4th Sunday after Trinity

Bonfire night in July. And then there was the Moygashel bonfire with its life-sized effigy of a boat, containing life size refugees in orange life jackets. Eerily lifelike in silhouette. And hellish when it was lit – like humans on fire. A hate crime.

In Sri Lanka, during the worst ethnic riots, the country burned. Buildings and cars were set alight, with people put inside them. Burning refugees, even in effigy, is hellish – I have seen where such dehumanising hatred leads.

The burning effigy evoked feelings of hell for others – Professor Duncan Morrow, of Ulster University, said:

“For me, this is literally diabolical. We are heading towards an inhuman hell. And by the way, this has literally zero to do with the gospel — Protestant, Catholic or otherwise. Jesus is always with the crucified.”

How do we, as God’s people, treat the stranger and outsider in our midst? The refugee, the migrant, the foreigner? This question is at the heart of our Gospel reading.

The Archbishop of Armagh in his statement on the Moygashel bonfire echoes Jesus’ words in the Good Samaritan about loving the stranger. Quoting the book of Leviticus the Archbishop said this:

“The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34).

These are the words from the Law of God to his people.  He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  If we compare them with the effigy of a boat of migrants which sits, to our humiliation and lasting shame, on top of a bonfire in Moygashel, it exposes that effigy for what it is – racist, threatening and offensive.  It certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity or with Protestant culture and is in fact inhuman and deeply sub-Christian.

The story of the Good Samaritan is well known from Sunday school days. It seems a warm story about helping our neighbour. We assume it has nothing to do with refugees. Or outsiders.

But it has everything to do with them. It re-iterates the Leviticus command  the Archbishop quotes: “Love the stranger as yourself.”

In our society, where community life has fractured, where neighbourhood residents barely see or talk to each other, we might do well to listen to Jesus’ call to love our neighbours!  But Jesus’ parable goes far beyond that. The parable is Jesus’ response to a lawyer’s question. To a Jewish expert in the law and commandments.

The lawyer was testing Jesus, and trying to justify himself. He thought he knew everything, did everything right. He was a good person, respected by society, a model in interacting with neighbours. I am reminded of words from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance,

“I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;

The lawyer asks, “What should I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus turns the question back to him: “What do you read in the Old Testament law?”

The lawyer gives the perfect answer. He knows this: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, and love your neighbour as yourself.”

“Then go and do this…and then you will live” says Jesus. It isn’t enough to just know the words of the law!

This challenge may have worried the lawyer. He thought he had it right. What, exactly, was Jesus asking him to do? So he asks Jesus a very lawyerly question: who is my neighbour? “Who are you asking me to love?”

In Leviticus, “neighbours” referred to strangers, foreigners, living among God’s people. But Jesus goes even beyond that.

Samaritans were hated and despised by Jews. Samaritans were people of mixed nations, mixed marriages and mixed customs. In the previous chapter, Luke tells us how Samaritans refused hospitality to Jesus and the disciples. And sent them away on dangerous roads late in the evening — to face the very danger that befell the Jew in today’s parable. Jesus’ disciples had wanted to call down fire on the Samaritans.

But in Jesus’ parable it is the hated enemy who shows incredible care to the Jew. So when Jesus turned to the Lawyer and asks “who do you think was the injured Jew’s neighbour. maybe the lawyer couldn’t bring himself to say “the Samaritan,” so he says, “the one who showed him mercy.”

The Jewish lawyer is told to go and do what the Samaritan did. To love his Samaritan neighbour – the outsider, the stranger – as himself.

Jesus’ story shocked the lawyer and the disciples who were furious with the Samaritans. I don’t think they expected to love the Samaritan Jesus brought into the story. Those terrible people – Samaritans. That is not who they thought their neighbour was.

Jesus re-writes the meaning of neighbour. It is not just the stranger we are to love, but people. People of mixed nations, mixed marriages, mixed customs. Outsiders.

Our neighbours are refugees, migrants and asylum seekers.

They are people that we have grown suspicious of because the media and politicians portray them as scroungers, liars, exploiters. Bogus asylum seekers. Illegal migrants. economic migrants. “taking our jobs and houses, and clogging up the NHS.”

We need to see the truth about them.

Most migrant workers are legitimate, many brought by the UK government to serve hospitality, nursing and care sectors. Nurses have told me that UK recruitment agencies came to India, and persuaded them to come., brought them on charter flights. When I visited Ruth Malone with the rector last year, she pointed out the many carers from abroad, and said, they are very kind. As Archbishop John said last month during the riots last month,

“I am concerned that when family members can no longer care for themselves and are at their most vulnerable, there won’t be skilled assistants and carers to help look after them. Or that when I go to hospital, there won’t be nurses and doctors from around the globe to provide expert treatment and care. Or that so many of the industries crucial to a flourishing Northern Ireland – from agriculture to the arts,… [and] hospitality will wither without workers being respected and valued, regardless of their background.”

The news shows us a broken world. Climate change bringing famine and drought; wars destroying life; persecution — all are part of our world. A young woman told me that her mother brought to the border of her country because girls were being raped and kidnapped for the army. She never heard from her mother again. On her journey, this woman was intercepted by human traffickers and molested.

We forget that the West has played a part. We arm people in conflict, sometimes both sides. We provided bombs and bombers to attack the Yemen, the military equipment used against Gaza, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. We hasten global warming and destroy environments and lives. We create the refugees.

Paul told me how when little and he fought with his sister, she ran to his mum and said, “Mummy, mummy, Paul called me names, then I forget what happened, and then he hit me.” Similarly we forget that refugees exist because we are part of the destruction they face.

Refugees are, according to the Bible, the strangers in our midst — our neighbours — battered and bruised.

Love the Lord with all your heart. Love your neighbour as yourself.
In these days of flourishing hatred and evil how can we love our neighbour in obedience to Jesus.

Here are a few suggestions.

Smile at the outsider. Greet them. Talk to them – even if it is just hello. Find ways to support organisations that help them. Be kind. Extend hospitality – invite someone for a meal. If there are riots, take a stand — last year many Christians came out to protect ethnic minorities during the racial riots, and turned the tide.

The Good Samaritan risked his life to save the Jew.

This is the calling to Christians. To love your neighbour as yourself.