Sermon for Trinity 4: The Scandal of Mercy preached by the Vicar, Fr Christopher Woods

We begin with a question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

A lawyer—religiously trained, theologically literate—wants to test Jesus. But Jesus turns the question back. “What is written in the Law?” How do you interpret it? He continues. And the answer comes easily: Love God with everything, and love your neighbour as yourself. Absolutely right said Jesus. Do this and you will live.

But then comes the lawyer’s second question: “And who is my neighbour?”

It is a question that sounds innocent enough, almost moral or philosophical. But in fact, it’s a question that wants to limit love. To qualify compassion. To say: who do I have to care about… and who can I safely ignore?

He is not the only one to ask such a question. It's a question still very much alive in our world today. Governments shirk from the question, or they find an economically viable answer as opposed to a pastoral one. Who, truly, is deserving of our concern? Or, why should we worry about neighbours who are not one of us? Who is my neighbour? Those who share our values, our postcode, our faith, our skin colour? Is it those who agree with us, behave properly?

In response to the question, again posed as a test, Jesus refuses to give an answer in prose. Instead, he tells a story—a parable so rich, so scandalous, that it unsettles the categories of who is “in” and who is “out.”

A man lies wounded, stripped, and left half-dead on the roadside. Two respected figures pass by—both religious, both righteous—and yet neither stops. They keep moving. Perhaps they are afraid. Perhaps they are busy. Perhaps they tell themselves: someone else will stop. But then—then comes a Samaritan. A heretic, an outsider, someone whose very presence in the story should raise eyebrows.

And yet, he is the one who stops. Who bends down. Who binds wounds with oil and wine. Who lifts the man, brings him to safety, pays for his care, with real, embodied and selfless mercy.

Jesus does not just say “go and do likewise.” He says, in effect: this is the shape of eternal life. This is the logic of the kingdom. Not purity, but mercy. Not proximity, but compassion. Not tribal belonging, but costly love.

The Samaritan, then, is an icon of Christ—who in the words of St Paul’s letter to the Colossians, is “the image of the invisible God… through whom all things hold together.” Christ, who finds us wounded and ashamed on the roadside of our lives, does not pass by. He stops. He kneels. He carries.

Pope Francis, in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, returns again and again to this parable as the foundation of Catholic social teaching for our times. He writes:

“Jesus asks us not to decide who is close enough to be our neighbour, but rather that we ourselves become neighbours to all.” (Fratelli Tutti, §80)

This is deeply resonant with the words of Deuteronomy: “The word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart.” The law of love is not distant. It is not a matter of elite holiness. It is doable. God’s will is close—almost scandalously close. It rests in our everyday choices, in how we look at strangers, how we treat the inconvenient, how we respond to the wounded and the lost.

In the words of Bishop Rowan Williams, “the neighbour is the one who breaks into your life unasked.” That is to say, being a neighbour is not about feeling kindly in general, but about allowing yourself to be interrupted.

And it’s costly, isn’t it? To stop. To be late. To risk. To give. To love across boundaries. To see Christ where you least expect him.

This story challenges not only our personal morality but our collective conscience. Who is lying in the ditch today?

The asylum seeker. The homeless man in the shop doorway. The young woman fleeing domestic violence. The elderly neighbour forgotten behind closed doors. The young man battling addiction. The family weighed down by debt and fear.

But also: the person we struggle to like. The one who pushes our buttons. The political opponent. The awkward colleague.

They, too, are our neighbours. They, too, are Christ.

Pope Francis, in a homily in 2023, said this:

“To truly love God, we must love our neighbour; but to love our neighbour, we must also allow ourselves to be loved by God… for only then do we have the courage to kneel by the wounded.”

That’s the secret. We cannot be Good Samaritans by willpower alone. We must be filled with the mercy of God, and let it overflow. We must let Christ tend to our own wounds, before we can tend to others.

We are not the priest or the Levite in Jesus’s story. We are not even the Samaritan—not at first. We are the one in the ditch. And Christ is the one who stops for us, binds us, and gives us life.

And when we remember that—when we remember that we have been rescued—we begin to walk differently. To love differently. To pass by no longer.

To be a Christian is not to have all the right answers. It is, rather, to be drawn into the messy, radiant nearness of God. So let the question echo again in our hearts today:

“And who is my neighbour?”

May we hear Jesus answer—not with an abstract definition, but with the invitation to become neighbours. To live with eyes open, hearts broken, hands ready. To be the Church not of purity, but of mercy.