Sermon, July 15, 2007 -- Luke 10:25-37

“Neighborly Gestures” (Luke 10:25-37)
Rick Olson, July 15 2007

What can we say about this story? It’s been preached and taught and wrangled over in the life of every church. The phrase “Good Samaritan” has come to mean someone who donates time on the weekends to help out down at the shelter, or who gives up her Saturdays four weeks in a row to build habitat houses. Somebody who gives money to the orphans, food to the food bank, and cans to the can bank. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of this. Without volunteers and charitable donations, life for the poor would be worse than it is. But lending a helping hand isn’t what this parable is about. And to see that, you have to begin with the lawyer, and his first question to Jesus.

He’s called a lawyer in the NRSV, and that’s not a bad translation – what he was was an expert in the law, maybe a teacher, maybe a priest, and you have to remember that in those days, there wasn’t any difference between civil law and religious law. At the time, law was law was law. So, as a practitioner of the law, lawyer is as good a translation as any. And the guy comes up to Jesus, and asks a question to test his honor “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Well, Jesus knew that it was a test, and that was OK . . . the guy was just doing his job, after all, and he wasn’t particularly belligerent. Jesus had just gotten through making some pretty big claims about his authority – which translates to civil authority, remember – and about the kingdom of God, which he said he’d come to proclaim. Jesus had just gotten finished saying “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” And this must’ve seemed pretty outrageous to the lawyer, who taught Torah in the temple and knew it backward and forward. It’s outrageous, and yet . . . intriguing . . . and so he asks a question about this kingdom, asks him about how he, personally, can get into that eternal place, how he can inherit the Kingdom of God. And Jesus answers him with a another question, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” and now the lawyer’s on the spot, it’s his honor that’s at stake, and so he answers with an answer that’s above reproach, he quotes from Deuteronomy, from that part of the book known as the shema: “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 to top it off, he adds a little snippet from Leviticus: “and your neighbor as yourself.” There, the lawyer thought – “that oughta hold him.”

But Jesus says “You have given the right answer – do this, and you will live.” and the lawyer’s face reddens, for he’s been bested by Jesus. He asked this itinerant preacher a question to test his knowledge, and he’d turned it around made him answer his own question! And then, like a child, he was told to go do it, as if reading about it wasn’t enough, and that stung just a little bit, for wasn’t that just the lawyer’s job? Reading and studying the Torah? And so his pride required him to ask another question, and he knew just the one “Just who is my neighbor?” he asks. “Who are the ones I’m supposed to love?”

And as Jesus launches into a story, the lawyer listens carefully – storytelling was a time-honored way of making a point in rabbinical circles. “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho,” Jesus says, and immediately the lawyer notes on the vagueness, the ambiguity of that description. It wasn’t a “A Jew was going down the Jericho Road” or “A gentile” or “A Roman” but just “a man,” and thus the man represents everyone, not any specific group. And the lawyer knows very well how dangerous the road from Jerusalem to Jericho is – it drops 3200 feet in just 17 miles, it’s rough and rocky, and infested with bandits, and sure enough, the man was set upon by them, stripped and beaten, and left half-dead. And Jesus says “by chance, a priest was going down the road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.” And the lawyer shakes his head – A priest who didn’t do his duty. The Torah was clear – At the very least, the priest should have stopped and buried him if he was dead, who for all he knew was dead . . . Again he shakes his head . . . that’s the problem with young priests today. They just don’t want to be bothered . . .

Jesus continues his story, and a Levite’s the next passer-by, A Levite . . . for Pete’s sake . . . a temple functionary by birthright. Surely he won’t pass the poor man by . . . But he does, and it’s the second time a person whose job it is to stop has walked right on by . . . if they’d only stopped, the man would be rescued, his life would be saved. And a part of the lawyer is right there, on that hot, dusty road, a part of him hears the flies buzzing around his open wounds, feels their tickle against his flesh, a part of him sees the red blood seeping onto the ground, and it’s his blood, and his wounds, and his groaning from the terrible pain. But a part of him sits back and admired the artistry of Jesus’ storytelling, like a novelist who can get into a colleague’s story and admire her technique at the same time. First, a priest comes along, and doesn’t do anything, and next a Levite, one of the hereditary priestly caste, and so the second example builds on the first, it intensifies the point – here two priests, first a run-of-the-mill ordinary old priest, and then a Levite, a super-priest, and still no help for the helpless . . . and story-telling conventions require that the third time’s the charm that on the third repetition, the exception that makes the point is heard . . . and so the lawyer knows what comes next, who the next person to come along would be. He’ll be the man who helps the helpless man, and further, he’ll be an ordinary Jew, not a priest, because the priests wouldn’t stop, and to that ordinary Jew, the helpless man will be his neighbor.

