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One for the Road - Revisited

We're celebrating "Home Mission" Sunday a week late in Belfast South Methodist, but as part of it we are exploring what loving our neighbour means for us seeking to love our neighbourhood on the Lisburn Road... As part of that we are trying to hear what Jesus said in a story based on another road 2000 years ago.
I originally wrote the following dialogue, which we will be using this morning, for the "Connexions on a Journey Event" at the 2004 Methodist Church in Ireland Conference in Dublin, as a partner piece to the "Companions on a Journey" poem I have recently reposted. I went back to find this dialogue and discovered that it got a whole 2 hits the first time I posted it... It's probably due a reblog...


Voice 1: A lesson on the road…
Voice 2: A dangerous road…
Voice 1: A difficult lesson…
Voice 2: One which we haven’t learned 2000 years later…
Voice 1: What must we do to inherit eternal life…
Voice 2: That’s easy “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind;” and, “Love your neighbour as yourself.”
Voice 1: Correct! Eternal life to the smart alec on my right!
Voice 2: But who is my neighbour?
Voice 1: That’s typical of the breakdown in a sense of community in the world today… Imagine not knowing your own neighbour…
Voice 2: No seriously… Who do I have to love?
Voice 1: Who do you have to love? That’s different… Jesus told a story about that… About a man who was walking a dangerous road…
Voice 2: From Jerusalem to Jericho?
Voice 1: You’ve got it…
Voice 2: And he was mugged…
Voice 1: And robbed…
Voice 2: And left for dead…
Voice 1: They didn’t even leave him his mobile phone so he could phone for help…
Voice 2: Did they have mobile phones in those days?
Voice 1: Never mind… Anyway, along came a priest…
Voice 2: And did he help?
Voice 1: No… He walked by on the other side…
Voice 2: Never did trust those priests…
Voice 1: Then along came an elder…
Voice 2: And did he help?
Voice 1: No… He walked by on the other side…
Voice 2: Well, he was probably in a hurry… and it was a dangerous road to stop on…
Voice 1: And along came a Samaritan…
Voice 2: Ah wasn’t that lucky…
Voice 1: What?
Voice 2: Having a good Samaritan come by just in the nick of time…
Voice 1: I didn’t say anything about a good Samaritan…
Voice 2: Didn’t you?
Voice 1: You might as well say “a good drug addict” or “a good terrorist” or “a good paedophile” or “a good bogus asylum seeker…”
Voice 2: But none of them would be as catchy…
Voice 1: No-one who was listening to Jesus would have thought you could have a good Samaritan…
Voice 2: The only good Samaritan is a dead Samaritan…
Voice 1: Again, you’ve got it! But Jesus didn’t. The hero of his story was a Samaritan. It was the Samaritan who helped the man by the road.
Voice 2: So that is the answer to my question?
Voice 1: What question?
Voice 2: Who is my neighbour? Who do I have to love?
Voice 1: Yes…
Voice 2: Samaritan’s!? But I don’t know any Samaritans! There are none who live round our way…
Voice 1: No… Do what the Samaritan did… He loved the person he met on his journey… Not with a love which cost a sympathetic nod, a tearful eye and a hastily offered prayer… But a costly love… A dangerous love… A healing love…
Voice 2: I see…
Voice 1: I mean… If a Samaritan could understand that, then anybody could…


(© David Campton 2004)
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