ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

The Parable of the Good Samaritan: a revelation of God’s intentions for us all

Orthodox Parish of the Annunciation, Oxford
11 November 2007

Luke 8:26-39

Today we have heard the parable of the Good Samaritan, which Christ tells in the form of a story after he has been challenged by the young lawyer, ‘Who is my neighbour?’

You may remember that in the past I have referred to the way in which the interpretation of texts is not always a question of exegesis – i.e. extracting what is there – but also a question of reading into them things which are perhaps not obvious, but which are there nevertheless. There is a marvellous example of this in connection with this particular parable.

At the very beginning of Lent, in one of the hymns for Vespers, we are given an explanation of why the priest walked by on the other side. He thought, says the hymn, that nothing could be done for this man. Now there is nothing in the Gospels that tells us that. This is simply eisegesis: we read into the story a reason for passing by that is not there. And yet it is a very interesting interpretation, because we ask ourselves how many times in our own lives do we walk by situations where we say, ‘There is nothing that can be done.’ In other words, the hymn finds in this story something which we experience in our own lives.

The parables as a whole describe relatively small incidents. Something happens, or there is some fact, and Christ uses it to comment on something which is much larger. In this particular story, of course, he is trying to get us to understand who our neighbour is – and our neighbour is of course anyone whom we happen to come across.

But there is another, deeper, structure in this same story, and I think we are justified in finding it there and learning from it as well.
Let us look at certain aspects of this narrative.

This man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Now we know the geography of the Holy Land. Jerusalem is on a high cliff, and the descent to Jericho is extremely steep: in fact it takes you below sea level. Jericho is down with the Dead Sea – one of the lowest places on the surface of the earth – so there is huge fall in height there.

Then, Jerusalem is also another way of talking about the Kingdom. We have only to think of the Book of Revelation and the way the prophet sees the New Jerusalem descending. So there is a way in which this recasts another descent – the descent of Adam and Eve at the time of the Fall.

Then again, this man fell among thieves. Now Christ himself uses this language to talk about this world and the contrast between this world and the Kingdom: this is the world ‘where thieves break in and steal’ (Mt 6:19). But thieves also remind one at once of the demons who begin to take over Adam and Eve’s life when they depart from Paradise. Moreover, these thieves stripped him of his raiment. Now Adam was clothed in light when he lived in Paradise and he lost that garment when he fell. So once more we see here a similarity between the story of this man and the story of mankind.
Then, if we look at what actually happens in the story, it is the religious people who pass by on the other side. They either cannot or will not help. These people at one level are the insiders of society: they defend their position by creating and accepting the existence of outsiders. But in the Kingdom the influence of these people will pass. There will no longer be priests offering bloody sacrifices. There will no longer be Levites serving in the Temple, because Man will worship God everywhere.

So there is a pointer here to the transition from our current situation – and certainly the contemporary situation in Palestine – to what would be and will be.

Again – to take up this same structure – it is not the insider who stops, but the outsider, the Samaritan – the person who does not worship in Jerusalem, who lives outside Jerusalem, and is not someone with whom one would even share a meal. Remember that Christ himself, throughout the Gospels, comes across not as an insider but as an outsider. He runs up against the anger of Herod the Tetrarch, against the Roman Governor, against the Scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees – against all these people who are established in society. When we look at who his friends are, we see that they are in effect ‘publicans and sinners’ – the Canaanite woman (again an outcast), widows, lepers. We think also of the story of his birth: to be born in a cave – not in a home but in a cave – and to have to flee to Egypt as a child. And this is experienced not only in his life but also in the way in which others experience him. He comes across to his contemporaries as someone from somewhere else, not really ‘one of us’.

This is given expression in the Gospel of John, when Christ is in conflict with the Pharisees, and he says ‘I know whence I came and whither I go but ye cannot tell whence I come and whither I go’ (Jn 8:14). You do not know where I am from. I am that much of a stranger.

Again, when the Pharisees are talking to the man whom Christ has healed, who was blind from birth, they say to the man, ‘We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we do not know from where he is’ (Jn 9:29). So in a strange way the Samaritan appears in this story as a Christ-like figure, someone come to save another who has lost his home, who is far from his home in Jerusalem: both are in a sense outsiders.

There is confirmation of this in the action of the Samaritan himself. When the Samaritan saw this man fallen among thieves, he had compassion on him. This is precisely the characteristic of Christ: compassion. We hardly need to think of examples, since they leap to mind: the feeding of the five thousand, when he had compassion on those who were hungry; the healings, where he has compassion on the sick; the raising of the dead –Jairus’s daughter – the forgiveness of sins. In all these things Christ shows his compassion just as the Samaritan shows his compassion.

There is a way, then, in which this parable does not just tell us how Christ thinks we ought to behave ourselves in our own lives. It is also a picture of God’s relationship with mankind, with the world, as this is expressed in Christ. Mankind in the Fall descended from where he was, from Paradise – from the Jerusalem of life. He has become in this life the prey of demons – the demonic powers that attack him and all of us. He has lost the garment of light that belonged to him in Eden – and Christ, God in Christ, comes to restore him, to bring him back to health.

Finally there is nothing strange at all in the last words of today’s passage: ‘Go, and do thou likewise’. Christ himself says that he has come to ‘do the works of him that sent me’ (Jn 9:4). All that he does in this world is actually the work of the Father; and the work of the Father is to restore mankind – to see that every person, to the extent that they can enter into God’s grace, is saved. God, in doing this, shows us his compassion upon mankind – his compassion which is expressed in the sending of Christ; his compassion and his generosity which is expressed in the way he causes the sun to rise on the just and the unjust, and the rain to fall on both.

Let us understand this story, then, not simply as a tale which will tell us how to behave ourselves, but as one which that reveals the deep structure of this world as related to God, which reveals God’s intentions for all of us.
Amen.