Action for Children Sunday 2013

 Sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at Ferryhill Methodist Church, 4-August-2013

For many Christians the command to be a Good Samaritan is central to their way of life; the parable of the Good Samaritan is, after all, one of the most often repeated and much loved parables of our faith. These parables of Jesus are like open ended puzzles; they force the hearer to appropriate the story for themselves; they live with us, continuing to shock, and engage.  A parable asks us: ‘Where do you stand – with the priest?’ ‘Whose side do you take – the side of the Levi?’ ‘Which one of these characters is you – or are you all three?’ The stories engage with our own powers of empathy and imagination; they are ultimately meant to change not reassure us.  And yes parables still have the power to speak to us and the Christian church today. The independent, non-partisan public policy think-tank ResPublica created in 2009 by Phillip Blond found that in a recent report 90% of church congregations undertake some kind of voluntary activity, encouraged and prompted I suspect by the parable of the Good Samaritan. That compares with only 54% for the population as a whole.

But a willingness to serve in some voluntary capacity prompted by the story of the Good Samaritan isn’t the only social asset possessed by the Church. From the running of youth clubs to visiting the elderly, providing food and shelter to the homeless and raising money for the poorest people of the world, churches like the one here in Ferryhill and mine at Crook are determined to prove that there isn’t a social problem that isn’t being solved by someone, somewhere, modelled on the story of the Good Samaritan. It was reported in The Times last week, 27^th July, that the Trussell Trust has been named “Britain most admired charity.” It runs 360 food-banks across the UK, offering emergency rations to those in need. In 2012/13 the numbers of those helped by the food-banks increased by 170%.

 “Who is my neighbour?” asks the lawyer in the parable trying to test and trick Jesus. Jesus would know well the Hebrew Scriptures. Leviticus defines neighbour in terms of family, kin, and close friends. But would Jesus argue for a broader concept of neighbour? Would he dare to be ‘inclusive’? – an inclusiveness which was already causing scandal for this pale Galilean. ‘Is any Jew a neighbour, even a sinful one, a tax-collector, a prostitute, a woman, a person of questionable sexual history?’ Or, ‘what about non-Jews, those outside the covenant, the uncircumcised, the Roman occupier, the despised Samaritan, the unclean and immoral Gentile?” Jesus was for sure getting a name for himself.

Notice the way Jesus answers the lawyers question – he does not fall into the trap of answering the question. Instead, he reframes it – his parable turns the question from ‘who is my neighbour?’ to ‘To whom am I myself a neighbour?’ - it is a subtle shift from the question of ‘who can I choose to be my neighbour to a completely different emphasis which is fundamental to the Gospel: ‘how do I become neighbour, how do I stop pointing the finger and condemning and start becoming the Gospel myself?’ This is the means by which we do not seek to define neighbour but are ourselves defined by Christ’s call to love neighbour as we love ourselves.

 We know the parable well. To cut the long story short, a Samaritan comes to the rescue. The traditional hated enemy becomes the one who saves. We are not told who the victim on the road is. So this victim could be a Jew saved by a Palestinian, or in a different context the Tutsi saved by the Hutu, the evangelical saved by the gay person, the member of the Taliban saved by the British soldier, or the other way round. And the Samaritan does not just save. He goes radically beyond saving. He risks his own life and reputation in order to help, and he offers radical generosity, not just a little bit of help, but finance enough to pay for three months of care, with the promise of more on his return. The only motive we are given is that he sees him and has compassion for him. Yes, compassion – that goes beyond, race, or tribe, or religion, or sexuality, or ideology, minority group, or scape-goating, and sees not the categorisation, or the prejudice, or the learnt fear, but sees the human being. That’s it; that’s our Gospel, the Good News of the compassion of Christ which has the power and the healing to overcome the wrong done to the victim.

