6 Pentecost

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: 6 Pentecost
PROPER: 10 C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: July 12,1998

TEXT: Luke 10:25-37 - Parable of the Good Samaritan, or Parable of the Caring God - "Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy."

ISSUE: This is another of the frequently misunderstood parables of the Jesus. The situation between the lawyer and Jesus is a testing and an attempt to humiliate Jesus, which backfires. The lawyer is left to publicly admit that the hated outcast, low class, thief-like Samaritan in the parable is the good neighbor in this parable. A second important aspect of the parable is not that we must do good works, i.e. be good caring neighbors, but that God is the Good Neighbor who enters into the suffering of his people. The suffering victim is like Jesus, like humanity, in need of God's redeeming grace.
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The so called Parable of the Good Samaritan is indeed one of Jesus' finest parables. However it is also one of the most misunderstood and probably the one most poorly interpreted of all of Jesus parables. May God forgive me for all the times I so badly misled people when I have preached on this parable. The majority of us, myself included, learned and continued to perpetuate the belief that this parable is about being nice to one another. We should be good neighbors and love one another. Occasionally we should give a little money to the poor and hurting. After all aren't we supposed to go and do likewise, as did the Good Samaritan in the parable? Our Sunday School interpretation and learning of this parable ususally led us to believe that we should do good works or good deeds. Our general interpretation of the parable is that we should be like the Good Samaritan and help out the poor guys in the ditch. If Jesus on his way to Jerusalem went around teaching that people should be nice to one another, and give to the poor, and be neighborly, Why, in God's name, would he have been crucified when he got to Jerusalem?
I want to do two things. First, let's consider what it going on, so far as St. Luke is concerned, between the lawyer in the story and Jesus. Then, secondly, we'll deal with the parable itself.
According to Luke, a lawyer (scribe-pharisee) comes forward to test Jesus as he is making his way to Jerusalem. There are probably a number of poor people standing around when this public incident takes place. It was the poor who were mostly attracted to what Jesus had to say. Actually the lawyer is trying to challenge the honor and status that this lowly carpenter has attained, who is now an itinerant preacher. Who does he think he is? So the lawyer asks him a question which is really a challenge. He asks Jesus a question that he already knows the answer to: "What do I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus ups the ante by responding with the question, thereby challenging the lawyer, "What do the scriptures say?" And the lawyer replies with the Shema: Love the Lord you God . . . and adds, love your neighbor as yourself." Neighbor, of course meant you own kin and race. Very good says Jesus, you knew the answer all along. You were just kidding, i.e. lying, when you asked me the original question, and thereby Jesus maintains his status and turns the lawyer into a liar. In order to get out of this situation, and to try to justify himself, the lawyer then asks, "And who is my neighbor?" Then Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan:
A man is going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, which is a down hill journey, and falls among thieves. Since the man was probably a trader, he was himself considered to be a thief, and at least a no account. In any event he is beaten, stipped naked, and left for dead. A priest and a Levite, also a religious man, come by and see the dead man along the side of the road. If the priest stops and touches the possibly dead man, he will be unclean and impure and will have to return to Jerusalem for a long ritual act of cleansing. Priests didn't touch naked dead bodies (Ezek. 44:25) or strangers, who might not be of the same race. So he passes by as does the Levite. But then a Samaritan happens by and does stop. Samaritans were by Jewish standards sub-human and impure. He was probably a trader too, and considered to be an impure thief. But he stops and anoints the victim, actually touching him. The he puts him on his ass, takes him down to the bottom of the hill to Jericho, gives and inkeeper a large sum of money to care for him, and says if he needs more money that when he returns he'll foot the entire bill whatever it is.
Well Jesus says to his hot shot lawyer, which of these do you think was the neighbor. The answer is obvious: the one who showed him mercy. What else can the lawyer say? He has to admit that his hated and detested enemies can also be good neighbors. Jesus has humiliated his contender, and maintained his own honor. The poor people standing around would have been cheering, possibly rolling on the ground in laughter, to see the lawyer humiliated. The event and the parable for Luke reveals the hypocricies that people live with, and Jesus exposes them. Why is Jesus crucified? Not because he is nice, but because he challenges the hypocrisy of his time and because he humiliated and publicly dishonored one of the leaders or at the very least maintained his own position of honor. The mighty are brought low.
