The Jericho-Jerusalem road.

Sermon preached at St Peter and St Paul’s Church on the sixth Sunday after Trinity, 15th July 2007, based on Deuteronomy xxx.9-13, Colossians i.1-14, St Luke x.25-37.

On the next day,
as he departs,
the Good Samaritan takes out two denarii,
gives them to the innkeeper,
and says to him,

'Take care of him;
and whatever more you spend,
when I come again, I will repay you.'

Just as he is leaving,
the Good Samaritan is accosted
by a rather formidable woman
clearly with a bone to pick.

“Where do you think you are going?”

The Samaritan stops dead,
taken aback by 13 stone
of pure peevishness standing before him.

“I’m going on my way,”
he says, clearly thrown
by this strange demand.
“So you’re going to leave
that poor chap here
are you?

Sure, you pick him up
and patch him up
and bring him here,
but then you leave him.

Why?

Why aren’t you staying
with him until he’s better?

Why aren’t you prepared
to travel with him back to his house
and make sure that he is returned safely?

You’ve paid for his bed and board here,
but how’s he going to get home?”

Should the Samaritan have done more?

[PAUSE]

It is clear to us
that it is the Samaritan
who acts as neighbour
for the victim.

In the Samaritan,
we see one who is willing
to make himself close to the one suffering;

the one who will not allow
distance to become an obstacle
to helping and loving and rescuing.

That’s the whole point of neighbourhood
- you make yourself close
to those folk around you.

But how close is close?

[PAUSE]

How many people would you say
are within 100ft of you
right now?

Would you say that
you are close
to each one of those people?

Let’s shrink the circle down to 10ft.

Are you close to all these folk?


What about at 1ft?

Are you close to the people
right next to you?

There are folk who
are not here in this building today
who are close to you.

You may even have a friend
a thousand miles away
with whom you are closer
than someone ahead of you
in the queue
at the Distribution of the Eucharist,

but it’s possible that
the person next door
might just as well be
on the other side of the world.

This is a phenomenon
that is affecting our Church.

How many people in this parish
do not actually live in this parish?

How many are from Northfleet,
from Welling,
from Dartford?
And how much
this parish benefits
from these folk!


Even though
they are not resident in the parish,
they are still a part of this parish.

But there is another question
that goes along with this idea.

How many people live in this parish
who are not members of the parish?

That number is rising.

The number of neighbours is shrinking.

What more should we be doing?

[PAUSE]

For the Samaritan,
his encounter with Jericho’s answer
to Nora Batty is troubling.

Surely there is a lot more that he can do.


Perhaps he ought to go back
and stay with this chap
and see him safely home,

but this takes him out of his next task,
out of his step on the journey.

It takes him away
from the next victim of robbery
on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho.

It takes him away
from the next bond of neighbourhood
that he is to forge
as he treads this route again and again.

[PAUSE]

Meanwhile back at the inn,
months pass
and the victim grows whole again.

He decides to wait for
this Samaritan to come again,
to thank him for the kindness that he shows,

to pray with him
to the God whom they worship
albeit in different ways,

grateful for the love
of one man prepared to cross the distance
to become a neighbour.

And so he waits,
and, growing impatient,
he begins to go out onto the road
between Jerusalem and Jericho
in search of this Good Samaritan.

As he treads the way,
he sees a priest and a Levite ahead of him
passing by a small shape
huddled in the roadside.

As the man reaches it,
he sees that it is another man
stripped,
beaten,
bloodied
and bruised,
left for dead by robbers.

He binds the wounds,
puts the victim onto his donkey
and wends his way back to the inn.

And as he travels back to the inn,
the man realises what he must do now:

he must tread the road
again and again looking for others,
so that he might be a neighbour to them.

A new neighbour walks the dangerous road
between Jerusalem and Jericho.

[PAUSE]

We too as a church walk on a journey
with a mission
to bring the love of Christ
to the people of Swanscombe.


It’s easy for us to be directed
away from that mission
by things that we feel we should be doing.

We need to ask ourselves,
“how are we forging the bonds of neighbourhood?

How are we closing the gap?”

Invitations into the Church
and various celebrations
certainly let the people of Swanscombe
know that we exist,


but without the bond-making,
the cultivation of neighbourhood,
we lack the strings that bind us together.

And clearly we are limited in what we can do.

If we consider ourselves
close to everyone in a radius of 100 miles,
then that’s just too much for us.

If we consider ourselves close
only to the person within 1 inch
then we are clearly too individualistic.

Somehow we have to reach out,
to as many people as we can.

We need to close the gap
even the gap between people
we cannot stand!

It’s a big ask - a huge ask.
-an ask that’s beyond us!

So how do we do it?

Is there an All-powerful Neighbour
who will help us if we ask Him properly?

So how do we ask Him to help us?