Following some conversations with a number of different people that reflected on our last couple of weeks of worship, I’ve decided that we will just have one sharing and one story for the kids from now onwards. We’ll be thinking around just how we will present these, not sure if you’ll see much difference this week, but keep watching. This means that the lectionary that was listed in the MUC Mag is now out of date. We’ll keep the readings and theme for Sunday 1st November – All Saints Day, but the rest of our heroes will take us up until Christ the King Sunday, the end of the church year and the second last week of November.
So, onto our next Biblical Hero – The Good Samaritan and some sharing by Carol Faram.
Now this story of the Good Samaritan is one that I would be so bold as to say that you should all know, and I just love Carol’s reasons for choosing him as her hero. I’m not going to say too much about why Carol choses him, but if you know Carol and have seen her heart for others you will know the impact this character has had on her life.
Characters such as the Good Samaritan cause us to stop and look at the way we live. They cause us to wonder just what we would do in a similar circumstance and which character we would be in the story. I remember a few years ago being asked the question that if I was to tell the story of the Good Samaritan today, who would I choose to play that part. Would he (or she) be a refugee? A drug addict? A homeless person? For today, who is the person that we would be most surprised to find helping us, who is most unlikely?
In Jesus day, the Samaritans were hated by the Jews. They were an ethnoreligious group (an ethnic group whose members were also unified by a common religious background) that originated from the Israelites. They are closely related to Judaism but believed that Mount Gerizim was the original Holy Place of Israel and therefore the only place to worship God, not Jerusalem. It was said that a member of the Jewish faith would walk out of their way so that they didn’t have to see or cross paths with a Samaritan. It is one of the reasons that Jesus’ conversation with the woman at the well was so scandalous.
So, who would that person be for us today? That’s a question worth thinking about. Jay Robinson
Image by Dinah Roe Kendal
Jay Robinson