In the name of God- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
These are the hardest sermons to preach. All you have to do is utter the phrase “Good Samaritan” and even those with a passing knowledge of the Bible will know what you’re talking about. We have “Good Samaritan” laws that try to promote helping those in need. Even the series finale of the hit show Seinfeld was based on these sorts of laws. So how is a preacher to preach on such a well known text? As Jesus told it, this story was subversive and shocking, but in our culture is has become genteel. Most people hear this passage and assume that the moral of the story is “be nice to strangers,” which it is not. Some preachers will approach the text by examining the question “who is my neighbor,” urging their congregation to respond with compassion to everyone they meet. And that too, is missing the point.
This is an extremely rich parable, and it refuses to be summed up in one pithy little statement. In fact, referring to this passage as the “Good Samaritan” is misleading. We’d do better to call it “The Parable of the Man in the Ditch,” or “The Unlikely Neighbor.” But even those statements don’t capture the full grandeur and all of the subtle lessons that Jesus has put into his masterful telling of the parable. So let’s walk through this passage and see what exactly we are being told to “go and do.”
As the text begins, a lawyer arises to test Jesus and set a trap for him. Lawyer really is a bad translation, this man was a religious scholar, someone who studied the laws of Judaism. So don’t read this passage as an indictment against attorneys, this man had a religious motivation in his approaching Jesus. He came to test Jesus, to try to undermine his teachings. Maybe he wanted to see, if perhaps, the rumors might be true, if there was a chance that he might be really be a prophet, or even more, the messiah.
But his motives were not so pure, as the way the dialogue unfolds, we see that he is just waiting to pounce on Jesus if he fumbles the question. We see this most clearly in the question- “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” The question itself is a trap because it doesn’t make any sense. The easy answer is that there is nothing you can do to inherit anything. By definition, inheritances are free gifts, you cannot do anything to earn them. He has asked Jesus an impossible question.
When do we do the same? When is it that doubt causes us to test God? How many times do we pray “God, if you really want me to do this, give me a sign.” And in doing so, we’re just waiting for a chance to get out of if it. When do we ask those impossible questions? When do we make those deals with God that are setting us up for failure, you know the sort- “O God, if you’ll just do this one thing for me, then I’ll do this grand and wonderful thing for you.” But as we’ll see, our traps of insecurity and fear don’t pull God into them.
So Jesus, rather brilliantly, answers his question with a question, not falling for the trap. He asks “what is written in the law? What do you read there?” Any Jewish legal scholar knew the answer- love God and love neighbor. As the passage from Deuteronomy this morning proclaims so beautifully- “the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” This isn’t rocket science. The word of God isn’t something hidden from us, it isn’t something that we struggle to understand. It isn’t something that we have to go and search for. It is as near as our mouth and heart. This is one of the most important blessings with which God blesses Israel: the nearness of God and God’s word. So this religious scholar had no choice but to answer the question in this way- love God and love neighbor. And when he responds in that way,
Jesus tells him that he has answered correctly. But the man can’t leave well-enough alone.
The text says that he wants to justify himself. The word “justify” might also be translated as “vindicate” or “make oneself right.” The spring on the trap didn’t work, so he’s grasping at straws now. Parables are meant to draw us in, to invite us to participate in the story. So now is a good time to consider how we fit into the story thus far. If someone asked you- “what is written in the Bible?”, how might you respond? Have you read enough of the Bible to answer that question? Have you meditated on God’s word to have a response? How near is it to your heart and your mouth?
And when is it that we
seek to justify ourselves, when we would do better to just keep quiet? When the
argument is over, and our traps have failed, why do we keep grasping for
straws? This parable is an invitation, both to consider how near to us God is,
and to discern the motives for our actions- are they in keeping with God’s
word, or are we just trying to justify ourselves?
So Jesus then begins to
tell the parable. A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into
the hands of robbers. This was not an unheard of happening. Thieves could easy
hide and jump on travelers who were not well-protected. They stripped him, beat
him, taking all of his possessions, and left him there to die. And I wonder
where we still have Jericho roads in our world. What are those pathways that
still exist that are full of danger? What are the institutions that still exist
that beat people up?
The past several weeks
have been historic ones for the Supreme Court. The case that got most of the
attention was the ruling that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional.
