Luke 10:25-37
“Charity begins at home”
“Why should we give to the *Guatemala Appeal? Are there not many rich people in that country? Isn’t it their duty to help the needy people in their own country? Why should we have to support them, doesn’t charity begin at home? There are plenty of needy people in our own country we can help.”
This, I am sure is the sort of thing that goes through some people’s minds whenever we are asked to support Christian Aid (or some other charity helping people abroad). Some people even make a point of only giving to local charities – a very parochial attitude and one which betrays a lack of vision for the world at large. Because, like it or not, we are part of a Global Village. You can get on a plane and be in Guatemala in less than 24 hours. Charity does begin at home, but it doesn’t end there.
Still we do have a duty of care for the people around us. We have to live in a way that reflects the love of God, and it’s no use giving money to overseas charities if we are not showing love and compassion to our own family members, our neighbors and daily acquaintances.
Do you remember Mrs. Jellyby in Charles Dickens Bleak House. Mrs. Jellyby devoted every hour of her waking life to helping the natives in “Borrioboola Gha” ( a fictional area of West Africa). In doing so she neglected her own husband and children. Her eldest daughter Caddy was forced to work as her mother’s secretary. Her life was one of clerical drudgery – for every campaign letter Mrs. Jellyby dictated had to be written out with pen and ink by Caddy. Eventually Caddy came to hate the very word “Africa”. Her mother’s idealistic vision became bane of Caddy’s life.
No, we must not be like Mrs. Jellyby. We should care for our own family first.
What is it Paul writes to Timothy?
“If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” (1 Timothy 5:8 )
“Worse than an unbeliever” – those are strong words!
Charity extends to the ends of the earth
But that doesn’t mean we should have no concern for needy people outside our immediate circle. As I said just now: we live in a Global Village. And as Christians we are to love not just our own folk, not just our own nationality, not just our own race, not just people like us, not just our own religion.
And this is the point behind the parable of the Good Samaritan. An expert in the Law of Moses asked Jesus about eternal life. Jesus said, “You must love God with all your being and you must love your neighbour as you love yourself.”
“Yes, but who is my neighbour?” the man replied. And Jesus told this story of the Good Samaritan.
Let me retell it to you now in the form it is told in the Lion Storyteller Bible. This spells it our in a very simple and plain way.
[Read story “The Kind Stranger” from the Lion Storyteller Bible.
( ISBN 0 7459 3607 5 ) ]
You see, it was generally thought in those days that you should love your neighbour and hate your enemy. Your neighbour was the person who lived near you, and the members of your family, and your extended family, and other people in your village or community, and the other people who worshipped in your synagogue. And perhaps you could extend the idea to include all Jews – all who shared your religion and your race.
Your enemy was anyone who wished harm to you. It might be a personal enemy from within your own community, or it could be a member of a hostile group. To the Jew, Samaritans were enemies, and so were Romans and other Gentiles.
But especially the Samaritans! The Jews hated the Samaritans, and the Samaritans reciprocated by hating the Jews. (Samaritans were not of pure Jewish race and their religion was regarded as being mixed with paganism.)
Who was the true neighbour?
At the time of Jesus most people though you had to do good to those who did good to you and harm to those who would harm you. You loved the people were like you and hated those who were different.
But Jesus turned this all upside down. In the Parable, the man who was attacked by robbers was a Jew but his own people did nothing to help him. The Priest might have been on his way to the Temple ( we are not told in which direction he was travelling). He had important work to do for God. He could not stop to help a man lying bleeding in the road. Anyway, from where he was standing (across the road) it looked as if the man had already died. Nothing could be done for him now, except to bury him. And there was no way a priest could do that. To come near a dead body would render him ritually unclean. Then he would not be allowed to carry out his duty at the Temple until he had been purified.
And no doubt the Levite made the same kind of excuses to himself. (Levites were Temple servants who assisted the Priests.) Anyway, it was a dangerous place to hang around in – what with all those robbers around. Far better to move on to some safer area.
The whole thrust of this parable it that the very people who should have been neighbours to the Jew did nothing for him. They abandoned him to his fate. They were supposed to be religious men, and you would think they would have compassion, but they didn’t. If they didn’t love their neighbour, how could it be said that they loved God, however punctilious they were about the Temple ritual?
But the Samaritan saw the man and had compassion on him. He looked at that Jew and saw, not an enemy, a man to be despised and hated, but a brother in need. So at great risk to himself, and taking great pains, and spending a fair sum of money, he took care of the wounded traveller. He was the one who acted like a neighbour to the man who had been mugged and left for dead.
“ You go and do likewise,” Jesus said.
The principle of Christian giving and care
And that’s why we support the Guatemala Appeal and many other charities helping needy people throughout the world.
You may well say that the rich people in Guatemala should help the poor. Of course they should. And the Priest and the Levite also should have helped that poor man lying in the road. But they didn’t and it fell to the Samaritan to help him.
And we have to be like that Samaritan. If some of the rich people in Guatemala won’t help the poor in that country, then we can help them. (As for those rich people, it’s a matter between them and God. We can be sure they will have to account for their actions one day before God’s awesome throne.)
“Charity begins at home” – of course it does, but it doesn’t end there. It extends through the whole earth. The Samaritan didn’t say to himself, “This man is a Jew, I can’t help him. I must only help Samaritans”. No, he had compassion on the man. He saw him as a human being.
And this sets for us the standard and principle of Christian giving. We don’t only help our own people. Our giving is not just to local charities, not just to our own nation, not just to our own race, not just to our own faith.
After all, I doubt if many of the people we shall be helping in Guatemala are Presbyterians. (Most are probably Roman Catholics.) In other years we have supported counties where the people were Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists. The Christian should be a neighbour to everyone – not just to co-religionists.
When it came down to it, the expert in the Jewish Law was asking the wrong question of Jesus. Not “Who is my neighbour” but rather “To whom can I be a neighbour?”
[* Every five years the Presbyterian Church of Wales has a special appeal to support a project in a different part of the world. These are projects run by Christian Aid's partners worldwide. For information on Christian Aid see: http://www.christianaid.org.uk
This year the Appeal is for projects in Guatemala.]
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