So far as Luke is concerned, he wants the early church to know that it must set aside its prejudices, hatreds, ancient feuds and see the poor, the Samaritans, the Gentiles, and the Jews, the traders, the outcasts, the lepers, the lame, the blind, the deaf, as an essential part of the new faith whose purpose is to proclaim the Goodnews of God. This event is a most significant and profound challenge to the culture, of that time, and to our own. Human prejudices and hatreds are often deeply rooted in our backgrounds and psyches. It is very hard to give them up and let them go. That's why Hitler got away with murdering Jews, and why white Americans murdered and humiliated Indians and maintain their prejudices against the niggers. We still today like to maintain the status-quo and keep out Juvenile Detention Centers, Homes for Recovering Alcoholics and Drug Addicts, low income housing out of our neighborhoods, and even in very subtle ways we try to keep new people out of our churches, or at least keep them in their place of second class members who are acceptable so long as they don't want to change anything. Luke's scene between Jesus and the Lawyer challenged the early church, as it challenges the church today to get on with letting go of the old and proclaiming the Goodnews. . . . which brings me to part two.
The majority of Biblical Scholars believe that this parable (excluding the exhange between Jesus and the lawyer, which is more likely Luke's invention and which we refer to as the Parable of the Good Samaritan) is proably one hundred percent (100%) authentic to Jesus. Basically it is about a poor soul who is likely an outcast (trader) who falls among thieves and is about murdered. He is left naked and dying. The religion of the time is passing him by. It walks around him, and ignores him. But another outcast comes by coming down from Jerusalem that most holy city and stops to get down on the ground and into the ditch to anoint the body and to lift it up on the ass. The Samaritan outcast then takes the victim to the inn and gracious gives the innkeeper a great sum of money, to provide for the victim and then offers any amount a great abundance of assistance for his ultimate cure.
Now I know we like to think that the Good Samaritan is like Jesus who comes to heal the sinners, and to fix them up. And we are all called to be Good Samaritans and do good deeds and help the poor and the needy, in response to "Go and do likewise." Robert Capon, in his book The Parables of Grace says that that interpretation is absurd. I'm inclined to agree. When was the last time any of us brought in a stranger and fixed them up? Some people do, but we think they're foolish, if not crazy. We are afraid of the strangers and good common sense tells us to be cautious. Helping panhandlers on the side of the road can be condoning and contributing to scams and con-artists. To be caring and sensible . . . . and safe . . . . we look for established organizations to give to: the church' social ministries, Salvation Army, shelters, food pantries. More often than not these donations are meagre. But we feel, think, and moralize "every little bit helps." We trick ourselves into thinking we're hotshots too, when in our hearts we know we are not. We are modest givers because of our own uncertainties, anxieties, and insecurities. Like children on the playground, we're afraid that if we give up our toys we'll be losers. We can't stand to think of ourselves as losers, or as the lost and least. Yet look at the human condition. A large number of us drink too much, smoke too much. A high percentage of us abuse drugs. More than half of us are divorced. We grab whatever and we can get and try desperately to cling to it. We're not the hobo on the city street corner. We have a great deal and then whine and feel desperation and unhappiness. Some have lost family, friends, children. We fear for our own health and well-being. Some of us who are the most well off are the biggest whiners and the most unhappy of people, who also make terrible messes out of their lives. We participate in scandals and live in the midst of violence and cruelty, and impose it ourselves on one another in passive aggressive ways. Who is in the ditch and victimized along side the road? None other than ourselves.
But what's more is that Christ Jesus came to live with us. He was the one who got beaten, bludgeoned, whipped, mocked, and murdered. The victim in the parable is Christ Jesus having come to his own, and they received him not. He revealed what we don't like to see or accept, that we are the ones in the mess, and we're often killing one another and committing spiritual suicide. Our only hope lies in the Good Samaritan, who is often the very one we reject and see as the stranger and foreigner in our lives. The Good Samaritan is not us. The Good Samaritan is God. He's the one who is the strange foreigner. Our purity and religion is not what saves us, or even our good works. It is God alone who is our saving hope. It is God who puts up the abundance of love to heal the suffering and the brokeness of the world. God alone will persist in his abundant love until we are healed and well. Our saving hope does not come from our doing good deeds. It comes from the free and abundant grace of God. God is my neighbor. God is the one who shows abundant mercy.
It is usually good common sense for us to do good things for one another. That is the given in a civilized society, if that's what we are. We often have to be very careful as to what we think the Good is. I've done some things I thought were good, only to find the opposite to be true. I learned well in the Boy Scouts of America that a profusely bleeding person needs a tourniquet to help stop the bleeding, only to find that is no longer the good thing to do. Think of the mate at the wheel aboard the Titanic who with the best intentions but who wrongly called at that fateful moment called out: Hard to the port." causing the ship to ripped apart along starboard side. Though we may think of ourselves as the unsinkable ones, we are often our own worst enemies. We are humans with good intentions that are sometimes very wrong. Our ultimate hope resides in the Creator. It is God who is Good. And we feebly do what we can. But we walk through the valley in the shadow of death. We are the robbers, the bandits, the victims of our alienation and separation from God. Yet it is God, the One so foreign to us, like a Samaritan, who sets the table which makes our cups run over. Surely it is God's goodness and mercy that shall follow us all the days of our lives, and the faithful shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.