Luke 10:25-37
Last week we looked at the parable of the Prodigal Son, and today we look at the parable of the Good Samaritan—probably the two most well-known parables in the Bible. But in spite of its familiarity, scholars still disagree about some important elements of the story.
First we have the lawyer. The lawyer, of course, is not an attorney. He is not an expert on civil law; he is an expert on religious law. Contemporary scholars agree on this. What they disagree on is his motive.
The scholars who assign bad motives to the questioner point out that the lawyer asked the question to “test” Jesus. The verb translated as “test” is the same verb used when the devil “tests” Jesus in the wilderness. They say that he presses Jesus because he was anxious to make excuses for himself or to prove that he was right.1
Those on the opposite side of the argument say that the lawyer’s questioning was typical of the tradition. If you have ever seen the movie Yentl, the scenes where the students argue about Jewish teachings would give you a good indication. They say the lawyer was respectfully asking questions in order to pursue a meaningful conversation.[1] He asked because he wanted to make sure he was righteous—right with God, doing all that he could to follow God’s commands.
Contemporary scholars don’t agree on this issue of motive, and neither do the scholars in our Leisurely Lectionary Bible study group. In the end, we decided it didn’t really matter. Jesus’ response to them—and to us—is the same, regardless of our motive. So let’s move on to the story.
The parables, like any good tale, invite us to enter into the story. Typically we do this by identifying with one or more of the characters. I took this approach last week with the story of the father and his two sons. Some of us identified with the prodigal son, others with the older son, and others with the father. But this parable presents a problem. We don’t really want to be anybody in this story.
The first character we encounter is the traveler. A certain man is traveling a dangerous road. We are not told anything about the man—his race, religion, or socioeconomic background—but Jesus’ audience would have assumed he was a Jew, like them. So let’s assume the traveler is like us. After all, we have all traveled dangerous roads. We have experienced the fear of the unknown, have faced the bend in the road beyond which hidden dangers might await. So the traveler’s story becomes our own . . . until he is beaten, robbed, and left for dead, and then suddenly we don’t want to be the traveler any more. And we certainly don’t want to be the robbers. We have already experienced too much violence in our lives, or maybe we haven’t experienced any directly, and we fear the time will come. So we quickly think, “I’ll be the next person in the story.”
And along comes a priest. OK, that’ll do. A priest we can sort of identify with. A religious leader. A respected member of the community. But the priest doesn’t turn out to be so admirable. We don’t know why he crosses to the other side of the road to avoid the traveler. Many have speculated that he did not want to risk becoming ritually impure by touching a corpse—or one he assumes is a corpse, since he doesn’t get close enough to determine if the man is actually dead. But the command to properly care for the dead would have superseded any purity concerns. Besides, the priest was on the way back from Jerusalem, not to Jerusalem, where his priestly duties would have required purity. So we don’t know why he went to the other side of the road. We just know he refused to offer aid and we don’t want to identify with someone so heartless.
Next we encounter a Levite—an assistant to the priest, a lay leader in the church; the one responsible for preparing the sacrificial animals and opening the door of the temple. That sounds like a good possibility for us. Until we discover that this particular Levite apparently is more concerned with sacrificing animals than saving people, more adept at closing the doors of the temple than opening them.
OK, so we’ve tried to identify with the traveler, the priest, and the Levite. We don’t want to be any of them. Maybe the next person will be a character we can identify with. And it is. “The Good Samaritan.” Of course, he is never called “good” in the text. But we read the title some helpful editor put in there, and we think, “Sure, I’ll be the Good Samaritan.” Only with our cultural distance from the text, we forget what it meant to be a Samaritan. Because the Samaritans and the Jews had different purity laws, a Jew would become ritually impure by touching a Samaritan. So naturally Jews avoided Samaritans in order to maintain their purity. But what we avoid, we begin to fear. And what we fear, too often, we ultimately hate. So if we were part of Jesus’ original audience, when we heard the word “Samaritan” we would not think of “good” and we would not even consider identifying with him.
So here we are looking for ourselves in the story, and we don’t like any of the options. The parable may be an invitation, but I’ll RSVP my regrets!
The problem is, we can identify, can’t we? I know I can. Too much.
I have been a thief. I have robbed people of their joy by telling them that their dreams were unrealistic. I have robbed people of their self-respect, their right to dignity in the midst of poverty or illness. I have robbed people of the joy of giving, assuming that because I had more money, I had more to give. I have hoarded my belongings and refused to share my abundance. I have been a thief. Haven’t you?
I have been a wounded traveler. I have encountered violence against my body and my spirit. I have lain on the side of the road while religious leaders assumed I was dead and rushed away from me as fast as their legs would move and their robes would allow. I have been a wounded traveler. Haven’t you?
