delivered 11 July 2010
by Rev. Dr John Evans
Amos 7:7-17
Psalm 82
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37
Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan is probably the best-known of all his parables. It is an oldie, but a goodie! The very image of the compassionate assistance of the Samaritan traveller has entered the language and the public imagination. If a person is described as a Good Samaritan, we know exactly what they mean. A Good Samaritan is a person who has put their life on the line for another. In Western Australian the Uniting Church even one of its caring services is known as Good Samaritan Industries – and it is lovingly known as Good Sammy’s.
So when it comes to sermons on the Good Samaritan – well you can lay them end on end and they will stretch to the moon and back; and you already sort of know what I will say. Typically, the sermon will be couched as an example, an illustration of what it means to love one’s neighbour as oneself. It will be a call to compassion. Along the way references will be made to the great antipathy between Jews and the Samaritans. So our compassion is to transcend such divides. Our neighbourliness is to overcome barriers of race and enmity. This is how we are to love others as our selves. We are to go and do likewise.
There are of course may be some twists and turns we could add to the sermon. For example, we could suggest that Jesus is like the Good Samaritan. We can allegorise the story. Characters in the story can be given specific roles. So Jesus is the Good Samaritan. He is starkly contrasted with the religious authorities – the priest and the Levite who both pass by on the other side. So we might suggest, they pass by because of their strict observance of the law of Israel, the covenant. They could not relate with, touch, or come close to a dead body. This poor chap, the victim, looked dead, and so they avoided him. However, the way of Christ, the way of mercy and compassion transcends such legalism. Love overrides the rules and practices of religion.
Another feature of the story, along the way may also be mentioned: the context of the story in the Gospel of Luke. There is really a third scene to our gospel reading – a reading we will indeed have next week. So the opening scene is the dialogue with the lawyer, about seeking eternal life. The answer is then rightly given:
“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 neighbour as yourself.” (Luke 10: 27)
What Luke then does in his gospel is to set this parable of Jesus, about how we are to love our neighbours, in parallel with what immediately follows – the story of Mary and Martha. A story in which the actions and devotion of Mary is contrasted with Martha, a busy doer of hospitality, or even if you like, a busy Good Samaritan. With these three scenes we have a model of what a balanced life of “loving God and loving others” may indeed look like.
All true. Good stuff. But …, yes you knew there would be a “but”, doesn’t all this in large measure depend on from where we read this story? What would happen if we read this story, not from the position of the Samaritan, the helper, the compassionate one, but the victim – the person set upon by brigands and robbers? It is true that we as mainline Christians in the west do not see ourselves as victims, and we as Gentiles just do not get this hatred between Jews and Samaritans. And so we therefore have no difficultly assuming that this story is all about being like a Samaritan. But that would not have been the case for Jesus’ good Jewish hearers. They would have had no natural or obvious affinity with any Samaritan. They were not going to associate themselves with this victim’s rescuer. Even in Luke’s account, the lawyer cannot bring himself to name the person who was a neighbour as a “Samaritan”. He uses the circumlocution of “the one who showed him mercy”. This story is told from the perspective of one who needs a neighbour. It comes from the perspective of the victim. The story takes on a different complexion if we do this.
First of all the setting of this parable is well known. The 17 mile long mountainous road down from Jerusalem to Jehrico was a notorious haunt of brigands and robbers. Contemporaries of Jesus wrote about this very danger. And thus the not very surprising event took place; a person was attacked. Now note that this person who is attacked is the only one in the story whose social location is not specified. Others have a religious rank, job, or ethnic identity. He is simply an anthropos, a man, a sort of everyman – but a Jew all the same. The violence that he receives is extreme – this is not just a robbery, it is over the top violence. He is stripped – left naked, and left to die. As one commentator says
“Knowing the road’s reputation we might have anticipated trouble, but the brutal details sober us. This man, reduces to our common nakedness and on the brink of our common death, is a figure now of the most elemental and raw human need. “ (Duke, The Parables, 40)
So as a hearer of this story we might associate our thoughts with this person. The story invites us to take us to a vantage point in the ditch, and await developments.
So we are in the ditch. And in the story there next comes that literary device which we know well. Three characters are mentioned. Think of jokes that begin “an Englishman, a Scotsman and an Australian”. Think the fairy story of the three little pigs. In this sort of story, or joke, we automatically think that the third character will resolve the story – provide the point of the story or joke. The first two little pigs are lazy and eaten by the wolf and the third is completely different. The third character becomes the point of the story.