And while that is something to celebrate, let us remember that it is just one
step in the step towards liberty and justice for all. But there was another
case decided that I’m afraid will set up many new Jericho roads. The
Court recently struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, opening
the door for discrimination and racism to find a new home in the voting booth.
The Court said that the nation has changed in the past 50 years and such a law
is no longer needed. I wonder if the security personal on that Jericho road
were removed because there hadn’t been any muggings recently. As Justice
Ginsburg wrote in dissent- “[This] is like throwing away your umbrella in a
rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
There are many Jericho
roads, where those who are forced to travel them are just waiting to be mugged
and beaten. You can find these roads in North Carolina if you’re unemployed, as
our legislature has decided to strip benefits. You can find these roads in the housing
projects, where the road from poverty to prosperity is full of robbers just
waiting to knock people down. You can find these roads in our jails, which are
disproportionally full of minorities. You can find these roads in our education
system in North Carolina, where we rank 46th in the nation in
dollars spent per student and are continuing to cut funding to public schools.
You can find these roads in Raleigh, where Medicaid expansions are being
rejected in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy. You can find these roads among
migrant workers and our immigration system. You can find these Jericho roads
everywhere.
And along comes a priest,
coming from Jerusalem and returning home to Jericho. Priests had shifts at the
Temple in Jerusalem, and this priest had likely just finished his few weeks of
service in the Temple. Some people try to give this priest a free-pass and the
quote laws from the Torah about ritual purity, suggesting that the priest would
have been making himself unclean by touching the beaten man, thereby making
himself unfit for his duty to God. And that would be a great argument, if it
worked.
But it doesn’t. For one,
the text clearly says that the priest was heading down from Jerusalem, which is
a city on a hill. If he was going down, he was finishing up his priestly duties
and would have had plenty of time to go through the purification rituals before
his name came up on the Temple rota again. Furthermore, those rules only
applied to touching a dead body, and the priest doesn’t even walk over to see
if the man was still alive. He doesn’t attempt to get help, instead, he can’t
be bothered with this. So he crosses over to the other side and goes on his
merry way.
Perhaps the priest
thought that if anyone asked about it, he could use those purity laws as his
excuse. Or perhaps he could say that he was so focused on where he was going
that he didn’t even notice the man. What are our excuses? What excuses do we
use to keep the dirty, poor, and needy at an arm’s length? When do we look the
other way and pretend that we didn’t see injustice?
This priest’s error was
in confusing holiness with Godliness. He thought that he had excuses for
avoiding this inconvenience- his duty was to remain holy so that he could do
his ministry. But he forgets that before anything else, he is called to
Godliness, to loving God with all of his heart, soul, and mind, and to love his
neighbor as himself. Let us not make the same mistake.
Next down the road comes
the Levite. Levites were a group of people that assisted the priests in the
Temple. And this Levite was also coming down from Jerusalem, signaling the end
of his shift in the Temple. And what I’d like to point out is that he did the
same thing that the priest did. Now priests led the worship and rituals in the
Temple, and the Levites assisted. And what is so abhorrent about this part of
the parable is that the Levite did the same thing as the priest. He knew that the
priest, who lived just down the street from him in Jericho, had left the Temple
a few minutes before he did. So he knew that the priest must have passed by
this wretched man and not done anything. And he did the same thing- nothing.
You’re probably familiar
with the psychological phenomenon known as the “bystander effect,” that says
that the more people who see someone in need, the less likely anyone is to act.
Momentum can be hard to break. It is difficult to go against the grain, to be
the voice of dissent when injustice is happening. This incident is an extra
damnation against the priest, who set the example for this Levite. And we would
do well to consider what examples we are setting. What does the way we live
teach our children and grandchildren? How do our actions, as people who claim
to be Christians, reflect on Christ? What example do we set for those around
us?
But the Levite bears some
of the blame as well. And his inaction begs us to consider those moments when
we just go with the crowd. The Levite didn’t have the courage to be different.
He couldn’t find the strength to do what he knew was right, but would have made
him vulnerable. After all, the wounded man could have been a trap. Perhaps the
robbers were waiting for someone to approach the man and then attack them as
well. But the riskiness of doing the right thing does not make it any less the
right thing to do. Let the example of the Levite be a wake-up call to act when
action is called for and to speak when a voice needs to be raised.
