Let us pray: May the words I speak and the thoughts and actions that these words inspire be faithful to your will for us, your people, O God. Guide what I say. Amen.

The title for this reflection of course comes from the old, old hymn of the same name. I chose it because of the familiarity of the story told in today's gospel reading. I think, arguably, that the story of the good Samaritan is the passage of Christian scripture which has most entered into the wider culture. The reason, naturally, is that it contains within it not only a clear and timeless message, but also because it is just simply a good story.

A commentary, noting how well known this parable is, suggested that a good deal of creativity is required to bring new meaning and insight into the telling of it.

That comment puzzled me when I read it, although I must say that some of the resources it pointed at to emphasise its point were very good. It's not a bad thing to be given an opportunity to take a fresh look, using a new perspective at something which has become so familiar that it may have lost some significance. I absolutely understand that point. However, at the same time, my puzzlement came from the thought that the very act of looking for a new and fresh perspective seems to assume that the story is so worn with time and familiarity that it has lost any value it might have once had.

Is that really the case? Are the principles and moral teachings of the story of the good Samaritan so well known that it fails to offer anything new to those who read and hear it? Are we so attuned to the “do the right thing” attitude that the story teaches that we can not learn something new and are we so instructed by it that we would never dream of not going out of our way to be the kind of neighbour that the story teaches us to be?

I expect your answer to that question is the same as mine – namely that there are still countless examples of people who walk by on whatever road, sidewalk, pathway or turnpike without stopping. That being true, it would seem to me that the story of the Good Samaritan still has something to teach us. I read somewhere in the last few months of an incident – and I have to admit that I forget exactly where this happened, but the incident seems to add an additional layer in true-life example to the story of Jesus. A man, seeing a woman involved in an altercation with a knife wielding assailant intervened, allowing the woman to escape. That's Layer 1 – the Good Samaritan – who happened to be a homeless person – thus further building upon the same themes that Jesus used in his story – the Samaritan was in the minds of the listener the most unlikely of all the passers-by to stop. I suspect that for us we might think the same way about so-called homeless people – that they indeed might be the least likely to stop and help. But in the story I reference that is exactly what happened. However, in a terrible twist to the story – the man who intervened was himself stabbed by the attacker who ran away – and then the wounded Good Samaritan lay on the street - security cameras running as pedestrian after pedestrian walked by – some of them stopping long enough to take a good look at him slumped over on the edge of the sidewalk – but eventually walking on by. By the time someone did stop to help him, and call the paramedics – he had succumbed to the stab wounds. The Good Samaritan had himself not been blessed by a further Good Samaritan stopping to help him before he died.

Thus, despite Jesus' telling of the story, and despite its being the most well known of all passages of Christian scripture, there are still things to learn from it – without searching for deeper insight and novel perspectives. The story stands on its own in a very clear and direct way.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we should not engage in deeper reflection and study of the stories of Jesus. On a Sunday not that long past, I reflected on the way that the parables invite us to do just that, and that part of their timeless appeal is that they offer layer upon layer of meaning and insight. The story of the Good Samaritan invites us to consider who the Samaritans are in our present day context. It also invites us to consider who the broken and beaten are among us. I mentioned the commentary with which I had if not a small quarrel, at least a bit of puzzled consideration. It pointed me to a story told by an artist who wanted to portray the story of the Good Samaritan using his particular art form, namely sculpture. The artist Charles McCollough described how in attempting to portray the story in sculpture he was drawn to consider the story from the perspective of the beaten man. What would it have been like for him to receive help from someone whom he despised. All the people he respected had walked by, and now someone whom he least expected to help, and quite frankly except for his circumstances would indeed have despised, is the one who stopped.

We know that Jesus was one who continually and purposefully turned traditional understandings and perspectives upside down. In order for us to be true to that tradition we must also do the same – not only in our interpretation of Jesus' words and teachings, but also in the way we act in response to those words and teachings.

So, am I hedging a bit on the point I was trying to make when I began this reflection? I think what I am advocating for is a both/and approach. The story of the Good Samaritan interpreted in a traditional way still has much to teach us. The message of “do the right thing” and the message of “don't engage in hypocrisy” and the message of “expect the presence of God to be made known in the unexpected” are ones that continue to inform our lives to this day. But that very tradition of expect the unexpected is one that leads us to look for new meaning and new perspectives in the story as well. In other words, the story taken in a traditional way still has much to tell us, and one of the things it tells us is to look at the story in other ways as well.

I began this reflection by recalling the hymn – Tell me the old, old story. It's a hymn which invites us to look back with warmth and perhaps even nostalgia. In some ways it describes the theme I first presented – namely that there is much that is tried and true in the old ways – that despite our modern ways of being and thinking, the old wisdom, the old stories, the old insights can still inform our lives. But it is also a hymn which I'm not keen to sing anymore, because in my mind it leaves us in the past. Despite the good things it calls to mind, it is not one which invites us to look forward. It's almost as if we get stuck in the past – hoping for things to be the way they were, but knowing deep down that they can never be that way and the only way to be living is not in reverse but in a forward gear. How many of us have engaged in that rosy coloured recollection of how great it used to be in whatever church we've attended – when people talking about the scarcity of seats and the bulging walls of Sunday School rooms? It probably never was as good as we remember and it therefore can never even get to be that way again – because it wasn't that way in the first place, but also because God is calling us to new ways of being, relating and living as a community of faith. The old wisdom, the old stories are not ones that we are called to look back on with affection, but rather to let form the basis for our way forward. They invite us to interpret the situations and vistas that lie before us, so that they truly become the foundation for a life of walking in God's way into the future. Let us trust that so founded we may be attuned to whatever calls there are to stop and help the wounded ones who've been cast to the side of the road ahead of us, and that we may be also be ready to accept help from the most unexpected and undesirable of God's helpers along the way. Amen.