of their own, but a despised Samaritan. Now they are really listening. There is, in their mind, no such thing as a “good” Samaritan. But this of course, is exactly Jesus’ point. By categorizing and judging others, by expecting them to behave in a particular way we are limiting ourselves and determining who is and who is not our neighbour.

The question of the lawyer is not really answered. What Jesus does though is to expose the prejudices that most of us hold. So long as we fail to see and recognise the good in those whom we fear or distrust, we are unable to love our neighbour as ourself. It is not a problem to care for those in need, but that is not the meaning of the parable. The shocking reality that Jesus exposes here is that a Samaritan can be good and that our values no preconceptions mean that we fail to see the goodness in others.

Whom do we despise or fear. Can we allow this parable to challenge our preconceptions and open us to the challenging idea that those who cause us anxiety may in fact be those who are most willing to show us love and compassion?

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Ingratitude exposed

October 12, 2013

Pentecost 21

Luke 17:11-19

Marian Free

In the name of God, to whom we owe all that we have. Amen.

This morning I would like to share with you something of the story of CorrieTen Boom[1]. Corrie and her sister Betsie were the unmarried daughters of a Dutch watch-maker. During the Second World War the family provided refuge to a number of Jews. They were found out and sent to German prison camps. Towards the end of the war, as defeat loomed for the Germans, prisoners, including Betsie and Corrie, were sent to camps further and further to the east. At last the sisters found themselves at Ravensbruck. There, the conditions were absolutely appalling. Their new home, Barracks 28 seemed to have half its windows stuffed with rags where the glass had broken. “The place was filthy, the plumbing had backed up and the bedding was soiled and rancid. There were no individual beds, but great square piers stacked three high, and wedged side by side and end to end with only an occasional narrow aisle between.

When the sisters reached their beds they had to climb to a second tier, crawl across three other straw covered platforms to reach the one that they would share with who knew how many. The space between platforms was so narrow that they could not sit up and so they lay back on the rancid straw. Suddenly Corrie leaped up, bumping her head on the bed above. “Fleas!” she exclaimed. “The place is crawling with them. How can we live in such a place?” While Corrie wailed, Betsie calmly prayed: “Show us how.” She reminded Corrie of the Bible passage they had read that morning: ‘Rejoice always, pray constantly, in everything give thanks …’ (1 Thess 5). “We can start now, thanking God for everything in this new barracks, Betsie announced. “Such as?” was Corrie’s surprised reply.

“For being together, for being able to keep our Bible, for all the women who will meet God through these pages, for the overcrowding which means that they will hear us when we read,” began Betsie. “For the fleas” she continued. This last was too much for Corrie – thanking God for the fleas? But Betsie insisted: “for everything give thanks.” And so they stood between the tiers of beds, in that hell on earth, and said “Thankyou to God for the fleas.”

Ten lepers are healed, but only one gives thanks. It is the outsider, the Samaritan, who returns to glorify God. The antagonism between the Samaritans and the Jews went deep.  The Samaritans trace their ancestry to the Israelite tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh and are adherents of an Abrahamic faith.  They separated from the Jews when Eli the priest who built a new holy place, abandoning (so they thought) that which had been established by Joshua. One theory suggests that the Samaritans were left behind when the Judeans were taken into exile in Babylon. The Samaritans claim that theirs is the true expression of the faith of the ancient Israelites and that Judaism is a version of the faith which was corrupted and added to during the time in exile.

The Samaritans believed that Mount Gerizim, not Mount Zion was the holy mountain and their scripture consisted only of what we would identify as the first five books of the Old Testament. The resentment between the two groups depended, at least in part, on their competition for authenticity and historicity. As the New Testament suggests, the Jews despised the Samaritans. Leaders on both sides – Jewish and Samaritan – discouraged contact with the other which including travelling through their territories and even speaking to them.

According to today’s gospel Jesus heals ten men of their leprosy and only one returns to give thanks. That it is a Samaritan who returns is not only a surprise, it is an affront to Jesus’ Jewish audience. Surely it should be one of their own, not a reviled Samaritan who sets the example, who receives recognition from Jesus. A Samaritan would have been the last person whom they would expect to hear commended.

In the gospels the outsider if often used to show up the religious people of the day: the Samaritan, the Roman centurion, the Canaanite woman, the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet, Zaccheus the tax collector and the woman with the flow of blood are all presented as exemplars in one way or another. The actions or faith of these outsiders expose the false piety and arrogance of the scribes and Pharisees. In the gospels, faithfulness, trust and gratitude are more often shown, not by those who believe themselves to be the children of God, but by those whose occupation, race or condition put them on the outskirts of respectable society and lead them to be considered with contempt by the so-called religious people of the day.

I’m sure that we all know people who show us up, who expose our arrogance, our anxiety, our lack of faith – the person living with constant pain who still manages to be cheerful and content, the person who remains sanguine even though their business has failed and they have lost everything or the person who remains calm in the face of chaos. Most of us do not like to have our weaknesses revealed. We prefer the world to see the front that we choose to show. It is natural to want to protect ourselves from criticism and derision, however if we are to grow and mature, we have to learn to open ourselves for inspection, to allow a light to be shone into those parts of ourselves that we would rather not see. We have to be challenged and not threatened by those whose lives demonstrate a holiness, a contentment or a calm that is deeper or stronger than our own.

Giving thanks – for fleas of all things – in what was already an horrendous situation, a Samaritan – of all people – being the only one to return to give thanks – these are actions that have the potential to expose our own pettiness and ingratitude, to reveal our self-centredness and thoughtlessness. At the same time they provide opportunities to re-examine our own lives, to re-think how we respond to life’s challenges and to determine to live differently – grateful for the abundant goodness which God has showered and will continue to shower on us.

[1] Corrie Ten Boom. Her Story. New York: International  Press, 1995, p144-5.

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