Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity
“And one … turned back …giving him thanks; and he was a Samaritan.”
We are still on the road to Jerusalem with Jesus, it seems, at least in the logic of St. Luke’s Gospel. And, intriguingly, we have yet again a story that concerns a Samaritan, just as last Sunday’s Gospel presented us with the parable of the Good Samaritan. And once again, the Gospel is coupled with an epistle reading from Galatians. There are relatively few references to the Samaritans in the New Testament – mostly, these two Gospel stories read back-to-back on Trinity 13 and 14, and the powerful but long, long Gospel story in John’s Gospel about the woman at the well of Samaria, a story read appropriately enough as the second lesson at Morning Prayer on The First Sunday after Epiphany every other year. Why? Because it makes something known about Jesus and about human redemption.
We are made aware in that story about a tension between Jew and Samaritan best captured in the unnamed woman’s remark to Jesus, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” And yet, we also see that such cultural and religious differences are transcended in a larger view of human redemption and divine compassion. “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” she says. The result of her witness is significant. “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.” Jesus stays there for two days, “and many more believed because of his word.” First, her word and then, his word. “They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world.” The whole scene is a powerful witness to Jesus as the Redeemer and about the compassionate and yet compelling nature of human redemption. We are actively drawn into the story in order to make it our own. We see, too, how the Samaritans are brought into the pageant of redemption.
