Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity
“And when he saw him, he had compassion on him”
We know it as the parable of the Good Samaritan. A familiar story, a familiar concept, even in our secular world, it suggests the powerful influence of religion on culture and society. We want to think that we can and should do good towards our neighbours, towards our fellow human beings. But we know, too, that what we want to do and even what we do is never fully complete, never fully enough. We even know at times that our efforts to do good have precisely the opposite effect. We make things worse.
Such reflections do not take away from the power and the truth of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Quite the opposite. They help to make us think more deeply about the Good and to realize that the power of doing good does not simply come from us. It is really altogether about God in us, not as if we are merely ‘passive vessels,’ but as moving our hearts and minds as active agents towards certain actions that arise from a certain kind of thinking. In a way, the parable is more about a certain attitude of mind that is needed in us and which is illustrated so beautifully, so powerfully, and so poignantly in the parable which Jesus tells.
What we see is the radical nature of love itself, the love that is God himself and God in us without which we are not lovely and without which we can only ‘look and pass by’ those in need. The divine love moving in us allows us in the journey of our own lives to come near to those in distress. It allows to see, to have compassion and to act. But it does not allow us the presumption to think that it is all our doing or that we have all the answers to the world’s problems. The parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us about what I would call, the humility of compassion.
What that entails is the realization that we ourselves are like that “certain man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead”. And we ourselves are like that “certain Priest” and “Levite” who “look and pass by”. But we are also to be like that “certain Samaritan” who, “as he journeyed, came where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion on him.” In other words, we ourselves are in this parable in every way both in our intentions and actions and our sufferings and failings. Yet we are called to be compassionate towards one another, both the stranger and the friend, because of the divine compassion which has been bestowed upon us. That is the deeper meaning of the parable, I think, and the only way in which we can understand it in relation to the questions which precede it.
