The Neighbour We Never Expected - The Good Samaritan, Black history and the mercy that changes us

A few years ago, I was fortunate to visit the Holy Land on a study pilgrimage organised by St George’s Anglican College in Jerusalem. I had a strong sense that I could not become ordained as a priest without first visiting the places where Jesus was born and lived out his ministry.

I am so glad I went. There were moments of extraordinary beauty and spiritual depth, but I also found the Holy Land a difficult and daunting place. The landscape was harsh, the heat overwhelming, and the conflict and divisions deeply upsetting.

One of the most challenging places we visited was the ancient road between Jerusalem and Jericho. It runs through a rugged, arid landscape, descending steeply from the hills around Jerusalem towards the Jordan Valley. In places, the ravines are deep and escape routes limited. It is easy to understand why a traveller might be vulnerable to attack.

Our pilgrimage leader, Fr Greg Jenks, read us the parable of the Good Samaritan as we stood there in the heat. Suddenly, the story felt less like a familiar passage of Scripture and more like something happening right in front of us.

Jesus is asked a question that sounds straightforward enough: what must I do to inherit eternal life? The answer is to love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind, and to love our neighbour as ourselves.

But then comes the question that changes everything: And who is my neighbour?

The lawyer wants to know where the boundaries lie. Who exactly am I required to love? Where does my responsibility end?

Jesus responds with a story about a man who is attacked, robbed and left for dead. A priest passes by. A Levite passes by. Both are religious people, people who know the commandments and understand the importance of faith. Yet neither stops to help.

Then comes a Samaritan.

For Jesus’ audience, this was the unexpected turn. Jews and Samaritans shared a complicated history of religious and cultural hostility. The Samaritan was not the person his listeners would naturally have chosen as the hero. Yet it is this outsider who stops, tends the wounded man, takes him to an inn and pays for his care.

Jesus turns the question around. The issue is no longer, “Which people count as my neighbours?” It becomes, “Will I become a neighbour to the person who needs me?”

Fr Greg suggested that we might understand this story differently if, rather than imagining ourselves as the Good Samaritan, we imagined ourselves lying wounded by the roadside. Vulnerable. Helpless. Dependent on the kindness of a stranger.

And what if the person who stopped was someone we distrusted, someone whose community we had judged, someone we had been taught to regard as different from ourselves?

It is an uncomfortable thought. But it opens a door to grace. Sometimes the person through whom God reaches us is precisely the person we have failed to recognise as bearing God’s image.

Today, as we mark Black History Month, this parable speaks powerfully into our own British history and our present-day lives.

Black people have lived in Britain for centuries. Their stories are woven into our national history, although too often they have been overlooked or marginalised. Our history includes the transatlantic slave trade, the wealth built through enslavement and empire, and the long struggle against racial discrimination. It includes the Windrush generation, invited to help rebuild post-war Britain, whose members contributed enormously to our public services and communities, yet some of whom were later treated with shocking injustice.

We must be honest about that history. Love does not ask us to forget the wounds or pretend that injustice belongs safely in the past. Nor should we imagine that racism is only a matter of individual prejudice. It can also be present in institutions, in unequal opportunities, in whose voices are heard, in whose experiences are believed, and in the assumptions we make about people we do not know.

But Black history is not simply a story of suffering. It is also a story of creativity, courage, achievement, faith and joy. Black people have helped shape British music, literature, sport, public life, healthcare and culture. Black churches and Christian communities have offered places of worship, belonging, mutual support and hope. Generations have challenged injustice, opened doors for others and built communities in circumstances that were often far from welcoming.

We celebrate all of that, not as a generous favour bestowed by the rest of society, but because these stories are part of who we are. Black British history is British history.

And there is something profoundly Christian about recognising that the person whose story has been overlooked is not peripheral to the community. They belong at its heart.

The American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr understood the Good Samaritan in precisely this way. In a sermon preached the day before his assassination, he said:

“One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey through life.”

