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Good morning. When I was young and misbehaved, my mother warned me with the words ‘Your father will read you the Riot Act when he gets home.’ It only took me once to work out that this was not a new adventure story, but a euphemism for a good old telling-off.

Of course there was a real Riot Act, apparently passed this day in 1714 and the punishment was much worse than parental admonishment. Two years imprisonment with hard labour if you were caught in a crowd that wouldn’t disperse once the law was read. The Act has been repealed but I’m fascinated by how the phrase continues as an idiom of speech. 

Of course we do the same when we talk about a ‘wild-goose chase’, ‘green-eyed monsters’ or ‘forever and a day’, unaware that we are quoting Shakespeare. The Bible too has given its fair share of phrases, like escaping by ‘the skin of our teeth’, or ‘a fly in the ointment.’ But my favourite is calling someone a ‘Good Samaritan.’ It’s a story told by Jesus about a Jewish man who’s ambushed, robbed and left to die and it’s a Samaritan who comes to his aid. It’s all the more impressive when we remember that Jews and Samaritans did not get on at all back then.

Jesus tells the story to encourage our compassion, not just for those who look like us or think like us, but for anyone who requires our help. Words and phrases, together with the laws of the land may always come and go, but history seems to be persistent in offering us opportunities to help such strangers in their need.    

God of compassion
We pray for all those who feel beaten or robbed or given up for dead:
Open our eyes to see the need in them 
Soften our hearts to share the pain in them
Enlighten our minds and strengthen our hands to work with them
Until all tears and pain are wiped away
Amen