Sermon July 14, 2013 Luke 10:25-37; Psalm 25
Gracious Lord, bless the speaking and bless the hearing, that your Word may take root in our hearts and bear fruit in our lives, for the healing of the world you so love, and to the glory of your holy name. Amen.
Today our Gospel reading is a familiar story. The Good Samaritan, we call it, right? Some of you have probably heard this story dozens or even hundreds of times. There is a man beaten, robbed, and left for dead on the side of the road, and the self-important priests are too busy to help, but the Samaritan, which must just be a name for a lovely, kind, and helpful human being, right, the Samaritan helps this man out by stopping, offering help, and his own time and money to restore the man to health, and Jesus says ‘go and do likewise.’ In our culture, we view the moral of this story as a lesson about acts of kindness, about not ignoring those who are in need. Good Samaritan laws ensure that those who want to offer help to people who are in life-threatening situations will not later be punished legally for doing so, and they can also mandate that people help when others are in trouble. The characters of the TV sitcom Seinfeld get put in jail in the last episode of the show because they fail to obey by this Good Samaritan law. In our culture, there is a certain way of interpreting this parable that is embedded in our worldview. Jesus’ words to go and do likewise refer to going to help those who are in the ditch.
This interpretation of the parable is not “wrong”, but I want to push the envelope a little bit and suggest that this is only one interpretation of this story, and that there may be other wisdom to be gleaned from this parable in Luke. It starts with thinking about who we empathize with in the story. When you hear this story, which character can you most identify with? What kinds of emotions come up? Do you imagine yourself in the place of the priest, who crosses over to the other side of the road to ignore the man? I always feel a pang of guilt, and imagine that Priest wore long robes that made her feel important and was too busy checking her smart phone to see the beaten man… Ok, so we’re just noticing what happens when we hear the story. Maybe you can relate most to the Samaritan, and think of a time when you were the one who helped someone in dire need, or at least feel like that is the person who you should aspire to be most like. But have you ever imagined what it would have been like to be the beaten man? I know that this is something that had never crossed my mind- what does this story feel like from the perspective of the one who has landed in the ditch?
In order to find another lens of interpretation, I want to share with you a story that a professor of mine at Trinity Lutheran seminary, where I will return after I leave you, wrote about in a book about Biblical interpretation. He is a New Testament professor, and for his work, he was going around to different seminaries all over the world to talk with students about how they interpret different passages from the Bible. Dr. Powell shares a story about his experience in Tanzania talking about this “Good Samaritan” parable. Now, the first thing we should say is that if you look at the text, never does it say that the Samaritan is good. So by calling it the good Samaritan, we are already interpreting the parable. So, in Tanzania, they have a completely different interpretation of this parable that results from empathizing not with the Samaritan, but with the man who had been left for dead on the side of the road. They believe that Jesus’ point was that people who have been beaten, robbed, and left for dead cannot afford the luxury of prejudice… people who have been beaten, robbed, and left for dead cannot afford the luxury of prejudice. When you’re down and out, you don’t get to choose who helps you up. This means that in Tanzania, a Samaritan law has nothing to do with your right or duty to rescue people, but with receiving help, and during the cold war, the country accepted help from all countries- capitalist, socialist, communist, whoever. It means that they would accept any type of financial assistance, and not give concern to how the funds were obtained. In other words, they view this story as a moral to the beaten man, not to the one who has the capacity to help. Go and do likewise means not “go and help those who need it,” but accept help even from your enemy.