Today we celebrate Action for Children – children like Sean whom we heard about in our story and the wonderful work done by Action for Children, particularly in the field of neglect. Reading their annual report a few weeks ago it reminded me of a talk given by the Bishop of Jarrow recently to his diocesan synod. The Bishop found himself reading a book on the theology of homelessness. “The author talks about somebody called Caroline and he says “Caroline begins her story at the age of 7, recalling a dysfunctional family, divorced parents, her mother always out at the pub and sexual abuse;” at the age of 13 Caroline was shoplifting to buy food and at 15 she left home and moved in with a friend. After a number of unsuccessful relationships she was married at 18. Her husband assaulted her badly. She became addicted to Valium and attempted to kill herself. She was made homeless, she was evicted for non-payment of rent on the flat she was sharing with another boyfriend and so it goes on. The author tells of a number of similar stories of homeless people whom he has met.

 “My initial reaction to hearing the story of Caroline and telling Sean’s story this morning is to admit that in a way these sort of life experiences are something right outside my experience. I simply do not know people whose experience of life is like that. Yes, I’ve met people like that as part of the work I do but there somehow seems a really very big gap between those people’s experience of life and mine. “And yet my theology and Christian understanding of the world expressed in this parable this morning tells me that Caroline and this young man Sean is my sister and brother in Christ, somebody for whom Christ died, a member like me of the human family; Caroline or Sean  is my neighbour, a victim lying on the Jericho road. The sad fact is (and I am sure you know this more than me) that within our own circuit many people whose life experiences are unbelievably different from mine are living cheek by jowl with each other. We also need to acknowledge that often our congregations have very different life experiences from the bulk of those who live in the area in which they are called by God to serve.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan, therefore, challenges us to look at our own approach to life and to our involvement with people to see if we, like the lawyer ask unprofitable questions that stifle compassion, and also to go and be a neighbour to those in need. The words of Deuteronomy echo down the centuries (Chapter 30 v 11+14), “Surely this commandment that I am commanding you is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. The word is very near you......in your heart to observe.” To which may be added, and where your heart is, there will your treasure be also.

God’s call on us in this situation is I believe is to put ourselves into each other’s shoes. Of course there is room for challenge not only about how we live our lives – including often why we are so ignorant in our churches about what is going on in wider society – but there needs first of all to be real attempt to put ourselves into the shoes of others as Jesus did. And Jesus was certainly willing to challenge – mainly of course the religious people! A society that rushes to judge and dismiss members of its communities is unlikely to be a healthy or Christ-like society.

 “I am struck by Pope Francis who, when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, washed and kissed the feet of homosexuals with Aids in his home city  - a move as controversial then as washing the feet of Muslims and women after he became Pope. Here are some words of Pope Francis when he was a Cardinal in Argentina -

he said “The poor must not be perpetually marginalised. We cannot accept the underlying idea that ‘we who are doing well give something to those who are doing badly, but they should stay that way far from us’ That is not Christian. It’s indispensable that we integrate them into our community as soon as possible…

“And he goes on: A poor man must not be looked at with disgust: he must be looked at in the eyes. “God’s vision is for a vision of a human family.” We as churches are invited in this part of our nation to start to discover what it means to be part of that human family where so many of our lives are so radically different from so many other people.

 “I am very struck by something Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury wrote about discipleship a few years ago “Being where Jesus is means finding yourself in the company of the people whose company Jesus seeks and keeps. So, when Jesus goes to be in the company of the excluded, the wretched, the self-hating, the poor, the diseased, that's where you're going to find yourself. If you are going to be where Jesus is, if your discipleship is not intermittent but a way of being, that's where you are going to find yourself, in the same sort of human company that he is in. This is once again an important reminder that our discipleship is not about choosing our company beyond choosing the company of Jesus “So that is indeed why so many great disciples across the history of the Christian Church, and indeed now, find themselves in the company of people they would never have imagined being with, had they not been seeking to be where Jesus is.

 And who is your neighbour? Or to whom could you become a neighbour? Perhaps a neighbour to the one you find most difficult to accept. How can we go beyond our own barriers to live Jesus’ radical compassion and be changed by it?

 

Amen

 

Readings: Deuteronomy v9-14, Luke 10.25-37