Year C, 14 July 2019
If I asked you to name a couple of parables, it is likely that the parable of the Good Samaritan would get a mention. It is a good story, well known and, at face value, easy to understand. The parable is timeless both in its message and challenge, but can also be over-simplified. I think it’s a little like an onion, with layers that we need to peel away to get to the central message.
But before we delve into the parable, I’d like to point out a couple of important things about the gospel of Luke.
Firstly, in Luke’s gospel, emphasis is often placed on those who are on the edges of the society in which the gospel was written – the outcasts, the lonely, the sick, women and children – all of these are included in God’s reign. If it was written today indigenous, refugees and members of the LGBTIQ community might be included in this list. In fact the kingdom of God is open for all people who know the love of God and respond to it.
Secondly, the writer of the gospel of Luke often portrays Jesus as a prophet. The role of prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) was that of continually calling leaders and those who maintained structures of power away from religious distortions and back to the heart of faithfulness – justice, love, mercy and compassion.
This subversive story of the Good Samaritan opens with an apparently simple question from a lawyer – “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” While the question is simple, and possibly genuine, it is also loaded. It’s not just anyone asking, but a lawyer, and he is asking to “test Jesus”. Jesus directs the lawyer to the Torah, and as lawyers were experts in the Torah, he can provide Jesus with the answer … “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 neighbour as yourself.”
Jesus basically responds with a ‘good job’ saying “do this, and you will live”. The lawyer presses the point by then asking “who is my neighbour?”
Let’s peel away the first layer … why does the lawyer ask this question? The text tells us that he wanted to “justify himself” but is that because he was embarrassed by the previous question he had asked which he answered for himself? Is it because he wanted to make the issue more complex? Or is it because he wanted to avoid the personal directness of Jesus response?
To answer this next question, Jesus tells a story. The story takes place on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, a notoriously dangerous 17 mile road which winds through narrow rocky passages and sudden turns which would make it easy for robbers to take advantage of travellers. This would have been common knowledge for the original hearers of this story, and therefore no surprise that someone would be mugged and beaten on this road.
We know very little about the victim … except that he was a man. We don’t know if he was a Jew or Gentile, wealthy or poor, a good or bad person. We just meet him naked, completely vulnerable, beaten and left for dead on the side of the road.
We know a little more about the people who passed him by, a priest, a Levite and a Samaritan.
Firstly the priest … he would have known the law and as such, understood that if he touched the ‘dead’ man he would have been made unclean which would have led to him losing his role in the temple. So even if the priest feels compassion for the man, job security keeps him from doing the right thing.
Secondly the Levite … Levite’s came from the tribe of Levi and were often assistants to priests in worship, though they were not bound by the same restrictions as priests, so the Levite could have helped the man. Maybe he saw the priest pass by and felt he should too, maybe he was worried that he might be the next victim, or maybe he doesn’t see the man as deserving of help – for whatever reason he doesn’t help either.
Thirdly we meet the Samaritan … a despised, low-life, good for nothing, scum of the earth. While Jews and Samaritans both followed practices and beliefs of Judaism, there were deep, historical rifts between these two groups. Samaritans were seen as half-breeds, they refused to participate in the restoration of Jerusalem, and were cursed daily in synagogues. Prayers were even offered hoping that Samaritans would not be partakers of eternal life. That’s pretty significant hatred.
Yet it is the Samaritan, the ultimate outsider, who goes above and beyond to help the beaten man. He cleans and binds his wounds, provides him clothing, transport and shelter. As well as paying for all this, he comes back later to make sure everything is alright.
When the story has been told, Jesus asks the lawyer “which one of these three, do you think, was a neighbour?” Notice that the lawyer can’t even bring himself to say the word ‘Samaritan’ and replies “the one who showed him mercy”. Again Jesus exhorts the lawyer to “go and do likewise”.
The prophetical call of Jesus in this story comes through the unlikely character of the Samaritan.
So then … who is my neighbour? In the parable it’s a Samaritan, the unwanted, rejected Samaritan who shows mercy.
Shall we peel back another layer?
It is one thing to know the right thing to do and entirely something else to actually do the right thing. The lawyer knew all the right answers but Jesus pushed him to a place where he couldn’t think with just his mind, but also had to use his heart.
If we truly want to love our neighbour, then we also have to be prepared to let our neighbours love us.
We would all like to see ourselves in the role of the Samaritan and hope that we might model this behaviour – it’s easy to be the hero of the story. It is quite another thing, however, to put ourselves in the role of the man in the ditch. Yet at times we are all a little like this man. We can be vulnerable and in need of help. We all have moments when we need someone to reach out to us, even when it will cost them deeply. And if we really love our neighbour it might be that the one who comes to our aid is someone we see as an outsider.
In October 1967, during the war between North and South Vietnam, an American fighter pilot was shot down when on a bombing raid. While he managed to eject from his plane, he broke both arms and sank to the bottom of a lake when his heavy flying gear became water-logged.
A retired Vietnamese colonel, Mai Van On, saw the pilot splash into the lake and “on instinct” swam out and used a bamboo pole to lever the pilot off the bottom and pull him to shore. By this time others had arrived and they helped to drag the injured man onto dry land. However, these additional bystanders were not acting out of kindness. They tore the clothes of the fighter pilot and began to beat and kick him.
Mai Van On stepped in and covered the man with his own body until the beating stopped. A military ambulance arrived and took the pilot to prison where he remained for the next 5½ years.
The pilot was John McCain, US senator. Years later he asked On why he had rescued him, an enemy pilot. On replied, “When I saw you were in difficulty in the water, you became human in my heart.”
We are to love God and our neighbour – and our neighbours might be those we don’t trust, don’t like and don’t want to be around.
So what does Jesus mean when he says “go and do likewise”? He means that we are to see the unseen, love the unloved, and allow someone to see and love us.
Amen. © Rev Heather Hon – July 2019