by CCW | 11 September 2022 10:00
It is not too much to suggest that the remarkable seventy year reign of Queen Elizabeth II bears eloquent testimony to the ethic of compassion set before us in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. She was a uniting figure in the face of the culture of antagonism in the divisions and conflicts of our postmodern world. A Queen who was deeply devoted to her people who in turn were devoted to her, and “knowing whose minister she [was],” as the Collect puts it, Elizabeth sought in her own gracious way the honour and glory of God through her devotion to duty and her compassionate commitment to sacrificial service. We mark her passing with profound gratitude for her witness and life of service and commend her soul to God’s gracious keeping.
In the two hundred and fifty one years of the life of this Parish, first as the Parish of Windsor, and then, and now, as Christ Church, there have been nine monarchs, two of whom were Queens whose combined reigns, the reigns of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II, were the longest, totalling one hundred and thirty four years. The passing of Elizabeth marks the end of an era and the beginning of another under the reign now of her son, Charles III, the tenth monarch in the history of our Parish. Long live the King.
The passing of a monarch gives us reason to reflect upon the significance and nature of sovereignty whether in its republican or monarchical forms, whether diffused among the citizenry or concentrated in the person of the sovereign. As Queen Elizabeth’s long reign reminds us, all sovereign power derives from God, from what is greater than ourselves. When that is forgotten there is only tyranny and abuse. What is forgotten is the relation of mercy and truth and the necessary interplay of wisdom and power, of thought and action, we might say. This is what is set before us today in the Gospel story and its setting.
How do we face the troubling and difficult things of our world and day? Through the renewing of our minds upon the wisdom of the ethical. What is the Good and how does it live in us? It can only be through the opening of our souls and minds to “the fear” or wonder “of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom,” and which, even more, as Job says, “is wisdom” (Job. 28.28). This is equally about our being open to the epekeina of Plato, the Beyond, the Good which is beyond the being and the knowing of things as their ground in which the soul participates even in its suffering; this, too, is the insight of Job and Jesus. It is ancient wisdom. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the death of Enkidu moves Gilgamesh to embark upon the greater journey, the quest for wisdom. These reminders counter the spectre of “endism” which hangs over us and paralyzes us in our contemporary fears and anxieties about our world and one another.
The story of Mary and Martha, the images of contemplation and action respectively, bookends the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Christian ethic of compassion par excellence. We easily overlook how the parable is framed by the quest for wisdom; first, by the lawyer’s question “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” which is a question about ‘what is the good as something to be done’, and by Jesus’ response. “What is written in the Law? How readest thou?” and, then, at the end by the story of Mary and Martha which immediately follows it in Luke’s Gospel. In between is the parable given as illustration and answer to the cynical and dismissive second question of the Lawyer: “And who is my neighbour?”
The parable illustrates what C.S. Lewis called the Tao, the path of wisdom, alluding to ancient Chinese philosophy, but seeing the primacy of the ethical as present in the religions and philosophies of the world, “Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and Oriental alike”, as he says. It is about an openness to the good of our humanity which transcends all claims to particularity and subjective interest. The demand in the parable is to act with compassion towards the stranger, the other, regardless of who they are or what they claim to be or how we see them. Jesus deliberately uses “a certain Samaritan,” fully aware of the animosities within Israel about the Samaritans with respect to the reception of the Law. It is not as if Jesus agrees with the Samaritan understanding. He doesn’t. What is paramount is the ethical requirement of compassion despite such differences because of what belongs to our common humanity: the “certain man” who lies wounded and half-dead, is us. We are all in the story both as the one who suffers and as those who look and pass by, or, more pointedly, as the one who is moved with compassion to care for the stranger who is neighbour.
The story of Mary and Martha anchors the parable by way of emphasizing the priority of knowing as the principle which informs action. Martha complains about Mary not helping her. But, as Luke makes clear, Martha is “distracted with much serving,” literally unable to focus to the point of a kind of manic distress and as such, as Jesus says, is “anxious and troubled about many things.” It is a perfect illustration of what W.H. Auden called “The Age of Anxiety” (1947) in a work by that name, which explores the forms of our modern discontent in our isolation and separation from any kind of transcendent principle; in short, God.
The King James Version memorably has Jesus say about Martha, “thou art careful,” meaning too full of cares. It speaks directly to our world. How to be careful in the right way about the right things? Such is wisdom. The one thing necessary is about our thinking about the Good so that it may move in us in spite of the differences of identities that divide us and separate us from one another. Wisdom transcends the binaries of our own making. The theoretical and the practical, the active and the contemplative are not opposed but interconnected and complementary through our openness to the transcendent Good which shapes our thoughts and our actions.
The parable shows us the dynamic of compassion. It is not about looking and passing by but about seeing with compassion and thus coming near and taking care of one another. The parable is actually a profound illustration of the radical truth of what is written in the Law, namely, the love of God and the love of neighbour. Each is implicit in the other. To love God is to love your neighbour. The neighbour is everyone, stranger and friend alike. To love the stranger as neighbour is to love them in God.
The parable is an allegory of the story of the Fall and Redemption and of the sacramental and pastoral life of the Church. The “certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho,” the symbols of the heavenly and the earthly city respectively. He “fell among thieves,” an image of the Fall which robs us of our true relation to God and leaves us “half dead.” Priest and Levite see and pass by for the Law in itself can only highlight our broken and wounded humanity, the truth of our fallenness. Simply as known it can’t address and redeem our humanity; something has to be done. In a way, this is hinted at in the Lawyer’s dismissive second question, “and who is my neighbour?” as if to excuse ourselves from the ethical demand to act upon what is acknowledged as known. This, too, is our sin, our fallenness.
Jesus deliberately uses “a certain Samaritan,” an outsider with respect to Jewish religion and culture, to show the exact opposite and thus to show the real meaning of the Law. Love of God and love of neighbour are necessarily united; each is implicit in the other.
It is not by accident that this parable has come to be known by the word which is not found in the parable itself; the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The allegorical or symbolic point is clear and is further clarified by the story of Mary and Martha. Christ is the Good Samaritan, the one who unites the love of God and love of neighbour in himself. In him the grace of the Law comes to its fullest expression. The images in the parable clearly point us to the sacramental and pastoral life of the Church as grounded in the Incarnation of Christ. Here is the compassion which is given to move in us and as it was, I suggest, in the life of Queen Elizabeth II.
Like Christ in his Incarnation, the “certain Samaritan … came where he was.” “And when he saw him, he had compassion on him.” It is a phrase frequently used by Luke especially – seeing with compassion is about the unity of heart and mind, about a thinking that moves in action. He “bound up his wounds,” a phrase richly evocative of Isaiah’s servant songs which inform our thinking about Christ’s passion. He pours in oil and wine, symbols of healing care. He “set him on his own beast;” the body of Christ himself who “has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows … who was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53. 4,5). “He brought him to an inn, and took care of him.” Such is the Church empowered with the “two pence,” symbolic, the Fathers suggest, of the sacraments of baptism and communion which the Church in its ministry is charged to administer. Such is Christ with us sacramentally.
The parable is told to convict the Lawyer and us about the absolute and sovereign goodness of God in Christ. It shows the necessary interplay between wisdom and power, between thought and action. The compassion of Christ is his grace alive in us by which God’s “faithful people do unto thee true and laudable service” and “faithfully serve thee in this life.” Like the Lawyer, Christ says to us, “go, and do thou likewise.”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity XIII, 2022
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