Good Samaritan in the City

When my year 9 class went into the city for an ‘amazing race,’ I was faced with a challenge…

A young boy, dressed in a school uniform was asleep, arms and legs sprawled across the platform at Parliament Station, one of the busiest stations in Melbourne’s CBD.  It was long past the start of school and the public were unalarmed, carelessly walking past him.  I turned to my group, ‘Do you think he’s Okay?’  One member replied, ‘He’ll be fine, come on, we need to get to Parliament House.’ I knew it wasn’t right.  I had to do something.  ‘Come on, if we stop we’ll fall behind,’ my group said to me.  Bravely, I approached the customer service desk.  ‘There’s a boy on platform 3 who’s asleep on the platform and it doesn’t seem right.’  The Metro employee abruptly stated, ‘What can I do about it?’  I was stunned.  This man, just like my group, wanted to abandon this young person.  Challenging him I said, ‘well I feel something isn’t right.’  He replied, ‘there isn’t much I can do.’  I stood there and wasn’t going to move until he did something.  Reluctantly, the man turned to the security cameras, saw the boy, paged an employee and told me, ‘someone is going there now.’  Satisfied, I turned around only to be met with the disapproval of my group.  Even though we lost the race, I knew I’d done the right thing.

Jesus lived in a time of extreme social segregation. Your ‘group’, whether that be Roman, Pharisee, Sadducee, Greek or Samaritan among others, directly defined your status, wealth, friends, enemies and power – if you had any. It isn’t hard to think of parallels today. Jesus sought to address this ungodly segregation. Above all other commandments, Jesus told us to love God and our neighbour (Mark 12:28-31).

Jesus replied, ‘The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.

Mark 12:29-31

When asked ‘And who is my neighbour’ in Luke 10:29, Jesus responded with the famous parable of the Good Samaritan.  We cannot underestimate how radical this teaching was.  The man from Jerusalem, who represented the religious elite and the Levite, the man of the priestly tribe, did not help the stranger.  It was the Samaritan, who belonged to a group viewed by many as Judaism’s inferior cousin, that did the work of God.  Galatian 3:28 reinforces Jesus’ teaching that ‘There is no Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’

Too often we find ourselves in a similar world to which Jesus lived.  It is too easy to ignore the ‘other’ and stay within the safety of our networks.  It is often difficult to reach out to those we don’t know.  1John 3:18 can serve as inspiration to us:

‘Dear Children, let us not love in words and speech but in actions and in truth.’

1John 3:18

A stranger may be on public transport as they were for me or at your workplace or on the street.  You never know, you may just change their life by living out the example of Jesus.