If you are old enough to remember, I wonder where you were when it was Live Aid?
Forty years ago today, this astonishing event, held simultaneously in both London and Philadelphia, featured the greatest and most well-known rock musicians of the time – many still at the height of their fame even now. An estimated 1.9 billion people (40% of the world’s population at that time) watched it on TV (no internet or catch up services then, of course).
Organised by musicians Bob Geldorf and Midge Ure, the event was a follow on to the Band Aid single, Do they know it’s Christmas released in the previous December. In itself that was stimulated by the BBC’s Michael Buerk’s reports of widespread famine in Ethiopia. A famine which the world had ‘passed by on the other side’.
As for me, I watched pretty much all of it in my small flat in Clifton in Bristol. Safe, secure and well-fed. A week later, I was at the wedding of my Dad marrying my new stepmum, May. Both widows they had found love and I was the Best Man. And yet, not least because I had spent the previous night being reacquainted with a pizza from the evening before, amidst the joy of celebration, it felt distinctly uncomfortable that we were all sitting down to a sumptuous feast a week after the lives of the starving had been present in our homes.
The Gospel reading set for today is, by timely and pertinent coincidence, the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus uses this parable to explore what it means to love our neighbour (and ‘as ourself’ – see the previous post and my new book for more on that).
It’s probably one of the most familiar of his stories. The phrase ‘passed by on the other side’ has entered commonplace usage. It paints a picture of those who should know better not doing what is best and Jesus follows this teaching through in stark contrast with an unexpected intervention, an unlikely hero if you wish.
As always in his parables, Jesus brings out insights into the human condition and raises challenges for us to respond to. We all walk by on the other side at times. Most of us have far more good intentions than we do good deeds. We are too busy or we don’t want to get involved. Sometimes, like in Ethiopia, we are confronted by what we might call ‘inconvenient truths’.
Looking around at others, our friends, our neighbours, those who we know and socialise with – there are people in need of a Good Samaritan. People who need someone to cross over to them from the other side. And it is good when we do so.
My new book, Loving Yourself is available to order at my online shop.
Thank you for reading this post – please share it with others, subscribe and contribute your thoughts at the WorkRestPray Facebook Group or follow on X (Twitter), Threads, Bluesky and Instagram.
You can listen to the podcast version at:
And there’s a talk about the Parable of the Good Samaritan given at St John Baptist Church, Marldon in Devon here:
Details of all my books can be found at richardfrostauthor.com.