I have been the priest and the Levite. I have neglected the wounded that litter the roads outside our churches and synagogues. I have neglected not only the stranger, but those closest to me because I had more pressing responsibilities. I have even been tempted at times to close the door to the temple. I have been the priest and the Levite. Haven’t you?
I have been the Samaritan, in both positive and negative ways. I have been the one considered unclean. More importantly, just like you, I sometimes have been able to see beyond the boundaries that divide us, have seen the wounded as individuals instead of representatives of a group in need of charity. On those occasions, I have found the courage to stay on the hurting side of the road. I have been the Samaritan. Haven’t you?
And I have been the innkeeper. I have been part of a community where wounded people are brought for healing and rest, where souls are nourished and broken bodies restored, where no one asks who you are or what you’ve done in order to decide if you deserve compassion. I have been the innkeeper. Haven’t you?
I have been all of these—the good and the bad, the strong and the weak, the caring and the uncaring, all rolled into one confused and convoluted person. I have been them all. Haven’t you? And here we find the good news—from the Christ who invites us to realize that the boundaries between us are null and void.
Through this story we have learned that there is no ethnicity attached to need. The wounded can be anyone, including ourselves. The road can be dangerous—tires can go flat on rainy nights and relationships can end seemingly without warning and everything we believed about God can be uprooted in a single blow. It is a dangerous road, and we better not travel it alone.
We have also learned that there is no solution in avoidance. If we establish walls between us and them and flee from the pain, we can mistake the living for the dead and fail to see the deadness in us all. We cannot slam shut the temple door without getting a few splinters in the process.
We have learned how it feels to be left on the side of the road, beaten by the world and ignored by the church. We have all experienced times when, like the traveler in the parable, we had no voice. We have been stripped of all that would give us status, all that would define who is in and who is out.
But we have also learned mercy. We have been moved with compassion for the wounded, the broken, the neglected. We have thanked God for the vision to see beyond our boundaries the courage to break through the walls that divide us, and the strength to carry the wounded to safety. We have learned how to accept care from the community, and we have learned how to be the caring community for others.
The boundaries between the wounded and the healers have been dissolved—for we recognize that we are both. And the fences between the robbers and the robbed have been opened—for we admit that we are both. And the walls between us and them have been demolished—for we realize that we are all neighbors; we are all loved.
Jesus told this parable in response to the question “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus asked, “What does the Law say? What do you see there?” Jewish scholars tell us that in Hebrew, the words ‘neighbor’ and ‘enemy’ share the same consonants. The two words differ only in the vowels. And printed Hebrew has no vowels; so the two words would appear exactly the same. “When Jesus asks the lawyer, ‘What do you read there?’ he is asking, ‘Are you able to see, in Torah’s words, the command to love both neighbor (narrowly defined) and those you would see as enemies?’”[2]
This is huge. But remember: This parable is not simply a story about loving your neighbors or your enemies. If it were, the Samaritan would have been the wounded traveler. “You know the rules: help those in need and get bonus points because it’s a Samaritan.”[3] But the Samaritan was the one who acted as a neighbor. The outsider was the one who saw beyond the barriers, who broke through the wall of religion and culture to offer healing.
We all are called to break through: to break through the obstacles that would divide us, to break through the barriers that stand in the way of love, to break through the prideful walls that keep us from allowing others to help us … because “the only way we can see ourselves as the Samaritan—the one called to give help and healing to those in need—is first to recognize how often we have been the traveler left for dead.”[4]
So it’s time to get out those little slips of colored paper you received on your way in. You are invited to write on your paper your answer to one of the following questions: When have you broken through a barrier to meet someone else, OR when has someone else broken through a barrier to meet you? There are pens on both ends of every pew. Share them with others in your row. So again: When have you broken through a barrier to meet someone else, OR when has someone else broken through a barrier to meet you? (I’ll give you a minute.)
We are called to break through. And here’s a hint: We are only going to break through if we stay on the hurting side of the road.
We all are on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. A dangerous road, to be sure. A road marked by division and hatred and violence. But we know where we are coming from. We are coming from Jerusalem, the holy city, where God has strengthened us for this journey. And we know where we are going. We are going to Jericho . . . the place of that famous battle, the place where the walls came tumbling down. Amen.
[1] This view of the text comes from Provoking the Gospel.
[2] “Parable of the Good Samaritan.” The Jewish Annotated New Testament, p. 123.
[3] Lose, David. “The Good Samaritan: Seeing and Doing.” www.workingpreacher.org.
[4] Lose, David. “Who Is My Neighbor?” www.workingpreacher.org