“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.
It belongs to the nature of our spiritual journey for us to enter into these stories and to make them our own. Throughout the long Trinity Season, Luke is our main spiritual guide and director. It is significant that we should have these two stories from his Gospel, each about a certain Samaritan, at what is, more-or-less, the mid-point of the journey. They point us to Christ and to Christ for us and in us. They challenge us about the stranger, the foreigner, the migrant and the wanderer, about whomever washes up literally upon the shores of our world whether dead, sadly, or alive, as we see in the immigrant crisis of today. We confront the challenge about an ethic of action rooted in compassion; we confront the contradictions, the sins and the failings, the short-comings of our humanity. I do not pretend to have the answers to these disturbing problems and am rather sceptical about those who think they do. Yet it seems to me that some sort of thoughtful action is needed rather than simply acting out of emotion and yet our hearts are moved by such spectacles of human suffering; ultimately, heart and mind have to go together. What is clear is that we cannot ignore these problems and that we confront ourselves in them. Which is why it is necessary to ponder these stories that concern Samaritans while we are on the road to Jerusalem.
So what is it about the Samaritans? What is the issue from the perspective of Judaism? The Samaritans are a Jewish sect who recognise only the Torah, the Law, the first five books of the Old Testament (to use a Christian reference) as Scripture, what they call the Samaritan Pentateuch and who believe Moses taught that Mount Gerizim is where God is to be worshipped, not Jerusalem. That is the issue.
Oh, how silly, you are probably thinking. It doesn’t really matter where God is worshipped or how, does it? Only that God is worshipped. Or does even that really matter? Think again. Most of us, if not a little xenophobic – suspicious of outsiders – are at the very least pretty attached to our places and the assumptions of our culture to the extent that we think about it at all. We are in this story precisely because of our attachments to places and practises. The question is whether we have a hold of the deeper understanding that is shown to us in the places and through the practices of our faith. Perhaps, just perhaps, these gospel stories about the Samaritans belong to the deepening of our faith and understanding about the universality of our humanity and about human redemption and human action in a fallen and broken world.
Going up to Jerusalem is a powerful image of the spiritual journey of the soul to God, to put it symbolically and theologically. That we can do so is because of these stories. So let us see how Luke presents the journey. First of all, it begins in the ninth chapter of his Gospel, just shortly after the story of the Transfiguration of Christ on the mountain, itself a significant story (though which mountain is unclear), because of its epiphany of the Trinity and the reference to what is to be accomplished in Jerusalem. Luke then records that Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” That is the key phrase. The Gospels are necessarily written after the Resurrection and, especially in Luke’s case, after its further expression in the Ascension. “When the days drew near for him to be received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem,” is the way Luke puts it. Yet it is not until ten chapters later in Luke’s Gospel and after several reminders that Jerusalem is the intended destination that Jesus finally enters Jerusalem on what Christians regard as Palm Sunday. It is a triumphal entry as in Matthew’s Gospel but in between that triumphant entry and the disturbing scene of Christ’s angry overthrow of the moneychangers in the temple, Luke has Jesus weeping over the city, over Jerusalem. Why? Because “you – we – did not know the time of your visitation.” Because of our ignorance about what God wants us to know and learn. His tears call for our tears, too, in the face of the indignities of human suffering in our global world.
But going back to when Jesus first set his face to go to Jerusalem, Luke tells us something very important about the Samaritans. Jesus, he suggests, “sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him.” In other words, the first stop on the way to Jerusalem is a Samaritan village. What happens? “The people would not receive him.” Why? “Because his face was set toward Jerusalem.” We are reminded of John’s Prologue read at Christmas: “He came unto his own and his own received him not.” The suggestion is that the reaction of the Samaritans is not unique to them but relates to the condition of our fallen humanity, to our failure to see and act upon what we are given to see. “How readest thou?” The reaction of the disciples to this rejection of Jesus is also instructive. “Lord, do you want us to bid fire come down from heaven and consume them?” they ask, as if to suggest “nuke ‘em till they glow” or bomb them into oblivion. Jesus “turned and rebuked them. And so they went on to another village.”
For ten chapters Jesus makes his way to Jerusalem, rather slowly, passing through many villages and the countryside teaching and preaching, healing and praying, rebuking and warning. The long, long journey is our preparation and his for the meaning of his kingdom, one that will be realised and accomplished only in and through our sins and follies, our failures and shortcomings, made heart-breakingly visible on the Cross. We forget that at our peril.
Christians are the worst of all people, dare I say, when we think that we have the answers and can simply go and do good and solve the world’s problems. We leave God out of the equation, the God who engages our humanity in all of its brokenness in Jesus Christ. We need to stay on the road with Jesus. That is the spiritual point, concentrated for us at the beginning of Lent with Jesus’ words to us, “behold, we go up to Jerusalem.” Finally, we might say, after the parade of lessons over nine or ten chapters. The point is that we don’t get it all and certainly not all at once.
This initial encounter between the messengers of Jesus and a village of the Samaritans provides further context for these remarkable stories, the parable of the Good Samaritan last week and this week’s exceptionally powerful story about the one, a Samaritan, who turned back and gave thanks. The first story follows closely upon the beginning of the Jesus’ going to Jerusalem and to the strong sense of intentionality about that journey, “he set his face.” This gives greater poignancy and power to the parable about being on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. How likely is it that the “certain Samaritan” is going to Jerusalem, meaning the literal place? Not very likely. And yet, the compassion and the action of the Samaritan places him and us with God in the unity of the love of God and neighbour, in the Jerusalem “which is above” which is “free” and which is “the mother of us all.”
The second story comes nearer to Jesus’ actual entry into Jerusalem. It begins, once again, with an explicit reference to Jerusalem. “And it came to pass, as Jesus went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee.” The certain village, unnamed, is on the way to Jerusalem. This is the setting for this most wonderful story about healing and salvation, about grace and thanksgiving, about our being made whole. The one who turned back responds fully and entirely to the grace of God. His act, as our liturgy reminds us, is a “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.” That is about Christ in us. But only if we are with him on the road to Jerusalem learning and acting upon what we learn. That journey shapes and informs our prayers and our actions. It is rooted in the freest and profoundest activity; the activity of thanksgiving in the midst of a world of suffering and indignity.
This is the central teaching. Thanksgiving to God makes all the difference because it is about our radical openness to the grace of God which alone perfects and makes us whole. This in turn shapes our thoughts and actions about the pressing problems of our day. It helps us to see them as questions about the nature of compassion and care, questions that are before us always and everywhere. We cannot not act in some way or another.
The action of the one who turned back is, of course, extravagant, even excessive, and yet his action is precisely what we do in our liturgical practices in all of our familiar places. How can that be carried over into social and political action? At the very least, it will require sacrifice. It will mean commitment and care in the face of indifference and paralysis, in the face of uncertainty and fear. Above all, it can only arise out of “our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving,” out of our love of God and our love for our common humanity.
“And one … turned back …giving him thanks; and he was a Samaritan.”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity XIV, 2015