I really wish that we
could have read this gospel passage in its original Greek this morning, because
the words jump off the page in the next section. These first two encounters use
the exact same sentence structure. But as Luke tells Jesus’ parable, this next
section is jarringly different.
This next sentence begins
with the word “Samaritan.” And I wish there was a way for me to make your gut
churn when you heard that word, as it would have for Jesus’ audience. The
conflict between the Jews and the Samaritans was intense, to say the least. It
was grounded in a theological dispute, but became an ethnic hatred. The feeling
this injured man, a Jew, would have felt when a Samaritan approached him would
be the same as if in 1950s Alabama a black man approached a white woman, or if
a Palestinian approached a Jew today in the Middle East, or if a Sunni came
upon a Shia, or Nazi soldier approached a Jew in 1930s Germany. To say there
was tension is an understatement.
And this part of the
parable is often overlooked. The beaten man had to accept help from the
Samaritan. Even in his half-dead state, he could have let ethic hatred drive
him to tell the Samaritan to leave him alone. And it begs the question, would
we accept help from anyone? Is there a group of people for which you’d rather
die than admit that they saved you? Being helped by someone, especially someone
you don’t like can be a challenge. Booker T. Washington was once asked how much
he charged for a speaking fee, and he said “$50, unless you host me, then
$150.” Putting ourselves at the mercy of others takes a lot of trust and
vulnerability. Receiving hospitality, especially for those of us who like to
appear as if we’ve got it all put together, can be just as hard as giving
hospitality. So let this injured man be a lesson to us, that we accept the
grace of God, regardless of what vehicle it uses to get to us.
Do you wonder why the
Samaritan stopped to help the man? And not just stop, but he tended to the man,
he poured expensive oil and wine on him. He put him on his own animal and
guided him to an inn, and paid for his stay. Why did the Samaritan lavish
compassion and mercy on him?
Again, the differences in
the Greek text make it so clear. In the first two encounters, the text says “a
certain priest/Levite was going down that road, and seeing him, passed him by
on the other side.” But when the Samaritan enters the parable, the text reads
“a Samaritan was journeying and seeing him, had compassion.” What I want to
point out is the difference between going down that road, and journeying. The
priest and the Levite were going down from Jerusalem, they had a destination in
mind. They were on a mission, and they weren’t willing to be distracted. They
were so focused on what they thought they should be doing and where they
thought they should be going, that they couldn’t make any room in their life
for compassion. But the Samaritan was not “going down,” he was “journeying.”
It’s really a question of
how you go about life. Is your life a closed system, or open to new
possibilities? Do you keep your head down to avoid distractions, or do you take
in the sights? What happens when someone threatens to throw a wrench into your
plans- do you get frustrated, or do you see it as a new opportunity for grace?
As the parable concludes,
Jesus asks the question “which of these was a neighbor?” And this is a rather
ironic and intentional reversal of how the parable started. The religious
scholar came to Jesus and asked, “who is my neighbor?” And Jesus concludes by
asking “who was the neighbor?”
And in that subtle shift,
Jesus is communicating the point of this parable. The neighbor goes from being
the object of the sentence, to the subject. And point of the parable isn’t to
figure out who we’re supposed to be nice to, to discern who our neighbor is.
That’s easy, everyone is our neighbor. The tough part of this parable is in
figuring how it is that we can be a neighbor to everyone that we encounter.
Jesus concludes by saying “go and do likewise,” or in other words- be a neighbor. And that is the point of this
parable.
As you can see, this
parable isn’t quite as simple as being about the “Good Samaritan” who teaches
us to be nice to everyone. Jesus tells this parable to challenge us and reverse
the way we see neighborly hospitality. We are invited to consider how it is
that we try to trap God in our uncertainly. We are urged to explore the Jericho
roads in our own time, that we might make them safer to travel. Our excuses are
nothing that should prevent us from doing the work of Godliness. Though it can
be difficult to break precedent and be that voice calling out in the
wilderness, it is our calling as Christians. We might consider how we can be
more open to receiving hospitality from others, and be willing to cross racial,
economic, and ideological boundaries to offer help to those in need. And we are
invited to enjoy the journey of life, so that we might be able to see what lies
around us instead of just going through the motions. It’s a very rich parable,
but if all you remember are three words from this sermon, remember these three-
“go and do.”
