Grace Presbyterian Church
July 10, 2016, Pentecost 8C
Luke 10:25-37
Samaritans
It is such a
familiar story, what’s a pastor to do with it?
It is maybe the
most well-known parable Jesus told, rivaled only by the parable of the prodigal
son. It’s a full-fledged story, with plot and development and conflict and all
the good stuff that makes a story compelling enough to hear.
Well, one thing we
can do is back up and remind ourselves that the story didn’t just come out of
thin air; Jesus is – cue the dramatic music – being interrogated. By a lawyer.
The lawyer is, as
Luke tells the story, testing Jesus. Throughout the different gospels different
parties at different times do just that, trying to trap Jesus in some kind of
bind that would either set him up to be found in error theologically or cause
him to fall out of favor with the people. The lawyer (who is not the kind of
lawyer we think of nowadays, but should be assumed to be an interpreter of the
law) here seems to be probing Jesus for some kind of theological misstep about
the commandments.
Instead, Jesus
turns the question on his interrogator, who could hardly get away with
declining to answer – it was his job to answer questions about the law. When he
did so, and did so appropriately, Jesus more or less congratulated him and
invited him to go his way in peace and security. This of course left the lawyer
stewing in the same kind of humiliation that Jesus’s would-be interlocutors
typically endured; their questioning turned against them, their duplicity
exposed. But in this case the lawyer can’t leave well enough alone, and – using
a long-favored legal tactic – tries to recover himself by questioning the
terminology in the answer: “And who is
my neighbor?”
The novelist and
Presbyterian pastor Frederick Buechner offers this take on the lawyer and his
question:
He presumably wanted something on the order of: "A
neighbor (hereinafter referred to as the party of the first part) is to be
construed as meaning a person of Jewish descent whose legal residence is within
a radius of no more than three statute miles from one's own legal residence
unless there is another person of Jewish descent (hereinafter to be referred to
as the party of the second part) living closer to the party of the first part
than one is oneself, in which case the party of the second part is to be
construed as neighbor to the party of the first part and one is oneself
relieved of all responsibility of any sort or kind whatsoever."
Instead Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, the
point of which seems to be that your neighbor is to be construed as meaning
anybody who needs you. The lawyer's response is left unrecorded.
Well, not that I
want to be in the position of questioning a Pulitzer Prize nominee like
Buechner, but one small part of the lawyer’s response actually is recorded for us. And it’s a pretty
revealing answer.
Upon finishing the
parable, Jesus again turns on his would-be interrogator. Having told the story
in which a Samaritan steps up, above and beyond the call of duty, to aid a badly
wounded man who had been passed over by members of the religious elite, he
again questions the lawyer, asking him to identify which of the three travelers
in the story had been a neighbor to the wounded traveler. Do pay attention to
the lawyer’s response:
“The one who showed him mercy.”
On one level, of
course, the lawyer has answered rightly. Now the way the Greek is constructed
in this particular sentence, a more literal translation would read something
like “the one who did mercy to him.”
That’s actually a theologically superior way to put it, if not so wonderful
grammatically. “Mercy”, like so many of the loaded theological words we use, is
active. It’s not a feeling or emotion
or empathetic reaction. Mercy is, even if English doesn’t quite capture it,
something you do. And this traveler
had in deed “done mercy” to the wounded man, unmistakably so. And Jesus’s
answer to the lawyer acknowledges this, as he leaves him with the command “Go and do likewise.”
But notice the
lawyer’s answer again, even in the theologically superior but grammatically
awkward version:
“The one who did mercy to him.”
The three passing
travelers in this story didn’t get names, but they did get pretty clear
identifiers that Jesus’s listeners would have immediately recognized. One was a
priest, a religious authority, and the second was a Levite, a member of that
tribe set apart since Moses’s time for service in the Temple. Two figures to
whom would be attributed qualities of righteousness as a part of their standing
among the people.
