Christ Church

Go and do thou likewise

The setting of the story of the Good Samaritan read in the last Chapels for Grades 11 and 12 this week is intriguing and significant for thinking and doing. It speaks to the challenges and conflicts of our confused and fragmented world. How to act? According to what set of protocols? Whose rules and why? What is it that is right to do? Why does that vary so much from jurisdiction to jurisdiction?

The setting of the parable is one of conflict and self-serving justification. “A certain lawyer” undertakes to tempt Jesus, to put him to the test in order to catch him out. He does so by raising the question about “what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” In other words, what is the good? Jesus asks in return a most important question. “What is written in the law? How readest thou?” Ethics is not just about rules. It is about the understanding of what binds us to one another and in what way. Jesus’ question draws out of the lawyer a marvelous summary of the essential ethical teaching that informs the Judeo-Christian and Islamic understanding and which has its strong counterparts in other religions and philosophies, what C.S. Lewis in the Abolition of Man called “the Tao,” referencing ancient Chinese philosophy. Here it joins together the love of God with the whole of our being in Deuteronomy with the love of neighbour in Leviticus.

Jesus applauds the lawyer’s answer as being right; “this do and thou shalt live.” But he, “willing to justify himself” asks “And who is my neighbour?” That is the setting for the powerful and moving parable of the Good Samaritan, as it has come to be known, which draws upon a host of passages from the Hebrew Scriptures about the stranger, the foreigner, the proverbial other as neighbour. The love of God and the love of neighbour, meaning one another, are inseparable. To do the one is to do the other and vice versa. Here is the ethic of care and compassion concentrated in a picture for us to read and in reading to follow.

But how? Only by that love moving in us, a love which is greater than our human loves which are incomplete and imperfect. In the Christian understanding, the love of God and the love of man meet in Jesus Christ, true God and true man, the mediator of the new covenant of love. The Resurrection has been all about the essential life of God revealed through both the Passion and the Resurrection. Here we see the dynamic of divine life at work in us when we allow what we read to move in us.

The parable is a touching allegory of the Incarnation and of human redemption. Our humanity lies wounded and broken on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, images of the heavenly city and the earthly city respectively. Priest and Levite see and pass by. Only the proverbial outcast, a certain Samaritan – a group despised by the religious leadership of Israel – “came where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion on him.” It is a recurring theme in Luke’s Gospel, the idea of seeing and showing compassion. The care is quite radical and points to the true meaning of pastoral care as signaled in the dominant image of the Good Shepherd in the Chapel. The challenge to the lawyer is the challenge to us. “Which of the three was neighbour?” Like the lawyer, the parable moves us to say, “he that showed mercy on him.” Mercy is a higher form of justice; it seasons or perfects justice as Shakespeare’s Portia says in The Merchant of Venice, following upon a long tradition of ethical teaching about the classical virtues as transformed into forms of love.

Education leads us out of ourselves and into something greater than ourselves. How we read and think matters because it shapes our actions with one another. The profound idea is about living beyond ourselves, beyond our self-interests and self-justifications. It is always about something more and greater than what simply lies within ourselves. In a way, it is what the martyr or witness tradition emphasizes: “another lives in me.”

To look and act towards the other seeking the good of the other is our freedom and the real dignity of our humanity. It is not about using one another but seeing one another in the love of God. The setting and the parable at once convict us of our shortcomings and convince us of the dynamic of loving care. It is grounded in the love of God.

At the very least, Chapel has, in this year of ups and downs, attempted to highlight the ethical and spiritual teachings that belong to the history of ideas and which belong to the truth of our institutions. It is about respect for persons regardless of the varieties and complexities of identities. This powerful passage underscores a point which has been emphasized over and over again. The individual, the self, is found in community, in our commitments to the good of one another; not in our aloneness, not in our isolation and separation. Such an understanding transcends the binaries of opposition and conflict to open out a larger view of what it means to be human. It means care even towards those with whom we may disagree.

I want to thank all of you for your patience and forbearance, for your respect and toleration. It is a challenge for you and for me but such is the nature of education. I especially want to thank the Chapel Prefects who under head Chapel Prefect, Stanislav Matkovskyi have done such an exceptional job of keeping things going so smoothly. It is all part of the morning miracle that contributes to the educational life and project of the School. Go and do thou likewise is about ideas alive in you in our life together.

(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, Head of English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy