May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Nothing, to my mind, demonstrates more clearly than today’s Gospel reading the emphasis Luke puts on the significance Jesus gives to people on the margins of the culture of his time. The alien, the refugee, the poor, slaves, tax collectors to name but a few and, as we know from today’s Gospel reading, the Samaritans. The Samaritans, being a mix of already spiritually corrupt Israelites and pagan foreigners, created a religion for themselves that the Jews considered heresy. Yet Luke gives a Samaritan a starring role in his rescuing the man who has fallen into the hands of robbers rather than the priest and the Levite whose very position within the culture prohibits them from offering a helping hand. As leading examples of the law, they do not wish to be defiled. The Samaritans were stricter than Jews about the commands of the Mosaic law but this did not stop the Good Samaritan who, despite being outside the culture, helps the man who has been robbed, stripped, beaten and left half dead on the roadside.
One effect of this narrative is that in giving an outsider the opportunity to engage in a rescue operation, Luke is revealing what has happened to the law in the life of Jesus. His life has not been given to us by God to abolish the law but to affirm it as rooted in love alone.
This affirmation is based on love and the mercy that flows from it rather than strict adherence to rules and regulations. It requires that you love God in heart, soul and mind and that you should love your neighbour as yourself. Being the good neighbour does not depend on your position in society, nor the rules that govern it, but upon love and mercy. In their strict adherence to the law, this was not an affirmation accepted by all the Jews and certainly not accepted by the Jewish leadership of the Sadducees and the Pharisees. From the time of Moses, the entry to the promised land and the establishment of the law on arrival, the law was regarded as essential to the Jewish people, both as a reminder of God’s covenant with his people which had taken them from the wilderness into the land of milk and honey and a protector from persecution. It was also there to bind their society together. If, as it is given in the Old Testament, you keep God’s commandments and turn to him with heart and soul you will be bountiful.
Why then did the priest and the Levite pass by the man who had been robbed if they had been called upon to love God in heart and soul? I believe it was because in the adherence to rules and regulations, for them this was a sufficient demonstration of loving God in heart and soul. To go beyond this point and let love for others beyond their society guide their actions it could mean breaking rules and regulations to heal the sick, respond to the needy and mix with outsiders. This would be a fearful thing to do because the rules and regulations had so much significance for them as a protector of their ways. The problem here is that it can leave a society inward looking rather than embracing all people in the love of God.
Jesus, then, offers us a way of life that looks outward in love and can be found in many ways today. In the work of charities such as the Salvation Army who are, and I quote: friends to the friendless and home to the homeless’ no-one is to be left out of the picture of care and concern. This gives the widest possible interpretation to the word ‘neighbour’ that goes beyond those that live near you to include everyone.
The call to love your neighbour as yourself does not necessarily come easy. There can be quarrels and tensions with your immediate neighbours and today’s world is full of conflicts between neighbouring countries. Such conflicts are rooted in fear, not love, and result in death and destruction.
If we can get beyond this conflict-filled world we can then build each other up to live better lives rather than drag each other down. This is what the Good Samaritan does for the man who has been robbed. He lifts him up and puts him on his animal to take him to an inn to be cared for. His mercy extends beyond the initial act of bandaging wounds to make sure that the man is well looked after. Here he is reflecting the mercy of God which is, as the hymn gives it, is ‘wider than the sea’.
To affirm to the utmost the law rooted in love, Jesus was destined, like the man rescued by the Samaritan, to be stripped and beaten but unlike the man, he had to die on the Cross to fulfil the promise of the law which is that we can inherit eternal life.
We have this promise but rather than delay its fruition our best hope in our earthly existence is to love our neighbours as ourselves. Without this love we will drag each other down into the darkness rather than raise each other up into the eternal love of God.
AMEN