So here we are in the ditch. The New Revised Standard Version then says. “Now by chance” a priest came along. “Now by chance”. What could that mean? Another way of saying that could be “As luck would have it.” You are lying there almost dead. What would you want to happen? Another robber could come along and finish you off. No – as luck would have it – it was a priest. What a relief! Surely for you as a victim – that would have been good news. I will be safe now. Yes there might have be religious rules that you can’t touch a corpse – but surely this is good news. I will have assistance. And after all, there were also other religious rules about not leaving an abandoned corpse. Well it was not fortunate, this victim was not in luck – the priest passes on to the other side. There was no help. So we come to the next person – also a religious person , a Levite. Unfortunately again, same as the first. The Levite too, passes to the other side. Message – religious leaders do not help. Yep – sounds like Jesus.
Here is then the turning point in the story. Who would be the third?
Two religious professionals so far – who would be the third? I think the money would have been on a layperson of some sort. Just an ordinary Jewish person. . . . and they would have then shown up, done it differently to the religious professional. So today we might have had a minister of the word, a deacon and then a lay member of the congregation. You would have had John Evans, Wes Campbell and then Shirley Johnson. However, this story of Jesus comes out like a minister, a deacon and then a Frenchman. The third person is not in the sequence. Worse. The third person was a hated Samaritan. For us that might have been a minister, a deacon and Osma Bin Laden, or some well known drug dealer.
This must have been a riveting shock to the lawyer, and to Jesus’ hearers. The stories categories have been totally altered. They have moved from religion, to ethnicity or race; and what is more, this person who is obviously going to be the focus of the story is actually an enemy. (Even note that Luke introduces a discussion of Samaritans in the end of the previous chapter – how Samaritans rejected Jesus and his disciples and James and John wanted to bring down the wrath of God on this village.) This was extreme choice.
Now remember you are in the ditch. The person approaching you is the last person you want touching you. I’m sure you would resist if you could, but you can’t, you are completely broken, nearly dead. The religious types had seen and moved on; this Samaritan comes near and sees – and actually is touched, “moved with pity”. Then follows a remarkable out pouring of compassion. In Greek 12 verbs follow. “Moved with pity … went … bandaged …having poured ….put him ….brought him….took care of him …took out two denarii …gave them …said …take care of him…I will repay.” Yes there are no less then twelve verbs which follow, which unpack this person’s care and mercy. Here, typical of Jesus’ stories – is extravagance; here extravagant love. Compassion is shown as a steady, generous consistency of deeds. It is more than just a one stop – it takes care into the future; and not just the here and now. It is extravagant – and so when asked who was the neighbour – any objection over race, or ethnic hatred – is stifled at the outset. There is no doubt – even coming from a Samaritan – this is love.
The story is over – and the question then comes to the lawyer. Which of these three was neighbour? As we see, the lawyer cannot answer directly, but says the “one doing mercy with him.” And so like Jesus had previously said with regard to keeping the law, “do this and you shall live’”. Here he simply says “go and do likewise.” There is however here a profound shift. A neighbour is not the object of one’s love. This was the point of the lawyer’s question. He believed there were limits to the object of one’s love. Jesus however, in the story, makes the neighbour, the Samaritan, the subject, the doer of love. The search for the right person, right recipient of our care, is subverted. We lying in the ditch all of a sudden had a new, amazing, shocking neighbour – who showed compassion and love towards us. And we are told to do likewise. . . but it is hard – we can’t associate such love and behaviour, with these Samaritans. Can it be that even Samaritans, love others?
Paul Duke observes: “The parable, an apparent reply to a question posed from a (smug) position of control and power, hurls us into a position of no control. We are set down into a horrid place of life and death need, spurned by the upright who find us abhorrent, then shocked by our enemy’s extravagant kindness.”
Duke suggests – the parable abandons us. And there in our abandonment as the victim – these could be some of our conclusions.
1. Our questions about who is my neighbour are really patronising and selfish. They just want to limit our love.
2. We are left to ponder what it is like being in a ditch – needing any neighbour.
3. We are left overwhelmed with the wonder of extravagant love.
4. And yes we are to show love – to do likewise. We can show compassion because it has been shown to us.
There is finally something just lingering here in this story about the nature of God’s love to us. A pointer to the final mystery about our life. . . remember the lawyer’s initial question of wanting to have eternal life – the fullness of life. Again Duke writes.
“We have been joined in the ditches where we were dying, by the One we did not choose, borne out on terrifying arms that we might have resisted but cannot, and covered in costly compassion we cannot repay. In short we live now by the mercy of the Samaritan God and a Samaritan Christ.”
