The Good Samaritan
By: The Rev. Gigi Miller
I once introduced a children’s sermon by asking “What two important things does Jesus tell us to do? I’ll give you a hint: the first is to love God.” One of the children shouted, “Love ourselves!” I took a beat and said, “Well, Jesus said to love our neighbors as ourselves, but you’re right, we can’t really do that if we don’t love ourselves first. So, I guess Jesus wants us to do three important things.”
My young friend was onto something profound. We might be able to obey a vengeful God who commanded us to love each other or suffer Divine judgement. But unless we know in our bones that God created us and cares for us unconditionally, we’ll never be able to open our hearts completely. When we can’t accept that we are God’s beloved children, we limit the boundaries of love, for ourselves and each other.
That might explain why the lawyer, a person well-versed in the Torah, asks Jesus to define “neighbor.” Maybe he’s thinking of the plumb line God described in our reading from Amos; the lawyer wants to measure the length to which his compassion must extend. Do I need to love the guy down the street with the yappy dog that drives me crazy? The people in the next village over? How far does this whole “neighbor” thing go?
Jesus responds with a story that everyone knows, even if just by its unofficial name. There are Good Samaritan hospitals, non-profits, and churches, like our sister parish down the road. There are Good Samaritan laws that protect folks who help people in a crisis, like the recent tragedy in Texas. But Amy-Jill Levine, an Orthodox Jew and New Testament scholar, stresses that we can only get the full impact of Jesus’ teachings by hearing them the way his first century Jewish followers did. Jesus doesn’t use parables to give us a comforting moral lesson; he wants to confront us and change the way we see the world.
We don’t know anything about the traveler on the road to Jericho, except that he was robbed, beaten, and left for dead. But Jesus uses a storytelling device familiar to speechwriters, advertisers, and stand-up comics – the rule of three. Humans remember ideas, things, or phrases when they’re grouped together in threes. Think the Three Little Pigs, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” or Snap, Crackle, and Pop. Jesus tells us three people saw the wounded traveler.
Amy-Jill Levine writes that the lawyer and the rest of Jesus’ followers would understand the first two passers by – the priest and Levite. But she warns us 21st century folks not to get too hung up on their titles. Jesus’ Jewish audience would recognize that these were hereditary positions. You are a priest if your father was a priest, and you are descended from Moses’ brother Aaron. Levites also work in the temple; they are descended from Levi, one of Jacob’s twelve sons. All other Jews are descended from one of Jacob’s eleven other sons. This little detour into ancient history is important, because the first listeners of the parable would have heard priest, Levite… and expecting Israelite, would have been shocked to hear…. Samaritan? The Samaritans were a people with whom the Israelites were at odds for generations in hot and cold wars. It would be analogous to us hearing “a doctor, a firefighter, and a terrorist.”
The idea that one of “us” could ignore a person in distress while one of “them” provides assistance is disturbing. So why did the first two pass by on the other side of the road? You can find a multitude of explanations or – let’s face it – excuses for a lack of action. Martin Luther King once preached “… the first question that the priest [and] the Levite asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ . . . But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’” God’s grace often flows from unexpected and perhaps even unwanted sources.
Jesus ends his story, asking “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor?” The hated term “Samaritan” is like dry toast caught in the lawyer’s throat; he can’t even choke it out. Instead, he grudgingly replies “The one doing mercy to him,” as we might if presented with a hero who’s also a known murderer. For Jesus, mercy is an action verb, requiring us to not only bind up wounds but stay in relationship with each other, even when it’s not easy.
This isn’t the feel good, “look for the helpers” story we heard in Sunday School. This parable challenges and convicts us. Author Debbie Thomas writes “It exposes our smallness and stinginess, our reluctance to embrace the radical kinship God calls us to. We are also left to wrestle with the scandalous goodness of God, a goodness that calls us to become instruments of grace even to those who offend us most deeply.”
People are sometimes confused when I refer to folks who receive a meal at our Saturday breakfast as our neighbors. Even though the kitchen volunteers may shout “Yes, chef,” like they do on TV, none of us are professionals, so calling folks who share our cooking “clients” or “customers” sounds a bit… pretentious. And “guest” to me implies someone whom I welcome and might treat with hospitality but isn’t a part of my inner circle; they’re just a visitor. The term “friend’ makes me think we have to like each other, but Jesus didn’t say that was a prerequisite. So, I’ve settled on neighbor because that’s who Jesus calls us to love.
Most spiritual traditions require their followers to engage the world in two foundational ways – through charity and justice. The Good Samaritan parable is an example of charity: direct service, taking care of someone’s immediate needs, as we do at the Food Pantry and on Saturday mornings. We’ll talk more about this in today’s Sunday Salon, but practicing justice extends the love of neighbor into institutions and systems that hurt and stigmatize people, as if the Samaritan in the parable were to advocate with Roman authorities to make the Jericho Road safe for everyone.
Jesus sees the Divine law of love — for God, ourselves, and our neighbors — as a plumb line we can use to construct our lives. It requires us to move beyond platitudes and performative gestures and take action to alleviate the suffering all around us. Radical grace commands us to stay curious and build relationships based on listening and learning, across borders and divisions that separate “us” from “them.” Though this may be demanding work, God is waiting there – on a dusty road to Jericho, around a picnic table after Saturday breakfast, in a city council meeting, or in this beautiful sanctuary on Sunday morning.
