Sermon on 10th July 2022, Trinity 4
Lectionary Readings for the Fourth Sunday of Trinity
Colossians 1: 1–14
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father.
In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God. This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow-servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit.
For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Luke 10: 25-37
Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’
But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw
him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” 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.’
Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Trinity
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
The two most famous parables of Jesus don’t even need to be named—-they seem obvious in their significance and universal in their application. They are both found only in the Gospel of Luke. In a way distinctively set forth by Luke, from a source that only Luke knew, they offer us models of behaviour, concrete examples of how we are charged to live the Christian life. Both are among the parables of mercy that give Luke’s Gospel its rich and deeply human colouring.
Luke’s Parable of the Loving Father, or The Parable of the Prodigal Son, as it has more commonly been known, illustrates the fathomless love and endless forgiveness of God, from whom nothing we can ever do can finally alienate us. The mercy of God knows no bounds. It will never end. We will always come up against it, no matter how stupid or selfish we are.
The Parable of the Good Samaritan, the parable we are given today, is also about the loving care of a God who binds up our wounds and heals all the hurts we inflict upon one another—-all the hurt of the world. A God of mercy.
These parables are, of course, set in Jesus’s own time. The Samaritans were regarded with hostility by the Jews, because they had separated themselves from the Jewish centre of worship in Jerusalem, tracing their own history to a priest who had made Mount Gerazim, near Nablus, to the north, their primary place of worship—-this was around the time of the Assyrian conquest. But they also worshipped Yahweh; they also held the Torah as their sacred book.
The priest and the Levite who hurry past the wounded man, left by the robbers for dead, were scrupulously observing the strictures of the law that bound them
within their special status: they were not to defile themselves by coming into contact with a dead body. Their job was to offer purification to unclean persons.
The Jewish lawyer who asks the two questions of Jesus, as you notice, does not even name the man who stopped to help as a Samaritan—he carefully refers to him as the one who showed him mercy. He does not admit that this could be possible—-that a hated Samaritan could be capable of such an act of mercy, rather than the officials of his own religion. The lawyer would have found the story Jesus tells improbable—-among other details, would a Judaean innkeeper trust a Samaritan? But this is a story about Jesus’s command: Go and do likewise.
Go and do likewise:
beyond what your own social standing and daily routine say is proper, beyond the boundary of the people who happen to live next door to your house, beyond what is comfortable for you.
So this question of the lawyer, who is my neighbour?, comes to have only a single answer, in Jesus’s conclusion to the story.
Our neighbour is the unfortunate, mistreated fellow human being we go out to encounter, not stopping to think about anything else. We are to be that one who shows pity and kindness, that Samaritan. We are not just to sit around waiting for someone to show up who might need our help; we are actively to go out to minister to those in need.
Who is my neighbour?
Who is our neighbour?
On Wednesday my visiting son Sam and I rented a car to drive to Wells, in Somerset, for a few days in the country. Traumatic as my driving was (I had never driven in England before, on the wrong side of the road, and it had been years since I had driven a stick shift—this is another story!) we made it as far as Andover when Sam suggested we take a break for lunch. We walked into the centre of the town to find a place. It seemed unnaturally empty of people. We couldn’t find a local place that looked inviting, so we ended up at the Pizza Express, on the main square. We were the only customers. A lovely young woman, possibly in her early 20s, brought us our pizza. I asked her where all the people were. She said the young people went off to university or training college in perhaps Chester or Basingstoke, but that most of them didn’t come back. And from our brief impression of the town, it didn’t seem as if there was much for them to come back to. The High Street was lined with cheap shops
and betting parlours, boarded-up storefronts interspersed with a few coffee shops. We felt depressed as we left. I have continued to think about what we saw there, and all the young people who didn’t come back. What are they doing? Did they find meaningful work, a bright future?
Who is my neighbour? That young waitress in Andover, and all the other young people of England who are struggling to find a job.
Three weeks ago, on the 20th of June, an incident occurred in Mexico, in a church in the remote northern province of Chihuahua. Remote from Mexico City, remote from my state, Texas, remote from us here, in London. A tourist guide, a parishioner, Pedro Palma, had run into the church in fear of his life. The two Jesuit priests there, Javier Campos Morales and Joaquin César Mora Salazar, ages 79 and 80, rushed to his aid. Father Campos clasped him in his arms as a man whom the priest knew well came in and shot them both. When Father Mora entered, hearing the shots, the man shot him, also. Another priest, Jesús, came and spoke with the man and calmed him down. The man asked him, Is it possible that God will forgive me? And Jesús said, yes. The man’s name to whom he said this is José Noriel Portillo Gil. In that part of Mexico, and all over Mexico, there are many men like him, drawn into organised crime by the drug cartels who have uncontested control. If they do not agree to join the illegal logging, the extortion, the harvesting and selling of marijuana and opium, they risk being “disappeared.”
Who is my neighbour? José Noriel Portillo Gil, and all the men like him. Struggling, in fear and desperation, to provide for their families.
In Uganda, in the poorest eastern third of the country, a friend of mine, a former school parent to whom I am close, founded an organisation called Rays of Hope Hospice Jinja. Fortunately, in Uganda, the scourge of HIV/AIDS has come firmly under control, so that with her clinic’s help in Kampala and Jinja the antiretroviral drugs are working and people have reclaimed their lives. But cancer and other untreated diseases still mark the experience of happening to have been born in the Busoga region of Uganda, and the poverty and illness there are heartbreaking. Only 11% of people who need palliative care in that region get it. Margrethe and her team of doctors, nurses, and social workers are valiant and unflagging, but much help is still needed.
Stephen, a patient, asked the palliative care nurse to write down this message to Rays of Hope:
When I smell, you still come!
When flies are all over my room, you still come!
When the weather is bad and the roads are impassable, you still come! Even when there are Covid-19 travel restrictions, You still come! What kind of people are You?
What am I to you?
You have treated me like a close family member. Yet you barely knew me. At this point, I know am not going to get cured of this disease. But I thank you so much for continuing to come and check on me, asking me how am doing, taking away my pain, taking away the smell, taking away the flies, taking away the hunger and filling my heart with Joy. If it weren’t for you, I would be dead 8 months ago
As for today, the food, soap, and comfort fund you brought for me has helped re-affirm my status as a father and provider in my family. I am 1000 times happier than what my diseased face can express.
Thank you so much, Rays of Hope. If you find me alive next time, we shall continue with the talk. If You find me dead, please know that you have been my dearest friends in the last times of my life. My family and I are very very grateful.
May God reward you abundantly,
Stephen
Who is my neighbour? The young waitress in Andover, José Gil in Mexico, Stephen in Uganda. We will never meet them, but they are our neighbours. They call out to us for our own pity and compassion. We are not able to lift
them onto our own donkey and take them to the nearest inn, but we can give money to help them. We can always give more. I am unashamedly asking you to go home today and give more to organisations such as Christian Aid, Aid to the Church in Need, Future Hope, Glass Door, or any other aid organisation you already support. Our help matters, and as Christians we are asked to remember our deep bond with those who are suffering. The times in which we live seem daunting, but we are not to lose hope. We can help, and our pity and compassion will save the lives of our neighbours.
Who is my neighbour?
All the persons of our world that is indivisible from Campden Hill. It is a privilege and a joyful thing, to be a good Samaritan!
Go and do likewise.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen
The Revd Dana English
The United Benefice of Holland Park, London July 10, 2022