And the lawyer is so in tune with the story and its technique that the next line comes as a shock, it catches him completely by surprise, as if somebody had snuck up behind him and hit up the side of the head. Instead of the good, pious, observant Jew, the model of the story is a Samaritan, an outsider, an unclean descendant of unnatural relations between Northern Jews and Assyrian women, if you know what I mean. A Samaritan, whose people are anathema in the temple, exiled and outside the pale, and unclean to Israelite eyes. A Samaritan, the ultimate fall guy, the ultimate outsider. And Jesus lays it on thick – he says that the Samaritan slathered oil and wine on his wounds, loaded him up on his own donkey, and carried him to the innkeeper, and spent two denarii – two days wages – and promised more. The Samaritan goes out of his way to help the man in the road, goes over and above the call of duty, when the lawyers own people, those with the most advanced, compassionate faith in the world, crossed to the other side. In one fell swoop, Jesus has challenged the lawyer’s notion of who’s who in the world, who was moral, who was worthy who was good, but that isn’t the end of the tale – there’s one more twist in the story, because once again, Jesus fires the lawyer’s own question right back at him, but this time it’s been transformed – because while the lawyer asked who is my neighbor, who do I have to love, to whom do I have to show compassion, befriend, help out, Jesus turns it inside out – “Which of the three,” he asks, do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He turned the definition of neighbor from one who receives compassion and friendship to one who gives it.

And immediately, the lawyer is back in that ditch with the helpless traveler, looking up into the face of the hated Samaritan, and it’s the Samaritan who has the role of favored fortunate who helps the less fortunate. It’s the Samaritan who has the power. And he can’t get around the logic of the story, the argument’s persuasive, air-tight. Who was the neighbor to the man in the ditch? He had to answer: “The one who showed him mercy” And like bitter icing on a cake, not only is a Samaritan the good guy in the story, but he’s commended to the lawyer, as a model, an example. “Go and do likewise,” Jesus says. In a final insult, the Jew is told to go and be like a Samaritan.

We call this the parable of the “Good Samaritan,” and that carries a boat-load of unconscious irony . . . How does the racist saying go? About the only good Indian? That's part of the shock of this story for the lawyer . . . the idea that there could be a “good Samaritan.” The enmity and divisions between the Jews and the Samaritans are along racial, political, religious and social lines. In Palestinian society, boundaries between different kinds of people were much more out-in-the-open than they are in ours . . . and they just didn't get crossed. There were boundaries between social classes, political classes and religious classes. Artisan’s didn’t eat with merchants, merchants didn’t shmooze with delivery men, and everybody hated tax collectors . . . For Jews, it was anathema to eat or otherwise have social congress with outsiders . . . for a Jew to go to dinner with a gentile would be like a Klansman going out for a beer with a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. And Samaritans were the ultimate gentiles, the poster-children for the outsider, and Jesus up and makes one the hero of his tale, and it totally blows the lawyer away . . .

Remember his first question? The one that started it all? “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” The lawyer was asking how he has to behave to live in the kingdom of God. And Jesus made him answer it himself, “Love God with all your heart, mind and soul, and your neighbor as yourself . . .” A good and proper answer – just what the Torah says. But it’s the answer to the second question – just who is my neighbor – that’s radical. It’s the neighbor who showed the love, the neighbor who’s compassionate and in this case, that neighbor is a hated Samaritan. And if a Samaritan is the neighbor – and one who obeys the Torah, no less – maybe the kingdom of God is just a little bigger, and just a little more inclusive than the lawyer had thought.

Phillip Yancey wrote a book called “What's So Amazing About Grace?” Now I haven't read it, and I'm sure Yancey has a lot of things to say about the subject, because grace is pretty amazing, but it seems to me that the parable of the helpful Samaritan nails one amazing thing right on the head – it shows how totally unexpected grace can be, how totally out of left field it often comes. Who would have thunk it? A Samaritan, outside the pale of respectable folk, unclean, probably on the dole, maybe even doing drugs . . . sharing needles . . . an agent of God's grace. The fact of the matter is, God's grace is at work outside the walls of our safe religious houses, outside in the world, within and through the most surprising folks.

Who are our Samaritans? In whom do we least expect the kingdom of God? Maybe it’s a drug-addled biker . . . or a convicted rapist. How about a crack addict, or a wife-beater or a street hustler?

The amazing thing about God's grace is that it's totally wild, totally unforeseen, totally free . . . And it's at work in our world right now, in unexpected ways, and through incredible people. And if we ask God the lawyer's question – who is our neighbor, who is it that's doing God's work, who is a vessel of God's grace – we'd better be prepared for the answer, we'd better be prepared to be as shocked as he was on that fine Jerusalem day, when he was given a lesson on just who belongs in the kingdom of God. Amen.