The third man was
a Samaritan. And the lawyer couldn’t even say the word.
In the time of
Elijah and Elisha, the prophets who figured into the scriptures and sermons the
past few weeks, Samaria was simply a region of Israel, the northern of the two kingdoms
that had resulted from the machinations of those who succeeded Solomon as king
after his death (the other kingdom was Judah, which was centered in Jerusalem).
The city of Samaria sometimes served as the seat of government of that northern
kingdom. By the time of today’s story, though, all of the region is simply
lumped into a larger Roman province called Palestine. Yet over the centuries a
virulent schism had erupted between those Jews whose worship was centered on
the Temple in Jerusalem and the Samaritans, who were, technically, Jews, but
whose practice had evolved to worship on Mount Gerizim in their own territory,
a site which they claimed was the original holy place in Israel, dating to the
time of Joshua, as opposed to Jerusalem, which only became prominent during the
era of King David. In short, a disagreement over what might seem to outsiders
an arcane theological point had become a hard-and-fast schism, with Jerusalem
Jews literally going out of their way to avoid even passing through the region
of Samaria, much less actually having anything to do with Samaritans.
For Jesus to
invoke the third, merciful traveler as a Samaritan, no doubt provoked agitated
bristling, and probably an oath or two, among his listeners. That’s if they
were a well-behaved group.
It was a two-sided
provocation that Jesus put before his listeners. By no means would any
self-respecting Jew of what we might call the Jerusalem party even think of
defiling himself by dealing with a Samaritan at all; being a neighbor to a Samaritan
was out of the question. At the same time, no such self-respecting Jew would
conceive of a Samaritan being a neighbor to a Jew. It would never happen, they might say, the way a plantation
overseer of the 1850s might say that a member of the same skin color as the
slaves he ruled over would never be President of the United States.
Such was the
vitriol that our lawyer couldn’t even vocalize that “the one who did mercy” could even possibly be a Samaritan.
It’s easy enough
for us to grasp the main point of the parable, and to apply to it Frederick
Buechner’s point that a neighbor is basically anybody who needs you. But it’s
not always easy or comfortable to get Jesus’s point that “anybody” really does
mean anybody. We aren’t prepared to
give up our grudges, our ancient hostilities, our prejudices or superior
attitudes or whatever ruses we use to divide ourselves and keep ourselves set
apart from and above others. It would
never happen. It can’t happen.
I won’t let it happen.
Our society is
pretty good at demeaning and dehumanizing “the other.”
The world out
there calls them job-stealers and threatens to build a great big wall, never
mind who’s going to pick all those tomatoes and strawberries in south Florida.
People call them
terrorists and threaten to bar them from the country, even if they’re citizens,
never mind that they are the ones that the actual terrorists kill first, as
witness events in Baghdad and Medina in recent weeks.
Or they just call
them thugs when they get shot, whether they be black man or police officer.
Jonathan Tuma or Steve Weaver.
And Jesus says we
can’t be part of that. Jesus says that’s your neighbor. If they need you, if
they need your help or your care or your compassion, that’s your neighbor.
Jesus has this
nasty habit of not caring one whit about our preferences or prejudices or whatnot.
The world says “but Jesus, they’re…”
and Jesus cuts us off and finishes the sentence “your neighbor.” Society protests “but he’s a…” and Jesus won’t let us finish, but says “the one you should imitate.” See, the
kingdom of God doesn’t honor those divisions we create. The kingdom of God sees
need and moves to meet it. End of discussion. If we want to claim to be part of
that kingdom of God, we’d better move that way too.
Which one … was a neighbor to the man who
fell among the thieves?
The one who did mercy to him.
Go and do likewise.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Hymns
(from Glory to God: The Presbyterian
Hymnal)
#63 The
Lord is God
#351 All
Who Love and Serve Your City
#203 Jesu,
Jesu, Fill Us With Your Love
#766 The
Church of Christ Cannot Be Bound
Yup.
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