Pentecost 5 Year C

Which of the three was a neighbour?

How many times have we asked ourselves that question? How many times have we been asked to consider whether we really would have been the one who came to help or whether we would also have found excuses to walk on the other side. You may be pleased to hear that’s not the question I want to address this morning. Rather, I’d like to consider what it feels like to be the person who needs some help; what it feels like to be the one who is in need rather than the one who is rushing to meet someone else’s need.

The way we read Scripture, and perhaps in particular the way that we read the Gospels, leads us into an ongoing narrative about reaching out to God’s people, finding the ways that we can serve as Jesus served, looking to alleviate suffering in any way we can. And, of course, that is what and how we should be living. But there are times for each one of us when we find that we are more vulnerable. Times when we are unable to look after ourselves, never mind anyone else.
Times when we are the one reaching out not to offer help but to accept help. And, on the whole, we’re pretty bad at that. We take a certain pride in coping; in being self-sufficient; in telling others, and ourselves, that we’re fine. And it’s only when we find ourselves really stuck, like the man in our story, that we recognise we have no option but, often grudgingly, to accept some help.

So what does acceptable help look like? What makes it easier for us to recognise our vulnerability, perhaps even to recognise the desire someone else has to make a difference, and to enter into that relationship?

Friday was St Benedict’s day. If I were to ask you what comes to mind when I talk about Benedict, you may mention his Rule, you may mention the relationship between prayer and work, and you may well mention hospitality. Hospitality is central to Benedictine spirituality. It’s at the heart of what Benedict taught and the way that his communities have developed. And I think that hospitality, in its most inclusive sense, may be a way into thinking about what constitutes help that we are able to accept.

Benedict says that monks should welcome all guests with the reverence and respect they would offer Christ. The underlying teaching is that we are called to find that which is of Christ in each and every person we meet. We assume that we are welcoming our God, entertaining angels, even though we may be unaware of that truth in the moment.

With that mindset, would we approach the person in need differently? I suspect so. Rather than thinking ‘I ought to go over and help’ but perhaps being a bit wary to do so, would we find ourselves recognising an opportunity to make a difference, an opportunity to encounter God in a situation we hadn’t anticipated.

So just imagine for a moment that you are that person in need of help. The person who finds themselves for whatever reason vulnerable and some, perhaps random, person comes along and offers a helping hand. How much easier would it be to accept that helping hand if it was offered with reverence and respect. The entire encounter would have a different quality, a different foundation.


Rather than feeling like a foolish person upon whom some disaster had befallen, you may be helped to feel like someone who simply had an unfortunate experience and who the random stranger was honoured to help.

The hospitality that underpins that scenario is what holds the space; the hospitality makes room for grace, for God to be at work. I would suggest that the first step on the path of healing is the offering and accepting of hospitality because in that encounter the Divine is both invited and expected to attend.

The lawyer whose question elicited the story we’re considering knew what was at the heart of real hospitality, although he was perhaps a little resistant to living it. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your strength, all your soul and all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself. What if we replaced the word love with the word honour? Honour the Lord your God with all you heart, all your strength, all your soul and all your mind. This business of following God isn’t half-hearted. It’s not something to dip in and out of. That verse is a description of a lifelong and extremely challenging commitment.

All your heart, all your strength… and never mind the challenge to see, and honour, your neighbour as yourself. This isn’t what comes most readily or easily to us. Biologically we are quite selfish creatures. Our fundamental instincts are for survival. And the journey of faith is about finding ways to set aside our immediate self-orientated instincts and to find our way into that more balanced place where we recognise our own importance but simultaneously recognise that we are no more, or less, important than the neighbour we encounter.

One trap within Christianity is to think that we need to diminish ourselves in order to serve the other. But that’s not the teaching. We’re not asked to love our neighbour more than ourselves. In fact, I would suggest that is one of the ways that we inadvertently turn away from God. It’s one of the ways that we inadvertently harm ourselves. As we are invited to meet and honour the Christ within the stranger, we are equally invited to meet and honour the Christ within ourselves.

So what would be helpful in enabling us to accept the helping hand that reaches out from time to time? What would enable us to allow ourselves to be the helped rather than the helper? Perhaps it’s about honouring that which is of God within us and having the grace to allow someone else to show the reverence and respect that they would show to Christ. Is it easier to accept the helping hand if I see that this isn’t a one-sided encounter. By accepting support, we offer an opportunity to the helper. By accepting hospitality we offer the possibility of healing to both people involved. In the act of accepting hospitality, we offer hospitality. In making ourselves vulnerable, we allow others to also be vulnerable.

And it’s in that place of vulnerability, in that place where heart, strength, soul and mind are touched, that we begin to understand what it means to offer and receive real hospitality. It’s maybe what we mean when we talk about receiving God’s grace; it’s maybe what we mean when we think about sharing something of God’s grace.

This isn’t something that we can achieve if we only try harder. It’s not the stuff of muscular Christianity. It’s the stuff of letting go; of trying less in order to achieve more.

Which of the three was a neighbour? I suggest that the answer is all three – but only one of them modelled the call to honour the other, to be a hospitable neighbour. Only one of them was changed, along with the victim, as a result of the encounter, as a result of the giving and receiving of hospitality.