Irreverin
Maybe they were feeling a little disgruntled… After all, the Samaritans in the neighboring village had just been terribly inhospitable to them. Maybe that’s why the Samaritan, transformed by the narrative powers of Jesus, becomes the unlikely hero of this story.
But “unlikely” is the operative word here. Even though “Good Samaritan” has become a blanket term for generic do-gooder in our modern day, secular culture, we cannot understate the inherent ‘bad guy’ implication that the term Samaritan carried in Jesus’ time…
This is the trouble with parables. We’ve often reduced them to secularized, generic stories of good/bad, right/wrong, that water down much of their original impact. When in fact, these stories of Jesus were radical, meant to connect with people’s memories and deeply held beliefs; and somehow transform those attachments into something new. Over time, the versions that have trickled down to us are colored by our own culture and context, our own comforts and privileges. Even though there are timeless truths at work within their layers, we’ve somehow diminished their impact by seeking an easy one-line resolution that isn’t really there.
Oddly enough– that’s exactly what the lawyer in the beginning of this story does. He has a question for Jesus, but he doesn’t want a sermon; he just wants just the punchline. He asks Jesus, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” What must I do to be saved? He’s looking for the packaged answer–the illustrated tract with a 3-point salvation plan. He can put the major highlights on a post-it, check them off the list, and be done in time for happy hour.
Now this is the point at which Jesus might normally answer the question with a question. But here, he goes one better. He answers the question with a STORY, and a great parable is born. Perhaps THE great parable is born.
Instead of offering the easy Sunday school answer, Jesus employs a tactic that any good lawyer is familiar with–Jesus rejects the premise of the question. And then, he rejects the premise of the FOLLOW UP question. So basically, the lawyer gets lawyered. By Jesus.
Why were the lawyer’s questions problematic? I think understanding that may be more important than the parable itself.
First of all, his question assumes that the requirements of eternal life are finite; that they can be completed in a given timeline and held up as a marker of achievement, like any other degree or trophy worth having. In other words, he views salvation through the lens of the same merit system that he’s ordered the rest of his life around, right? He’s asking as though salvation is something to be earned, and not a matter of grace given freely. And he’s asking this question from a place of privilege… in the voice of one accustomed to reaping the benefits of study and hard work and playing by the rules. In fact, he’s asking as one who knows the rules very well, and hopes he may trip Jesus up in the process.
So the two of them effectively get into a Bible bee (you remember Bible bee…or just an Appalachian thing?) They’re quoting scripture at each other, chapter and verse. The guy quotes the thing about “love the Lord your God with all your heart…and love your neighbor as yourself.” And Jesus says, good job, you’ve got your memory verses down–You’ve answered correctly. We’ll call that good enough for now”
He’s ready to leave it at that, but the lawyer has another… Who is my neighbor?
And this is the second flaw with his line of reasoning… he’s essentially asking, who belongs to me? He quotes from Leviticus, where the word for neighbor (rea) means friend, or fellow. In other words, a fellow Israelite–one for whom the law requires him to care. But he asks this question in the same spirit as the first; as though there might be a boundary to his area of concern. ‘Just outline the territory for me, if you will. Show me the area map of my compassion neighborhood, and I will complete the assignment.’
Realizing that the memory verse challenge is getting them nowhere, Jesus launches into the narrative that we know as the Good Samaritan.
“Good Samaritan…” Do we not find that problematic? That’s not Jesus’ title, that’s the one that has been handed down to us by way of translators and interpreters. That the descriptive ‘good’ is needed at all tells us something powerful about how Samaritans, broadly speaking, would be understood universally as ‘bad.’ Dangerous, other, enemy. It reflects a pretty racist worldview– much like the one we live in today, where a culture of white privilege invites us to divide people of color into the ‘good’ kind, and… you know, all the rest. Like the ones who live in the suburbs, and the ones who live in the parts of town you’d never venture after dark. The safe refugees, and the ones who make us nervous. The legal, and the illegal immigrant. The “I have a black friend, so I’m not racist,” mentality.
We sometimes hold a cognitive dissonance that lets us determine, in any given moment, whether or not we’re going to humanize the person by the side of the road… For a clear example of how that works, let’s look to a small town in Illinois. A town where the local population recently voted overwhelmingly for a certain platform of xenophobia; one that pledged to build walls and deport lots of undocumented immigrants…
Well, that was a few months ago. But now, the whole town is outraged… Because the beloved owner of a local Mexican restaurant is being deported. They feel that the sweeping immigration crack-downs should make exceptions for men like Juan–their friend and neighbor. He’s a pillar of the community, they say. He would never hurt anyone, they say. And, a direct quote: “He is a GOOD man that should be a role model for other immigrants.”
