Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2023

 Micah 6: 6-8, Luke 10:25-37

 

I’m not sure there are many Bible stories more familiar than the parable of the Good Samaritan.

 

Just yesterday morning – listening to Saturday Live on Radio 4 with Revd Richard Coles, I immediately thought of the story of the Good Samaritan as I listened to the ‘thank you’ slot. If you’re not a fan of Saturday Live all you need to know is that people contact the show with stories of good deeds done for them in the past where, for whatever reason, they never got the thank the person who helped them. They get to tell the story and thank the person on the Radio.

 

The story yesterday was told by an older woman, who related how her daughter, unbeknown to her, had collapse in the street in central London. A man working in the hotel opposite spotted that the young woman had collapsed and that people were just walking past. 

 

He crossed the street, picked up the woman, and took her into the hotel foyer, where she was able to give him her mother’s phone number. He rang and explained that the daughter had collapsed and the mother said ‘all she could think to do’ was suggest he put her in a taxi to a friend’s house who was a doctor, and the doctor friend would pay for the  taxi when it got there. In all the stress she completely forgot to ask the man’s name or which hotel he was ringing from. Her daughter, she explained, was suffering from advanced cancer and had passed out from the pain but due to the man’s actions she has able to get home. She died 8 weeks later in her mother’s arms, rather than simply dying, neglected, in the street that day. 

 

The mother concluded the story by saying ‘I want to thank him and encourage everyone who hears the story to realise that they shouldn’t walk by people in the street, but try to help someone in need’.

It would be easy to say that the man in that true story was a ‘modern-day Good Samaritan’, and conclude that Jesus’ original story was a call to all of us to be more kind.

 

And yet, parables are meant to be more than that – to make us puzzle and think deeply, rather than draw a simple moral.

 

So how else can we think of this well-known parable?

 

There is a beautiful Orthodox icon of the Good Samaritan. It is a very beautiful image and I recommend you look it up on the internet – I’m sorry we couldn’t find a way to get the copyright and share it with you today, you’ll have to make do with my description.

 

The injured man is shown, sitting on a horse, bloodied but now bandaged, being held upright by a strong standing figure. Further along the path you see 2 figures in the distance – the ones who passed by on the other side – and at the end of the road stands the welcoming inn and the promise of food and safety for the man. 

The title of the icon is ‘The Good Samaritan’. 

 

But when you look at the standing, supportive figure, who has done such a good job of putting the casualty on his own beast, you realise this is not just a Samaritan – even a good one – this is the figure of Jesus Christ. 

He is wearing red and blue – the traditional way an icon shows the earthly and divine nature of Christ, and he has a halo which includes a cross-shape. The icon depicts Jesus Christ himself as the Good Samaritan.

 

Now how does that thought alter how we see the parable? If it is Jesus who stops, who stoops to soothe and bandage, who cares and supports and carries to safety, what might this story mean for us?

At a personal level, the story of the Good Samaritan can be a story of our own salvation. 

The presence, the healing, the carrying of Christ all bring us from adversity to safety.

 

And in this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, how can Jesus as the Good Samaritan offer us hope? Dare we imagine that rather than just an exhortation to good works, Jesus is offering his church, a broken body, his healing. This week we can pray that Jesus Christ will bind up the wounds in the body of Christ, heal us of our brokenness, make us whole, and take us to a new place of security.

 

And once we are made one ‘as Jesus and the Father are one’, the whole church can then work together to fight injustice in our world – together we can be the Good Samaritan in our communities.

 

Desmond Tutu once wisely said that a divided church is too weak to fight apartheid. I’m sure this is true – and a divided church is also too weak to fight racism, intolerance, injustice or poverty.

 

This year’s material for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was prepared by the churches of Minneapolis in the aftermath of the grief and outrage sparked by the death of George Floyd in that city. They hope to help us seek to explore how the work of Christian unity can contribute to the promotion of racial justice across all levels of society.

 

Our Bible readings were chosen not just to help us reflect on our individual call to do justice or even a call to each denomination to love kindness, but a call to walk humbly together, as one with our God – the God who in Christ can heal our divisions.

 

I pray we will accept God’s blessing on and healing of Christ’s church – through the power of the Holy Spirit and for the sake of the world God loves. Amen.