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2001
11th November (am) - People who are our neighbours matter to God

Uniforms and inspection are second nature to those of you who are on parade this Remembrance Sunday. I have to confess that the closest I ever got to that kind of discipline was going to a boys' camp at Castlerock - Guysmere - where we were wakened by a bugle, and had a few minutes to wash in cold water before morning inspection by the Commanding Officer and the Adjutant. In the 60's we slept on straw palliasses, with blankets that seemed as if they had been around for centuries. In the inspection your blankets had to be folded to produce 8 straight edges.

The camp always had morning and evening prayers -with about 100 boys gathered in a large marquee. One evening, the chaplain arranged for some boys to act out the story Ernie Scott read for us today - the boys acted out the Good Samaritan very enthusiastically -attacking and beating up the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, so eagerly that an officer who had entered the marquee late, thought a real fight had broken out and decided to separate the combatants! He had completely misunderstood what was going on!
And I'm not too sure that we don't sometimes also misunderstand what is going on in this famous, old story of the Good Samaritan. Out of the many possible misunderstandings, I want to suggest two which seem particularly relevant on Remembrance Sunday.

Misunderstanding No. 1 is to think that being a Good Samaritan is just as good as taking God seriously.

Misunderstanding No.2 is to think that being a Good Samaritan is about 'nice' to your next door neighbour.

So firstly, Is it just as useful to be a good samaritan as it is to take God seriously?

Is it just as useful to be a practical, caring, down-to-earth person who is willing to put themselves out a bit for other people, as it is to take the matters of faith seriously? Is it just as useful to put your life on the line for others, as those who serve in uniform have to do - as it is to put your life clearly on the line for Jesus Christ?
Over and over again I meet people who tell me that they are not very religious, that they don't bother much about church, that they aren't into serious questions about faith ... but that they are serious about helping other people.
They see themselves as 'good samaritans' much more than 'religious' people - and sometimes they put many serious Christian people to shame. Jesus actually told the story of the Good Samaritan to a very religious man, who knew a lot about the Bible, but not much about practical caring.
The man had asked Jesus an incredibly important question: What must I do to inherit eternal life? He couldn't have asked a much more important question - a question about getting life right, about getting death prepared for, about getting hope for heaven. Jesus confirmed that the answer had 2 parts: Love the Lord your God with all your heart ........ and love your neighbour as yourself .... and the story of the Good Samaritan was to explain 'the loving your neighbour' part - not to downgrade the other part - loving God properly.

Now there's an important Remembrance Day point here.
On Remembrance Sunday we are very rightly concentrating on the 'good samaritan' part of life - the outstanding 'good samaritan' service given by people like you, for the well-being of others. You have given courageous service, many have undergone horrendous experiences, and some made the supreme sacrifice.
Just as Jesus so warmly endorsed the caring, sacrificial actions of the Good Samaritan who risked his life for the sake of a man he had never met and didn't know, so he would endorse the courage and service that we recall on Remembrance Day. People, like me, who have not had to give such service, especially need to understand what others have done for the well-being of my generation.

However, such service and sacrifice must never, ever be misunderstood as the whole story of life or, to put it the way Jesus was asked the question, how to 'inherit eternal life' - to have the hope of heaven and the hope of God.
It is a dangerous misunderstanding to think that God gives people heaven/eternal life essentially because they have been 'good samaritan' neighbours or even because they have given costly personal service. Jesus never intended us to take that out of the story of the Good Samaritan.
Rather Jesus made it clear that it was: Love the Lord your God .... and love your neighbour.
And there is only one way by which you and I can actually love the Lord our God and thereby have God's hope of heaven for our lives. God has made that way plain.
It is through the service and sacrifice of what someone else did that you and I may love God and have his hope.

Jesus Christ made the supreme sacrifice in order to give people like us a future - the sacrifice of the Cross - one man giving his life for all others.
- his death was the awful way necessary to deal with an awful problem - our God-forgetting, sinful lives.
- his cross was the costly place where the threat of death and hopeless defeat was taken away.
- his supreme sacrifice was the only way that our lives could be put right with God, and given the priceless promise of heaven.

Jesus, and all that is written about Jesus in the Bible, tells us that over and over again.
I am the way, the truth and the life, said Jesus, No man comes to the Father but by me.
For there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus who gave himself as a ransom for all men.
So we should never ever think that while we may not be much into things to do with faith and religion and church, we'll be able to make up for it with our caring attitudes, our service given, or even our sacrifices made for neighbours and others.
Don't make that mistake - if that was all we needed, Jesus would have told the story of the Good Samaritan, but would have walked away from the Cross - but he didn't.
- That Cross of sacrifice and death was God's way of doing what had to be done.
- Jesus is God's appointed way of hope - the only Saviour who is able to promise and deliver eternal life.
We leave ourselves with no true hope if we leave him out of our lives. Faith in Jesus Christ is critical for every man, woman and child - no matter how good a 'samaritan' we might be in our daily lives, no matter what service we have given. You and I need to trust in Jesus and his Cross, to trust him as our Saviour.
So there is a critical issue here for each of us - If, no when, we have to stand before God, will we be banking on what we have done for others or on what Christ has done for us?

Is being a good samaritan mainly about being 'nice' to your next door neighbour?

