The story of the Good Samaritan seems particularly vivid at the moment. Jesus gets questioned by a religious guy, what the man must do to get eternal life?
Jesus throws the question back, what do you think?
That whole response is worthy of a whole series of sermons, how much hot air do Christians create in understanding the culture of the unchurched, I have a really radical solution. Perhaps rather than creating courses on it, we ought to ask them what they think.... Now that is perhaps rather simplistic, the real point is how do we get to that stage where we can get rid of the baggage and have an open and real conversation, because that is not always as simple as it sounds.
The man says, love God and love your neighbour as yourself.
"Great," says Jesus, "Do this and you will live."
Now the story could have ended there, but the teacher of the law has just had a conversation where he set out to test Jesus, but at the end of the day, Jesus turned the situation on its head and turned it into a test for the man. One that he passed, which left him embarrassingly congratulated and associated with Jesus, which he obviously did not want him to be. So in a search for some clear blue water he asks another question, "And who is my neighbour?"
Jesus could have thrown it back to him, "What do you think?" But he doesn't. Why? Well for one thing if he had not then we would not have had this story, and the truth is that Jesus did not live by rules that say if x then y, but by the Spirit of God and we follow that leading.
So instead of giving a straight answer or asking a straight question Jesus tells a story. A very disarming story.
The story is incredibly dramatic a man beaten up and half dead, naked at the side of the road. There is something about this attack that seeks to dehumanise the man.
A priest sees the man and walks by on the other side.
So too a Levite, again a religious person.
So what will happen to the broken man...
A Samaritan walks past, not the favourite for the Jews, the hated foreigner, someone who would be perceived to be far from God. This man though does not cross over the road and try to avoid the situation. The man does good, the man rescues the man, he becomes for him a secular saviour while the religious just walk on by.
We can focus on the question, and who is my neighbour, but I think it goes deeper than that. The man has just stated that what matters is loving God and loving your neighbour, but what does that mean.
The Teacher of the Law could probably find sound theological reasons for walking by on the other side. The man may have been dead or died on him, therefore defiling him, and meaning that He would be unable to serve God by doing His priestly duties. The man may have attacked him, or someone else may have attacked him, and it is dishonouring to God to treat our lives as of no importance.
The Levite similarly was called to live a clean and pure life, but this theology led to him walking by on the other side. and in reality breaking the law of love.
The Samaritan though did not have the complexity of theology, he same a man in need and had compassion upon him. It was as simple as that.
The problem we have is that often we use our religion as an excuse for poor behaviour. Though we know on a simple level that the King of Love should make us more loving to our fellow man. There is a very real danger it can actually make us worse.
Rather than looking with simple compassion on the hurting, we seek out some thing or some one to blame. Rather than doing the right thing, we do the religious thing. We theologise it and blame the bad on theology. Not only do we not follow Jesus, effectively we are using him as a justification for wrong.
At the end of course Jesus does again ask a question of the man, "Which of the three acted like a neighbour to the man?"
In other words Jesus is going to make the man answer his own question again.
The answer is blatantly obvious, the one who had mercy on him.
Jesus tells him to go and do the same.
What is most profound to me at the moment is the universality of this. The man stripped of his clothes, his wealth and his identity, is quite literally naked humanity in need of help. The creed and the colour and the name really do not matter. It is just someone in need of our help.
The reason why this means so much to me at the moment is that we have been left feeling beaten up and bruised by the way that we have been treated at church. By any simple view of humanity what has happened is wrong, but religion can be used as a justification for what is clearly wrong.
What really hurts though is not the beating up, we know that the people who are causing us trouble, are messed up human beings in desperate need to truly know of God's love and healing in their lives. What hurts is the fact that some people who we would have thought to be our friends have walked by on the other side, embarrassed at our predicament.
To be fair on the priest and the levite the sight of the bruised naked man at the side of the road was hardly respectable. The Samaritan though saw the man through eyes of grace as still a man.
Jesus states that whatever is done for the least of these is done for me. So in a sense the man broken at the roadside is, as is every one broken at the roadside, Jesus.
Religion can be a very great force for good, but it can also be and has also been a very great force for harm, and all too often a cause for someone to act respectably but not lovingly.
At the end of the day the man had said what matters is to love God and love people, yet as Christians we can get so caught up in religious meetings and what we do that we forget that it is love that matters. I suspect part of the motivation in some people who have been rather distant from us is that, they have ministries to serve, and they do do good. Therefore, they would not want to sacrifice fruitful ministry. I wonder if that is exactly what the priest was thinking, he had an important ministry, people were dependent on him, what would they do if he was not there. He was an important man.
Yet the man who is remembered as doing the right thing, the one the poor trapped teacher of the law had to admit was doing the right thing, was the Samaritan.
When in times of trouble I have found at times that sometimes Christians do walk by, when people who are not stop and help you out.
Bad theology gets in the way, and it was to address this poor theology that Jesus told the story.
In other words the simple message of the story is behave like a friend of God, and behave like a friend of everyone. Note I state behave like a friend of God, what I mean by that is that we treat God better than we would treat our best friend, and we treat everyone else in the same way.
We need a world where we behave like friends to all, and do not walk by on the other side.
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