A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers ...

Thus begins perhaps the most famous of the parables of Jesus in Luke's Gospel. But its very familiarity may have dulled its message, allowing us to read it as just another good story, one we've known from childhood, whose central character has become an everyday metaphor.

Margaret Ghosn confronts our familiarity. She awakens fresh insights to the depth and challenge of the parable, a story at the heart of the gospel, a summary of what it means to be a disciple, a teaching about issues in society that continue to threaten us,

a rejection of a comfortable Christianity that often fails to notice the needs of people at the edges of society.

In a careful, informed exploration of the parable, she combines biblical and contemporary scholarship to remind us of the basic teachings of Jesus - about compassion, acceptance, inclusion and the overturning of conventional values - that were to be the

very marks of his followers in the communities called church.

Samaritan Journey is Margaret Ghosn's second book with Coventry Press