Showing mercy to people is a part of our lives of faith- you know that. We wouldn’t have all sorts of Lutheran social service agencies if our faith wasn’t about acts of compassion. But here, the Tanzanians remind us that Jesus is also speaking a word about social dynamics and the deep divisions present in society. In reality, the Tanzanians seem better informed about who the Samaritan would have been in the eyes of the Jewish listeners at the time. My brother was born in a hospital called “Good Samaritan,” and Samaritan in our culture is akin to kind and loving person. But the relationship between the Jews and Samaritans was about as friendly as the relationship between the US and the Soviet Union during the cold war, or Roman Catholics and Protestants sixty years ago, or nerds and jocks in a High School lunch room. The lawyer can’t even bring himself to say that the Samaritan was the most neighborly one, he says instead, “the one who showed him mercy” in order to avoid uttering the name of this unbelievable hero. Put yourself in the place of the lawyer, listening to this story, and it’s not a Samaritan who walks by but someone that you can’t stand. Imagine if this parable were told with a group of people that you harbor dislike for, someone you disdain as an enemy, whether a type of political group, or a group who is widely disdained by society, I don’t want you to tell me, but I can guess that in this room the one you don’t like is anyone from George Bush to covered Muslims to undocumented immigrants. And Jesus points to that very person as the one the lawyer should be learning from. The lawyer’s original question is, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” and here, Jesus, answers through this parable that eternal life lies in acting like the Samaritan. The key to eternal life lies in learning from his enemy.
In effect, what Jesus does is humanize someone who had been written off. I think about the way we use words to demonize the Other, like the term “Okies” in John Steinbeck’s classic the Grapes of Wrath that justified harsh treatment of the dustbowl refugees, or the term “Polak” in my hometown that promoted the stereotype that Polish people were stupid, or “Japs” during the second world war that made the Japanese seem less-than and made it ok for thousands of Japanese immigrants to no longer be neighbors and be carted off and placed in internment camps. We toss words like this around still today to make certain people seem less than human. But when the beaten man receives help from the Samaritan, the enemy becomes a human being. Marilyn Salmon wrote that, “When you experience life-saving mercy, otherness ceases.” Jesus’ comments to ‘go and do likewise’ is an invitation to find the humanity in the ones you have demonized and written off. In them, he told the lawyer, lies your salvation.
If you’ve ever read the work of Martin Luther King Jr., you know that he did a lot of writing about his white brothers and sisters. He said that his work to bring justice for African-Americans in the South was not just about their own need for equality, but about the need for whites to recognize that racism was also hurting them spiritually. To not recognize the divine presence in black children of God was akin to idolatry. He aimed to bring justice to African-Americans because while one group was oppressed, the rest cannot be whole. The divisions in society are cause for deep wounds that God desires to heal by helping us recognize that we are already one in Christ. We are already all human, who struggle with the same emotions, the same need to feed our children, and the rain falls on the wheat and weeds equally. In this parable of Jesus and in the work of prophets like Martin Luther King Jr., we are invited not to scapegoat the other, but to look into their eyes of the other, to listen to their stories, and join together in the work of healing.
It’s when we acknowledge our common humanity that we can truly encounter each other and work for the healing of the world that God so desires. Lilla Watson, an aboriginal activist in Australia, said this to her white sisters and brothers, “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” Jesus reminds us that the salvation of the world is bound up with the salvation of the poor, of the creation itself, the redemption of the rich and powerful, of the beaten and the war-scarred.
Maybe we should call this parable “the tale of the unlikely neighbor.” I imagine our current interpretation will endure, but this story has been enriched for me this year. David Henson wrote a beautiful blog about this lesson, and I will leave you with his closing words:
We are each the beaten one on the roadside, in need of salvation from our enemies.
We are each the Samaritan, with the power to save our enemies by loving them.
In other words, this parable asks us to do the unthinkable.
It asks us to heal and to be healed by our enemies, our neighbors, our sisters and brothers.
It asks us to live an eternal life today.
It asks us to live on earth as it is in heaven.
For this unthinkable and incredible invitation, I say thanks be to God, Amen.
Sources:
Mark Allan Powell. What do they hear: Bridging the Gap between pulpit and pew.
David Henson’s blog: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davidhenson/2013/07/jesus-doesnt-want-you-to-be-a-good-samaritan-lectionary-reflection-for-proper-10c/
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