In other words–this one is OUR immigrant. Our neighbor. He’s one of the GOOD ONES. Not like those nameless, faceless immigrants we see on tv. Those immigrants are not our neighbor. Therefore, they are probably criminals.
Once you get past the simplistic morality reading of the parables and dig into some of the layers of ‘otherness’ inherent in the context, it’s hard to know who we should identify with in the story.
The straight up Sunday school lesson is that we should identify with the Samaritan… That’s problematic though, for a couple of reasons. First of all, it ignores the radical implication of the Samaritan’s outsider status; the many ways he is viewed as a threat to all that Jesus’ people would hold dear. Putting ourselves in that role assumes he was just a regular guy, and not the social pariah that he truly was. And if we don’t recognize the negative implications of his nationality, we miss the radical message of a mercy that overcomes all human boundaries.
Furthermore, if we effectively puts us into the favorable seat in this story, that is, again, our privilege at work. If we identify with the unlikely savior here, that paints Christians as the ‘good guys;’ and the Levite and the Priest–both of whom are Jewish–as the ‘bad guys.’ See why that gets tricky? The whole “Christian/good, Jewish/bad’ interpretation of scripture has established the foundation for anti-Jewish sentiment throughout history.
There’s been a rampant resurgence of anti-semitism lately…as recently as this past week. From desecrated cemeteries to bomb threats at community centers. In light of these recent events, we need to be extra careful that we don’t fall into the trap of reading scripture with an unfavorable view of Judaism, and an overly pious impression of Christianity.
So… who are we in this story? We can’t be the Samaritan… And we sure can’t be Jesus. Perhaps we can identify with the busy priest and the hurried Levite, averting our gaze from the suffering in front of us, keeping our hands clean for some notion of purity.
But I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that most of us could probably best identify w/ the lawyer. In search of a checklist containing the articles of faith-based living. Feeling that if we can write them all into our day planner at some point a couple times a year, we’re doing ok. Our place of privilege allows us the same bit of cognitive dissonance… To view even the most central stories of our faith from a distance, and insert ourselves as the bystanders–not the villains or the victims in need of mercy.
This season of Lent is a time to confess our sins. At this particular point in the human story, it is clear that we need to confess the sins of racism and fear of the other that is deeply engrained in culture, and even in our faith story. We confess that our privilege and our limited reading of scripture and history continues to render violence, and perpetuate cycles of poverty.
Maybe, just as much, we need to confess our love of easy answers and quick fixes…our reliance on knowledge and achievements, over the grace of God; and the psychological boundaries we place on compassion, allowing us to determine each day what is, and is not meant by ‘neighbor.’
On that note–how about 2 modern day parables from this week in the world:
In Florida, a Mosque was burned to the ground… (Or I guess we should say, another mosque was burned to the ground). And as the fundraising efforts began to rebuild the worship space, they noticed something funny about the donations they were getting. Everything was coming in increments of $18. Those donations, it turned out, were coming primarily from their Jewish neighbors. And in the Jewish tradition, 18 is the number of well-wishing; it means long life for the recipient.
Flip the scene to Saint Louis–where a Jewish cemetery was wrecked by vandals. And who showed up to work alongside their Jewish friends and help restore the space? Was it the Mayor’s office, coming to the rescue with local tax dollars and the goodwill of the people? Was it the Christians, walking in the way of Jesus’ love and mercy?
No. Either of those would be the formulaic answers. But this time, it was the Muslim neighbors who showed compassion. It was the Muslim neighbors– those feared and scapegoated by everyone from the government to the media to the Christian establishment–the Muslims organized and raised more than $100k. They righted overturned headstones. And then when another burial site was destroyed in Philadelphia, they went and did the same thing there.
Muslims and Jews are working together a lot these days to stand up to bigotry. Because both of these groups, though historical enemies in some parts of the world, have been united in their marginalization. They share a bond as strangers in this particular strange land, and have this one thing in common: that many Americans have refused to recognize them as neighbors.
It’s time we acknowledge the complicity of our own privilege, our own race, and the Christian narrative itself, in pushing these groups to the edges. It’s time we realize we are not the hero of any of Jesus’ stories–but rather, the privileged bystander, wondering when we can get the right answer and be on our way.
The longer, more difficult answer is this: The work of eternal life is actually eternal. It is not rooted in the idea of some far off heaven, it is here, and it is daily. It is a lifetime of following in the way of Jesus, not just a few parsed words of his teaching. It is the way of everyday mercy; everyday grace; every day, widening the boundaries of who belongs to us, and whose neighbor we are going to be.
Will we ever learn? Will we ever get it right, this business of love and life and being human? I wonder… But I also suspect that Jesus rejects the very premise of the question.
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