As part of our Countering Hate, Cultivating Hope project, we are sharing a series of theological reflections throughout the project to explore how the Christian faith can respond to division, challenge hate and build communities that are more connected.
In this theological reflection, Angus Ritchie, Director of the Centre for Theology and Community, revisits Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan.
As we reflect on Black History Month, and this year’s theme ‘Honouring Our Communities’, this reflection invites us to consider how listening with open hearts and recognising the gifts of those who often go unseen and overlooked can help us challenge division and cultivate hope in our communities.
Good Samaritans?
Are Christians called to be “Good Samaritans”?
On a quick reading, the answer is “yes”.
When Jesus tells this often-quoted parable,
his final words are “Go and do likewise”.
But if we dig a little deeper,
his message is more unsettling.
The passage begins with a religious leader asking:
“who is my neighbour?”
He’s really asking
“What are the limits of mercy?”
What are my obligations to those who are different from me?
Jesus’ questioner knows he has to love his neighbour,
but he wants to know where that obligation ends.
Who does and doesn’t count as a neighbour?
Where is he allowed to draw the line?
Do I have to care about Samaritans?
As so often in the Gospels,
Jesus doesn’t reply to the question
in the terms in which it is posed.
Instead of telling the religious leader
that he should care more about Samaritans,
Jesus offers him a parable.
Here, the Samaritan doesn’t feature
as the one in need of help.
Instead, the Samaritan
is the one who bears God’s mercy.
This passage comes to mind when I reflect
on the conversations I am having on this project.
The passage poses questions,
for me and for all whom I am meeting.
Who are the “Samaritans”
in our own imaginations?
Where do we draw lines,
which limit the demands of mercy?
Where do we fail to recognise God’s gifts
because of our preconceptions
about those who bring them?
What gifts do we overlook
because we have not learnt to recognise
the treasure of God’s Kingdom?
Jesus challenges us to recognise
in neighbour and stranger
a bearer of gifts
as well as a source of obligations.
As he drew together Samaritan and Jew,
tax-collector and Zealot,
so he calls us to see his gifts
in those whose race or social class,
theology or politics
is very different from our own.
The stories Jesus tells
never reinforce our settled certainties.
Rather, they invite us to see the world afresh;
to view it through a different lens.
When we undertake listening
in our congregations and in our neighbourhoods,
our aim is not only to draw up a list of needs
but also to recognise a treasure-store of gifts;
places where God is already at work.
To recognise the gifts and insights
of those around us can be unsettling.
There is a security, a power,
in always being the “Good Samaritan” –
always the helper,
never the helped.
And there is that same security and power.
in always being the Teacher,
never the one who needs to be corrected.
Jesus invites us
into a new kind of relationship –
a mutuality in which we both wash the feet of others
and allow our feet to be washed;
in which we have a message to proclaim
and yet allow others to teach us.
When I accept this invitation,
I discover in my neighbour
not only someone for whom I should have mercy
but also the One who comes to bind my wounds.
This discovery enables us
to work together at a new depth;
to recognise and build a different kind of power.
