Preached at Holy Cross, Seend, St Peter’s, Poulshot and Christ Church, Bulkington
Colossians 1. 1-14; Luke 10. 25-37
“Go and do likewise.”
Vincent van Gogh, The Good Samaritan (1890). Hangs in the Kröller-Müller Museum, near Arnhem.
Does the name Olive Cooke mean anything to you? Ten years ago, Olive, who was ninety-two years old, was found dead in the Avon Gorge in Bristol. This generous lady, still tireless in charity work into her nineties, had given so much money to charity that she was constantly plagued by begging letters, receiving up to 3,000 a year. Some of the charities she gave money to passed her details on to other charities, and she eventually became so distressed by the tragic stories they sent her, and her inability to do more to help than the huge amount she was already doing, that she took her own life.
The Good Samaritan is one of the most famous of Jesus’ parables and it still resonates with people even in our post-Christian culture. There are two reasons for that. Firstly, it allows us to thumb our nose at hypocrites. We all hate hypocrites. In particular, it allows non-religious people to thumb their nose at Christians for being hypocrites, with Jesus’ approval (or so it seems). That allows them to keep doing what they want to do, which is to ignore what Jesus actually taught. But the second reason this parable resonates is because, whatever faith or lack of faith we hold, we all know that we do pass by on the other side, far too often. It’s true that we all hate hypocrites; but we also all are hypocrites, at least in some situations.
But hold on, we don’t want to end up like Olive Cooke, driven to despair by our inability to fix everybody’s problems. So let’s ask ourselves if Jesus was doing something more with this story than just telling people off for not always practising what they preach.
For there are different ways of exploring this parable, all of them tell us something interesting. One is to note is that the Samaritans were the traditional enemy of the Jews in Palestine. The Samaritans agree with the Jews about many religious matters, but also disagree with them about some very important things[1]—so they’re the classic example of the enemy similar and familiar enough to be truly hated. Therefore, I’ve often heard sermons on the Good Samaritan that read it as a warning against prejudice generally and religious bigotry in particular. That isn’t wrong. It’s an important part of the message of the parable, but I want us to explore it from a different angle today.
This is a story about a lawyer wants to prove to himself and to everyone around him that he’s good at keeping the rules of the Jewish Bible, and so he’s good enough for God and is going to get to heaven. He also wants to show he’s better than the people who don’t keep the rules. He makes a mistake though, in asking Jesus who counts as a neighbour. Presumably, he was hoping for Jesus to tell him exactly how many people he needed to love, and to get a relatively low number as his answer.
Jesus tells the lawyer to be like the Samaritan, to be willing to help someone you don’t even know, and more than that to help one your people’s traditional enemies, and do so at significant cost in time and money. It’s easy to overlook just how much time and money the Samaritan spends in helping this anonymous victim of violent crime.
“Go and do likewise”, Christ says. But hang on, how many of us actually have the time – let alone the money – to be able to do this for every deserving case we encounter? To live like this is literally impossible – ask the friends of Olive Cooke.
So is Jesus asking us to do the impossible? The superhuman?
Not exactly. Our first reading, from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, helps us understand what might be going on in the parable. Where we might start a letter, “Dear Rev’d Lynch”, or “Hi, Gerry!”, Paul starts his letter by wishing his readers grace.
What is grace? Grace is God’s good favour to us which we have done nothing to deserve. God is good to us because of what He is rather than because of what we have done. God’s grace isn’t a reward for our good behaviour, it’s a gift from God because He is love.
Grace is at the heart of what Paul wants to his readers to embrace—that’s why it’s the first thing he mentions in his letter to them. He then goes on to tell the Colossians that the Gospel has been bearing fruit in them since “they truly comprehended the grace of God”.
What does it mean to truly know, understand, and grasp the Grace of God? Well I don’t think anyone truly does grasp God’s grace in all its fullness. But a big step is to understand and accept that God has prepared for you gifts that are beyond anything you could wish for yourself, beyond anything you could possibly to do deserve them, or to earn them.
When we embrace that, we free ourselves from the game of punishment and reward that governs so much of our lives. Now, to some extent society in this world needs to work on the basis of punishment and reward. I wonder how many of us would pay our taxes in full or always obey the speed limit if we didn’t know we risked being punished for not doing that?
But God works differently. God doesn’t reward us because we deserve it, because we will never manage that; and when we face misfortune, it isn’t because God is punishing us—Jesus was clear about that.
At the centre of God’s relationship with us is the Cross. How did people react when God lived as one of us and did good? They brutally put him to death, and even most of His friends abandoned Him. The Cross is where our delusions that the world would be a better place if only we got our way more often are crushed. The Cross is where we confront the reality that we often pass by on the other side, that we often don’t do the right thing. The Cross is where our attempts to win heaven fail, and that, paradoxically, is why it is so full of hope, because it is only when we stop kidding ourselves that we could ever achieve God’s standards of goodness that we can instead rest secure in God’s grace.
Now, Jesus says if the lawyer truly loves God and loves his neighbour, he will obtain eternal life. But this is an impossible standard, as we have seen. We can’t win eternal life; we can only accept God’s free gift of it, given out of his grace. This shouldn’t stop us from doing good works, but quite the opposite. It allows us to do good not out self-interest, but in free response to God’s love for us, responding to God’s grace by sharing grace with others, knowing that salvation is ours through Christ’s actions on the Cross. It also frees from the burden of trying to fix all the world’s problems, freeing us to remember that our lives should also be about enjoying God’s good gifts that are all around us
I sometimes think our passage through this life is a school for trusting in God’s grace. Lean on God’s grace rather than your illusions of your own goodness, and you will find you will judge others less harshly and judge yourself less harshly. God might even work far greater things in you than you could imagine for yourself in this world, and lead you to reward beyond compare in the world to come.
And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and power, as is most justly His due, now and forevermore. Amen.
[1] I use the present tense, because there are still just over 800 Samaritans in the world of the 2020s – half on their traditional holy mountain, Mount Gerzim, in the West Bank, and the other half in the suburbs of Tel Aviv (read more here).
Top image — Olga Bakhtina, Good Samaritan with Lily (2020) – for sale at olgabakhtina.com.
