A Road Runs Through It, by Jan Richardson. Copyright Jan Richardson Studio, used by permission.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., knew his bible, and he got it right when he preached on the parable of the Good Samaritan. (He was assassinated one day after he preached on it: all of us seem to be forever traveling the dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho.)
You can read Dr. King’s words on the cover of our bulletin, but here’s the thumbnail: the priest and the Levite choose not to help the man in distress for perhaps one or two specific reasons. They may have other priorities (even virtuous priorities!), or they may simply be afraid. But the Samaritan chooses to help because he asks a better question of himself than the other two. In Dr. King’s imagination, the priest and the Levite (incidentally, in our church context, “priest and Levite” would roughly compare to me and one of our lay Eucharistic ministers) –they wonder what would happen to them if they stopped to help, but the Samaritan wonders instead what would happen to the guy in the ditch if he didn’t lend a hand.
The best question is not, “If I stop to help, what will happen to me?” The best question is, “If I don’t stop to help, what will happen to them?”
But I have a third question that everyone in the story could ask themselves: If I don’t stop to help, what will happen to me? Now, stopping to help is clearly risky: if I’m the priest or the Levite, I will avoid personal injury if I pass by on the other side. But what I might not be thinking about is the bad things that will happen to me if I just keep walking.
I would walk forward into my days a little less useful, a little less courageous, a little less righteous. It damages your soul, when you encounter someone in extreme need, not to put yourself at risk and reach out to help. You will proceed diminished. This is basic! We are to love God and love our neighbor, two commandments that wrap around each other like a helix: we can’t do one without doing the other. We can’t praise God without assisting our neighbor in need. And we will find it harder to assist our neighbor if we aren’t praising God.
The “lawyer” who tests Jesus knows all this, and it’s important that we know that when he questions Jesus, his intentions are hostile. He calls Jesus “Teacher,” which is a demotion in Luke’s Gospel, where Jesus is more appropriately called “Lord.” In his questioning he hopes to expose Jesus as a false prophet, to trip him up, to damage his honor in the presence of the others. Note his first question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”. Jewish New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine flags the problem with this question. She writes, “The question presumes eternal life is a commodity to be inherited or purchased on the basis of a particular action rather than a gift freely given.” This means the lawyer is suggesting that there’s one thing – or a list of things – we can do to earn the blessings of paradise, when the truth is, there’s nothing we can do to earn anything in God’s sight, and all the blessings we receive – now and in the life to come – are given to us by God.
It’s a small, mean little question. Jesus of course parries it skillfully, rather than naming some task or tasks the way a fraudulent teacher would do. And then Jesus goes on to not answer the lawyer’s second cynical question, “And who is my neighbor?” Instead of answering that, Jesus sketches a parable that teaches a lesson and then turns the tables on everyone, confronting them with a surprising twist (parables reliably do this!).
First, the parable’s lesson: Loving God and neighbor is a way of life, not something we do to earn anything, and so when the priest and Levite pass by on the other side, they are choosing an inferior, deathly way of life. They are forming themselves into less than what God has created them to be. The Samaritan, in sharp contrast, does not hesitate, but immediately takes action to assist the victim: he is forming himself, day by day, year by year, into a person who truly loves God and neighbor. He is the exemplar, and the questioning lawyer is exposed in his small-mindedness.
But don’t miss the twist: it is astonishing to the first listeners of this story that the hero is a Samaritan! Imagine your worst enemy, someone you think is beneath contempt. Think of someone you would expect to be a scoundrel in a good story. Now cast that person in the heroic role. Let’s say I’m in line at the grocery store behind someone wearing a Make America Great Again hat. When this kind of thing happens, I immediately feel judgmental, even superior. I suppress the desire to roll my eyes. But for all I know, that person is slowly, day by day, year by year, forming himself into a person who truly loves God and neighbor. And maybe I am not doing that. Maybe I am not such a good neighbor to people in need, and worse, maybe I need to learn the ropes from someone I think is beneath contempt.
This should stop us short.
I’ve already quoted Amy-Jill Levine, the Jewish New-Testament scholar. (You heard that right: it’s great to read an other-than-Christian scholar interpret Christian scripture!). Levine says more – much more – about this parable. She notes that the parable follows the rule of threes, in which you name two people that lead your listener to assume the identity of the third – if I say “Father, Son, and …” you know who’s next. But Jesus throws a major curve. Amy-Jill Levine says it’s like instead of naming “Moe, Larry, and Curley,” Jesus names “Moe, Larry, and Osama bin Laden.”
And then Amy-Jill Levine recasts the parable to help it hit closer to home. “To hear the parable today,” she writes, “we only need to update the identity of the figures. [Let’s say] I am an Israeli Jew on my way from Jerusalem to Jericho, and I am attacked by thieves, beaten, stripped, robbed, and left half dead in a ditch. Two people who should have stopped to help pass me by: the first, a Jewish medic from the Israel Defense Forces; the second, a member of the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. But the person who takes compassion on me and shows me mercy is a Palestinian Muslim whose sympathies lie with Hamas, a political party whose charter not only anticipates Israel’s destruction, but also depicts Jews as subhuman demons responsible for all the world’s problems.”
That’s a good update to the parable! But I thought it would be a good idea to update the identity of the figures in a way that brings it home even more sharply for us gathered here today at Grace Church, in person and online. So here goes:
Just then an Episcopal senior warden, a man named Luke from Suquamish, Washington, stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”
But wanting to justify himself, the warden asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down highway 305 on Bainbridge Island, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a bald gay priest from Seattle was driving his Honda sedan down that road; and when he saw him, he gave him a wide berth and kept driving to the ferry dock. So likewise a resident of Bainbridge Island and pledging member of Grace Church, when he came to the place and saw him, steered his car into the oncoming lane and passed by, going on his way.
But then a man wearing a red MAGA ball cap, driving a large truck with a huge U.S. flag in the back, drew alongside the victim; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity, pulled over, and parked his truck. (On the truck’s bumper was a sticker that says, “Keep honking. I’m reloading.”) The man went to the victim and carefully bandaged his wounds. Then he put him in his truck bed, brought him to Marshall Suites on High School Road, and took care of him. The next day he took out four hundred dollars in cash, gave it to the hotel manager, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The warden said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
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Preached on the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Year C), July 10, 2022, at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Amos 7:7-17
Psalm 82
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37
Work cited: Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: the Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi. (New York: HarperCollins, 2014), 77-115. Direct quotations are from pp. 85, 103, and 114-115.