Pentecost 5 C: What the Good Samaritan Teaches us About God

Posted by DJL on Jul 12, 2019 in Dear Partner | 7 comments

Luke 10:25-37

Dear Partner in Preaching,

I’ll admit that this has never been my favorite parable (and that I feel no small measure of guilt about that).

Maybe it’s because this is one of those passages that is so well known, so famous, everyone already thinks they know what it means and so it’s hard to find a fresh angle.

Or maybe it’s the way this parable has leapt off the pages of the Bible and into popular culture – think of the laws after Princess Diana’s death or the final episode of Seinfeld referencing the same – which makes it a surprisingly complicated passage to preach.

Or maybe it’s because it has too often been boiled down to a quaint moralism where “good Samaritan” equates being a do-gooder and thereby has been reduced to endorsing simple, often private, moral acts rather than more systemic action. A former colleague of mine, for instance, said that in today’s world it wouldn’t be enough to tend the man’s wounds but we would want to make sure the road between Jerusalem and Jericho was well lit and that the communities around it had sufficient economic opportunity so as to deter crime. Similarly, Martin Luther King, Jr. offers the possibility that the good Samaritan deserves greater scrutiny as one who “was concerned merely with temporary relief, not with thorough reconstruction. He sought to sooth the effects of evil, without going back to uproot the causes.”

Or maybe it’s way the parable lends itself to fairly obvious and therefore less-than-helpful dichotomies: priest and Levi, bad; Samaritan, good. King again is creatively suggestive, asking what if the “Levite was on his way to Jerico to make a survey of crime in the vicinity, and perhaps the priest was en route to Jerusalem to serve on the National Committee for the Improvement of Public Highways” and therefore had good reason to hurry.

Or maybe it’s all of this and more. Whatever the case, I’ve typically approached this passage with a low but persistent sense of reluctance. But this time around, two elements of the parable stood out that I’d not noticed before and have shifted how I think about preaching it.

First, I tend to think that the guy in the ditch is “my neighbor.” And I think there’s good reason for that. After all, the whole story is in response to the lawyer’s question, “who is my neighbor.” And Jesus confronts him with the need to define neighbor not in terms of proximity (the person next door) or tribe (the person like me), but rather the person in need. That interpretation remains both useful and important, as it calls us to put another’s needs above all other considerations, something that seems sorely lacking from contemporary debate on all manner of issues.

The closing lines of the exchange between Jesus and the lawyer challenge that as the only interpretation, however. “Which of these three,” Jesus asks, “do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” And the lawyer responds, “The one who showed him mercy.” Suddenly it’s not just the person in need who is our neighbor, but the person who responds to our need, even – and maybe especially – if it’s not someone we expected to respond or even want to respond. That’s the edge, of course, of having a Samaritan act as a neighbor. Could/would the lawyer accept help from the Samaritan, someone he’d been raised to despise? Could/would we?

Jesus’ twist on the directional force of the story – we assume right up to the end it’s about us helping others, when suddenly it’s about us being helped by others – creates a vision of greater mutuality that perhaps I’d realized. Jesus is inviting us, that is, to identify with each other primarily in terms of our vulnerability and shared human need rather than any external distinctions or circumstances. Whether giving help or receiving it, whether in the position of need or abundance, we are bound to each other in our vulnerability and mortality. What matters is that we are human, not what tribe or party or group or any other distinction that may matter to us but can’t be used to reduce our very humanness, our status as children of God and kin and kindred with each other.

The second thing I noticed is another shift. The lawyer asks, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And when he responds to Jesus’ question by quoting Scripture – love God and neighbor – Jesus says, “Do this and you will live.” Live. As in now, this moment. Jesus doesn’t say, “you will inherit eternal life,” or “live forever” or “eternally,” or “join me in heaven” or “experience eternal bliss,” or any of a hundred things he could have said that would parallel the lawyer’s question. Rather, he says simply, “Do this and you will live.” Which makes me think that life – kingdom life, life in and through the reign of God – isn’t something to possess or strive for or covet or earn but it something to be, well, lived, acted out, embraced right now. To live in the kingdom of God is to see others with compassion, to see others as fellow members of God’s kingdom and family, to see others in terms of how we are all joined by our need, our possibility, and our shared dependence on God’s grace and each other.

So how does this not still devolve into simple, or even complex or expansive, moralism? Perhaps it’s worth noting what a different picture of God this offers. The God to whom Jesus witnesses isn’t defined first and foremost by God’s power, or might, or need for praise, but rather by God’s concern that we treat each other well, that we help each other flourish, that we live together in mutual care for one another right here and now. God is less a ruler than a parent, less law-giver than lover, less a rule-enforcer than one who desires all things good for God’s children. And perhaps Jesus’ entire ministry – including his death on the cross – was to demonstrate God’s tremendous love for us and God’s burning desire that we similarly love each other.

Given how many people think of God as remote, as concerned more about private morality than public flourishing, as needing a bloody death to satisfy some perverse sense of justice… Given all that, the picture of God as a parent who desires that God’s children treat each other with dignity, compassion, and respect seems to me, Dear Partner, to be good news.

Blessings on your proclamation this week and always.
Yours in Christ,
David