The parable of the Good Samaritan isn’t just about being good. It’s also about the need to stop pretending that we just are.
Being neighbors
Proper 10C | Luke 10:25-37
This parable that Jesus tells is surely one of the most recognizable stories in human history. It has given us a phrase that is iconic. A phrase used to describe moments of saving grace, which adorns hospitals and agencies, and has even been used to fashion laws to protect people who stop to help someone in need.
The phrase “good samaritan” has come to be perhaps the most vivid symbol of compassionate grace.
There is a remarkable simplicity to the idea of unsolicited generosity: it seems profoundly human and normal. Expected, even. At least in the midst of tragedy. As we do by gathering food, clothing, or supplies after a natural disaster. It can seem like compassionate grace is what we expect to happen.
And yet, we can get lost in the complex challenge of “right” and “good” and what we’re “supposed to do”. And perhaps because we see so many examples of greedy, egocentric behavior, we might see these moments as reminding us about the good things we expect should come so easy. That do come and seem so remarkable…
First, the context.
As familiar as this parable is, I dare say we lose so much when we talk only about the parable and not the moment it rises within.
This is in the second half of chapter 10 of Luke. Back at the beginning of chapter 9, Jesus empowered twelve of his disciples to go out into the world with nothing, to heal, exorcize demons, and proclaim the good news of the kin-dom.
When they come back, Jesus starts to tell them about what’s to come, they argue over which of them is the greatest, they fail to heal a boy, and James and John suggest they commit genocide. Oh, and Moses and Elijah show up and God talks to three of them. So a lot happens.
But within all of this, we can see the growing gap between the world that the disciples know and the world Jesus is revealing to them. And they don’t always know what they’re supposed to hold onto. This all should sound vaguely familiar—like we know a bit about that!
The Lawyer
It is from this that Jesus sends out the seventy disciples in the same way he sent the twelve. And when they return, Jesus cries out in gratitude.
This is when an unnamed lawyer shows up to test Jesus. [Which, let’s be honest, seems like the case of someone not paying attention in the last chapter, but we’ll go with it.]
The test is also familiar. We’ve heard it elsewhere, of course. But it is also a version of the essential question of faith: What am I supposed to do?
And the exchange is curious. Because the lawyer asks Jesus, but Jesus gets him to answer himself (what does the law say?)! And the lawyer says:
“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 neighbor as yourself.”
But then it says that the lawyer keeps going. He wants to “justify himself”.
What can that mean except excusing himself? That he doesn’t love his neighbor as himself. He knows what Jesus thinks it means. He gets the connotation. But he wants a semantic excuse to get around it. To not be bound by it. Because if he can get Jesus to give a narrow definition of neighbor, then he can feel justified in not treating most people as well as he treats himself.
In other words, the lawyer knows exactly how broad a vision of neighbor that Jesus is going to offer. And he is selfishly against it. Enough to make up fake boundaries to protect his precious individualism. Not merely to get out of responsibility, but to make his refusal to be responsible and just.
And Jesus makes him look like the bad guy.
The Parable
The basic structure of the parable is pretty simple. Three examples which follow a traditional reversal pattern. Wrong, wrong, right. You show the wrong way, you show a second wrong way, then you reveal the right way. It helps the hearer understand what right really looks like.
A second element of the parable is most obvious to the people who lived in that context. The two who do wrong by neglecting the stranger were following the Law. They were doing “the right thing” under the eyes of the law. They are doing wrong in the text of the parable, but good in the eyes of the law!
Neither could risk their ritual purity to save the man. Someone else is supposed to do that. [A perfect example of “not my job.”] And, in a sense, the only person that could save the man was someone who isn’t from their tradition.
So, this amounts to a second reversal. The two “good people” do wrong and the “bad person” does good.
A third, and perhaps the most essential layer, is acknowledging how justified the Hebrew people felt in hating Samaritans. This was a 150 year-old blood feud of violence and border conflict. There is zero trust between the people.
So the Samaritan represents the other, outsider, foreigner and enemy.
This is the parable Jesus tells. To a lawyer who wants to feel justified in treating some people as not worthy of love. About a bad guy being the only one to save the man’s life. And this lawyer, trying so hard to avoid the truth, is forced to acknowledge that the concept of neighbor includes everyone.
The Extreme Example
Years ago, the Greek scholar, Amy-Jill Levine was giving a lecture to my diocese on the parables. And she wanted us to personify this parable ourselves. To come up with the most hated person each of us could think of. Our most hated person. This was about 2005 or ‘06.
She invited us to share who we came up with. And someone said “Osama bin Laden”. And the room hushed. It was the kind of perfect example. Hated. Justified hatred. People wanted to feel good for hating him. For many, pain was still fresh. All of the fallout, still smoldering.
Now, imagine he is the one who helps the stranger. And all of us passed him by.
We need to remember their context. And ours. And the parable’s. Because the lawyer is seeking justification for wanting to keep his neighborhood small.
And this isn’t about justification.
What Jesus doesn’t do is justify Samaritans. Or Hebrews. He doesn’t justify conflict. Or separation. He doesn’t call one good and the other evil. He doesn’t even say make your enemy your friend.
What does he do?
He simply asks which one is being a neighbor?
And the bitter truth to everyone who hears this story is that we can’t possibly treat our neighbors as ourselves if we aren’t willing to recognize that our neighbors are human.
And that we have a responsibility to them.
Our Neighborhood
The parable of the Good Samaritan is a brilliant teaching that always bores into our souls. It can’t not push us to recalibrate our own sense of right and wrong, good and evil, just and unjust.
And I think, because of its context, we ought to be extra careful not to take it as being too removed from our lived experience. To make it too abstract and universal. To craft new demands that we aren’t allowed to have enemies, for instance. That we must love them and pretend that nothing separates us; in other words to justify inclusion the same way the lawyer seeks to justify exclusion.
This isn’t a parable to justify anything. It’s to reveal that the people on the other side of the wall or border or sea are our neighbors. Jesus isn’t asking us to make them our neighbors. He’s saying that they already are.
And loving our neighbors as ourselves means protecting them as much as we protect ourselves.
Because we share the same air. Water. Earth. Climate.
There is no other. It is all our neighborhood. And we aren’t justified in polluting it. Or ignoring it.
There can be no more Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) when we realize that it is always already utterly and completely all our backyard.
And here’s the best part.
This parable isn’t either/or. It isn’t binary. It doesn’t end with the good people doing bad and the bad person doing good. The Samaritan takes the man to the inn and recruits help. He gets the innkeeper involved. He anoints him a neighbor.
We don’t all have to be individual heroes. It isn’t a race to be the individual who shows up. [Often to protect individuals caught in systemic problems.] We’re all neighbors already. To each other. And to all the people in our neighborhood.
And we are anointed to be neighborly. To show generous compassion. Love. Give. And to transform systems of injustice and respect the dignity of every human being.
This is our neighborhood. And it is our business to love our neighbors as if they were members of our family.