Not really, if we listen properly to the story.
The Good Samaritan put himself out for somebody who wasn't really his 'neighbour' at all - somebody whom he didn't really know - someone whom he might have had doubts about and grievances against - for Samaritans didn't like Jews, didn't trust them much; they'd often been enemies and most of the time they lived at uneasy distance.
And yet, here he was, a Samaritan, helping a Jewish man who had been viciously attacked. There's definitely much, much more to this story than being 'nice' to the people we know, or the people who are like us.
This Good Samaritan chose to stop with a man who had no claim on his help; he chose to risk his own life - for who was to say whether this wasn't a clever 'set-up'; he chose to put himself to trouble and to expense where there was nothing in it for himself, except risk.
Sometimes being a Good Samaritan involves some pretty hard decisions and some pretty serious risk-taking.
The Remembrance Day application is that being a Good Samaritan may sometimes mean being a good soldier or police officer or other public servant - where you have to take very serious risks in order to do what is right/good..
Indeed being a Good Samaritan may actually involve taking up arms and using military force - sometimes that is the sad and unavoidable way in which people who have been attacked and beaten up must be cared for, and the threat of further evil attack diminished. To run away from such choices is sometimes to run away from being a Good Samaritan - it is to pass by on the other side because we don't want to get our hands dirty.
I believe that this was the case when the Allies chose to stand against the aggression of Nazism or the terrible evils perpetrated by the Japanese Empire during WW2.
I believe that this was the case for so many people who stood against terrorism from all sides in NI over the last 30 years. This was 'good samaritan' work.
I believe this is the case in our world at the moment where Good Samaritans cannot stand back and allow Bin Laden and his network to terrorize the world.
Where the lives of ordinary people, and the general well-being of life in our world is threatened, then Good Samaritans do not stand back and do nothing. That is why it is right today, to solemnly remember the terrible sacrifices which so many people have made in so many varied scenes of conflict and trouble - where they have given 'good samaritan' service.

However, as people whose whole view of these things must be determined by our faith in Jesus Christ, our Good Samaritan Saviour, there are certain very definite qualifications about war and military action which we must be clear about.

Good Samaritan Christians see conflict and war as a terrible last resort - a sad and unavoidable necessity, never something to be initiated selfishly or carelessly. Today is a day for solemn remembrance, not for silly glory. We must never ever sentimentalize military action or make it seem glamorous or attractive. It is an awful thing, to be undertaken with heavy hearts, I believe that those who have seen such service know that truth better than the rest of us.

As well as seeing 'war' as a terrible last resort, Good Samaritan Christians see 'enemy' as a terrible last label - only to be applied when every effort at friendship and fairness has failed - a long resisted, but sad conclusion that the other person or group is not willing to be our friend, and is dreadfully dangerous as our enemy.

When the religious man asked Jesus, Who is my neighbour? Jesus gave him a mind blowing answer:
Anyone can be your neighbour, said Jesus - even people who could easily be classified as your enemy i.e. Jews vs. Samaritans.
So as we think about what is going on in Afghanistan, we have to be desperately careful - committed to dealing with the Bin Laden problem, but deeply concerned for the Afghan nation and its people. We have to be sure that the military action being undertaken is for their ultimate good - concerned that every possible humanitarian angle is considered. We need to make sure that while it is unavoidable that Bin Laden and the Taliban have become an enemy, that we don't classify a whole nation and its people as such.
This is an immensely difficult challenge - for the US and British governments, for the responsible Muslim governments, for the military strategists, for the actual forces. They need our most earnest prayers ... and ordinary people like us need to think hard about the issues involved, and not to be swept along on some foolish wave of patriotic fervour. For Good Samaritan we have to read - good Afghani, good Muslim, good Arab - not just good British, or Irish or American - and we must recognise the difficult Christian choices involved in combining tough action against the evil of Bin Laden with caring concern for so many people in the Muslim world.

Being a Good Samaritan means that our own gain or narrow self interest must be our very last thought.
As the Good Samaritan stopped to help the man who had been attacked, he knew there was nothing in it for him, apart from trouble, financial cost and potential risk.
We need to make sure that when we are involved in conflict or give our support to it, that we are not doing so because of what's in it for us - for that attitude goes completely against the true meaning of being a Good Samaritan neighbour.
Sometimes people have been divided, and conflicts have been engaged in, because motives have been very mixed up and sometimes downright selfish. Sometimes personal gain, narrow sectarian interests or national benefit have been the real reasons behind fine sounding moral, political, or even religious justifications.
It has happened in history over and over again. We've seen it happen here in our own country where honorable titles like Catholic and Protestant have been used by people for their own selfish ends, and terribly misused by people who have done awful things
We see it in our world today where some want to stir up a hatred between the Christian world and the Islamic world.
Good Samaritan neighbours will have nothing to do with this - they are to care about the lives of people whoever they are, wherever they live, whatever national or religious label they carry - they will want only the best for them, they will do nothing to harm them for personal gain or power, they will engage only in the use of force and war as a terrible last resort; as a means to overcome the aggressor and to help as many as possible on all sides.

This Good Samaritan thing is a bit tough - it challenges so many of our natural ways of thinking about things - it leaves no room for any old prejudices - it calls for costly Christian caring and living - but this is the way of Christ and it is the word of the eternal God to us, on this Remembrance Sunday.
The Good Samaritan way is the way God took himself. He took risks in order to help people who could easily have been considered beyond worrying about. God made the supreme sacrifice - through Jesus Christ he gave himself to a cross, for people, like us, who have resisted his rightful claim upon our loyalty, often rebelled against his divine authority, and actually lived as his enemies.
Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this ...... when we were God's enemies we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son.

By his sacrifice the enemies of sin and death and eternal judgment have been dealt with - obliterated for ever.
By what Jesus did, the hope of God and the door of heaven is open to all. Unconditional surrender, a willingness to allow the Good Samaritan, Christ, to be our Helper is the way of safety and hope.

The choice is left up to us.