The
parable of the Good Samaritan is so well known
that
the name, “Good Samaritan,” has become proverbial.
We
name churches after the Good Samaritan.
We
call those who help a stranger in need Good Samaritans,
especially
those who have nothing to gain personally
for
the time and inconvenience caused them by their actions.
But notice that we
have had to come up with Good Samaritan laws
offering
legal protection to people who give reasonable assistance
to
those who are injured, ill, in peril, or otherwise incapacitated.
In some cases, Good Samaritan laws encourage
people to offer assistance, indicating
that there is a duty to offer
aid.
I lived in Minnesota for nine winters,
and
in the rural areas during those cold snaps
if
you came across a car by the side of the road
you
stopped to see if everything was all right.
It might mean the difference between life and
death for someone.
Yeah,
everybody knows what a Good Samaritan is.
But
in that very familiarity
we
are in danger of missing significantly powerful things
that
Jesus is saying in the context for this parable.
There
is much more than meets the eye.
I
want to call your attention to some of that
and
see if that turns on a light bulb for you,
even
at the risk of making things uncomfortable.
First
of all, the occasion for the parable is a scribe, a Torah lawyer, a Pharisee
confronting
Jesus to test him about his knowledge of righteousness and law.
He asks his question of Jesus in such a way
to
see if Jesus thinks the same way he does:
“What
must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What
must I do for ME to get for myself eternal
life?”
And,
of course, Jesus turns his question back on him:
“How
do you read the law?”
The
Torah lawyer answers with the comprehensive law
of
love for God with one’s whole being and love of neighbor as self.
Jesus
says, “Right. Do this and live.”
Now
this man has the opportunity to display his scholarly expertise,
his
rabbinic discernment about the multiple guidelines
for
love of neighbor in multiple circumstances,
all
the ways of fencing in the commandment
to
make it workable and achievable.
So
he asks the question, “Who is my neighbor?”
Next
comes the parable, and when Jesus told a parable to people,
especially
as they are related in the Gospel of Luke,
the
story is not going to go in the expected direction;
you
can depend on something odd in the story that doesn’t quite fit.
What
is that element here in this story?
It
is the Samaritan.
What
is a Samaritan doing here, a Samaritan who comes from north of Judea,
whose
home is in a sort of buffer zone between Judea and Galilee?
What
is a Samaritan doing here on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho,
a
road no where near Samaria?
Now
this road, I’ve got to tell you, is not a safe road.
I know. I’ve been on it more than once, that road that’s been there
for millennia.
The
road down from Jerusalem to Jericho is about 30 miles long.
In
that 30 miles the elevation goes from 2,500 feet above sea level
to
over 1,200 feet below sea level – a change of almost 4,000 feet.
The
road hugs the sides of cliffs along steep wadis,
and
often passing under rocky overhangs.
It
offers so many hiding places and points for easy ambushes
that
in the last decade the Israelis have actually
plowed
up and barricaded that ancient road
so
that no one can get to Jericho that way anymore,
or
get from West Bank Jericho up to Jerusalem either.
Then,
at the time of Jesus, as now,
it
was not a safe road for anyone travelling alone.
So
we have an unfortunate soul who gets ambushed, robbed,
stripped
of his belongings, including his clothes,
and
is beaten and left there lying by the road.
Two
individuals come by, a priest and a Levite, clergy.
One
might expect compassion.
But
they would not, by law, touch a dead body, touch blood,
look
upon nakedness,
or
– here one might be cynical – would not delay their journey
especially
on such a dangerous road
where
this might be a set up for getting ambushed themselves
(one
could recognize this trick as old as the hills)
let
alone complicating their journey
for
the sake of a man who,
if
not dead already, would probably die soon enough.
Now,
the non-sequiter: the Samaritan,
totally
out of place on the road between
Jerusalem,
where the Temple is, the heart of the Jewish religion,
and
Jericho, in an area of religious schools, desert holy men and prophets,
a
Samaritan,
of
a people whose Jewish religious beliefs were considered
greatly
lacking, even heretical, by the good Jews of Jerusalem and Jericho.
Here
he is with oil and wine and money, himself risking attack on this road,
and
that he should take action to help the robbers’ victim
is
as unexpected under the circumstances
as
his being on this road in the first place.
But
what bridges this gap is compassion.
All
other issues of identity and purpose are set aside.
There
is no self concern, no closed heart.
Here
is a pure demonstration of the way of life, eternal life or simply life:
“I
love you as myself. You are
myself, and I will care for you.”
How
many barriers were crossed, were broken down here?
Barriers
of distinctiveness of class and right belief,
of
ethnicity and historical antagonisms,
and
of legalistic restrictions
about
how Torah was read and interpreted and conscribed.
Notice:
The priest and the Levite cannot act with compassion
from
within their religious identity.
So
there is no neighborly link between them and the man naked by the road.
Who
is neighbor?
Not the one who fits the
ethnic and religious lineage of the priest and Levite.
No,
it is the body of a human being – in suffering –
held
within the mutual awareness of shared humanity,
this
image of God, vulnerable in distress and need.
That is the actual
and only focus of authentic compassion.
This
wakeful compassion is the channel for effective action
in
giving service to another in a truly life supportive way.
Jesus
ends the parable with this question:
“Which
of these three, do you think,
was
a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?"
The
lawyer is compelled by Jesus to confess – the Samaritan,
in
contradiction to his own legalistic, ethnic and religious mindset.
“Go
and do likewise.”
Jesus
calls this man to leave behind his own carefully worked out system
of
keeping the Torah law
for
this radical and counter-cultural way of service
through
mercy and compassion and self-forgetfulness.
Jesus
is actually calling him into discipleship.
“Go
and do likewise.”
This
is much more than simply doing good deeds
where
motivation comes from within the limitations
of
our individual moral judgments.
Action
in no way impeded by any thoughts about worthiness,
how
deserving the one in need is.
Who
is neighbor?
Who
is NOT neighbor? Can anyone
possibly not be neighbor?
If
we are to take seriously the call of Jesus into discipleship,
then
we have to exam how that will take us beyond our self-interest
and
even our morality.
Compassion knows no
boundaries of worthy or unworthy, clean or unclean, friend
or enemy, family or stranger.
Jesus
would take us into circumstances
where
there can be only self-forgetfulness and no self-interest.
Can
we do this on our own? No.
That
is why Paul, as he writes to the disciples in Colossae,
prays
in today’s epistle reading:
For this
reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and
asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual
wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully
pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the
knowledge of God. May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from
his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience,
while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the
inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of
darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we
have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