He went on to argue that compassion means more than helping individual victims. We must also challenge the conditions that produce victims in the first place.

That is a challenging message for the Church. It is not enough to be kind to someone who experiences racism if we are unwilling to confront the attitudes, practices or structures that allow racism to continue. It is not enough to celebrate Black History Month if we then return to a version of British history in which Black lives and contributions are barely visible. And it is not enough to proclaim that everyone is made in the image of God if our welcome, our leadership and our everyday relationships fail to reflect that truth.

The Christian life holds faith and works together. We are not saved by accumulating good deeds, as though we could earn God’s love. God’s grace comes to us freely. But grace is never meant to leave us unchanged. The love we receive from God is meant to become love expressed in action.

This is at the heart of Jesus’ teaching. Love of God and love of neighbour cannot be separated. Prayer and worship matter profoundly, but they must shape how we treat people. The Eucharist draws us into the self-giving love of Christ, who gives himself for the life of the world. We cannot receive that gift and remain indifferent to the suffering or exclusion of others.

So perhaps this parable invites us to ask ourselves some difficult questions.

Who lies wounded beside the road in our society today? Whose suffering have we grown accustomed to overlooking? Whose experiences do we dismiss because they challenge our assumptions? Whose voices need to be heard, and whose gifts have yet to be recognised?

And then, beyond our individual responses, what must change so that the road becomes safer for everyone?

We may not be able to transform the whole world at once. But we can listen more carefully. We can learn the histories we were never taught. We can challenge racism when we encounter it. We can make our churches and communities places where people are not merely tolerated, but genuinely welcomed, valued and able to flourish. We can support changes that make justice more than a promise.

And we can do all this with hope, because the Christian story is not only about the wounds humanity inflicts. It is also about the possibility of healing, reconciliation and new life.

Perhaps the deepest challenge of the Good Samaritan is that we will not always be the helper. Sometimes we will be the wounded traveller, needing help from someone we never expected. Sometimes we will be called to recognise that we have been wrong. And sometimes we will discover that the person we thought was a stranger has something to teach us about the love of God.

In my ministry, I have visited people who are sick and dying in care homes, hospitals, their own homes and hospices: parishioners, family members and friends, sometimes in the final hours of their lives. Some have held deeply challenging views about racism, migration and people of other faiths. And I have sometimes witnessed a profound change in understanding.

When pain, loneliness or helplessness comes, the person offering care may be someone they have regarded with suspicion, spoken about with contempt, or even treated unjustly. That person may be there to comfort them, help them, clean and tend to them, and hold them with tenderness. In that moment, the story of the Good Samaritan is no longer an idea to discuss. It is happening before them. They are receiving mercy from the very person they had failed to recognise as a neighbour.

I do not want to make too neat a story of such moments, or suggest that one act of care erases the harm of prejudice. But I have seen how being held, healed and loved can open a person’s eyes. Sometimes, near the end of life, someone begins to understand the parable in a deeply personal way: the neighbour they had feared or despised is the one who has shown them mercy.

It would be good if we could make this realisation before we are in need or at the end of our lives.

The kingdom of God begins to take shape when we stop asking whether people deserve our compassion and start recognising their dignity. It grows when mercy becomes action, when action becomes justice, and when justice makes room for everyone to flourish.

At the end of the story, Jesus asks the lawyer which of the three became a neighbour to the wounded man. The answer is simple: the one who showed him mercy.

And Jesus says, “Go and do likewise.”

Not simply believe likewise. Not simply admire the Samaritan. Not simply feel compassion.

Go and do likewise.

May God give us the courage to face our history honestly, the generosity to celebrate the gifts of our neighbours, and the grace to help transform the roads along which we travel together.

And may the Holy Spirit make us a people whose faith is visible in our actions, whose worship bears fruit in justice, and whose love reflects the boundless mercy of Christ.

Amen.