5th Sunday after Pentecost
Text: Luke 10:25-37
Pastor Jean M. Hansen
This parable of Jesus – often titled The Good Samaritan - is so familiar that the word “Samaritan” is now used for someone who offers care and compassion to strangers. Most people do not know that in Jesus’ day a Samaritan was an enemy of the Jews, an outcast who distorted the faith and was to be avoided at all costs.
But, before we get to the Samaritan, lets look at the Lawyer who approaches Jesus asking, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He’s not a lawyer in the contemporary sense, but a religious man who has studied the Jewish faith and scripture and can offer complex commentary on God’s rules for life. He parses rules, commands, statutes and laws, so that the life of faith adds up to doing certain things a certain way and not doing other things. His question of Jesus is a way to see if this Rabbi is on the right track or to make sure he himself is, or both.
In response to his question, Jesus asks for his assessment of the Law, and the Lawyer proclaims the verse that is considered to summarize the whole law of God, “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.” An answer which Jesus affirms. But the Lawyer no doubt is aware that there are people he has not loved as a neighbor, so he wants to determine just exactly who is a neighbor, hoping that those he has ignored or treated poorly are not among them. So, his next question is, “Who is my neighbor?”
Author Frederick Buechner has written a wonderful description of what the Lawyer might have hoped to hear. “Very well: henceforth a neighbor (hereafter referred to as the party of the first part) shall be defined as meaning a person of Jewish decent whose legal residence is within radius of no more than three statute miles from one’s own legal residence, unless there is another person of Jewish descent (hereafter 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 a the neighbor to the party of the first part and one is then relieved of the responsibility of any kind to the matters hereunto appertaining” (1)
Instead, Jesus tells a story about a nameless man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, which was a notoriously dangerous route, who was attacked, robbed and left for dead on the side of the road. This suffering one is ignored by two fellow Jews, a priest and a Levite, who upon seeing him pass by on the other side, no doubt having come up with reasons to justify not helping this victim of violence, a person in great need.
Then the Samaritan comes along, sees the man, and is moved with pity. (At this point we can imagine that the people listening to Jesus’ story have gasped in dismay, since the Samaritan is considered the least likely to do what is commanded by God.) Not only does the Samaritan stop to help, he goes above and beyond, treating the man’s wounds, hauling him up onto his own animal and taking him to an inn where he further ministers to him and pays the innkeeper to care for man until he returns, promising to reimburse him for any additional expenses.
This is astounding; the Samaritan who no one else in the story, including the injured man and the Lawyer asking the question, would have wanted to have as a neighbor is the righteous one, the neighbor.
In this parable Jesus makes it clear that the only parameter for who is our neighbor is need. The person who needs someone to show compassion, who needs help, who needs healing, who needs support, is our neighbor. But, Jesus concludes, the thing that is even more important than figuring out who is a neighbor is to be one.
Now I want to tell you a story about being a neighbor, and as I do so, it’s important that you focus not on the one needing help, but on those who acted as neighbors. When I was in London in May, a few hours before I was going to the airport to fly to my next destination, I turned my ankle attempting to catch a bus, fell, and received quite a jolt when my head hit the concrete of the street. I wasn’t knocked out, but laid there for a moment, clutching my credit card to pay the bus fare. I soon discovered that my head was bleeding. That’s when two people on the street became my Samaritans. Let me jump ahead to tell you that the episode ended with me boarding the plane on time with a tender head and a very painful bruised or cracked rib, but otherwise OK.
That’s the short version … but I want to take a moment more to draw your focus away from all that to the Samaritans, the unexpected Samaritans who just happened to be on the street that day. The woman was named Sache; she helped me sit up, move and find a place to sit, while asking questions that showed she knew something about first aid. She stopped the bleeding from the wound in my head. It’s note-worthy (embarrassingly so) that her appearance might have caused me to ignore her had I encountered her on the street because I would have seen only the facial tattoos and not her kind eyes and calming manner. I later learned that she’s a musician and singer. This woman, nearly 30 years younger than me, called me “luv”, got my blood on her hands, exaggerated the situation to the ambulance dispatcher to get the paramedics to arrive more quickly and then listened to my reasoning when I asked her to cancel the ambulance. She made me laugh and she defined compassion.
The man, possibly an African immigrant, whose name I did not learn, was staffing some enterprise that I would have walked around quickly as he tried to drum up business. He called the ambulance, found the water and towels that Sache used to stop the bleeding, and asked kind questions.
They gave me time and loving attention and would not take the money I tried to give them when we parted. They knew nothing about me other than that I needed help, and I would not have expected them to help me. They were neighbors to me; I had to ask myself, would I have done the same for them? I will not forget them.
“Go and do likewise”, Jesus said. They did. AMEN
(1) “Luke 10:25-37 Commentary” by Scott Hoezee, July 14, 2019, www.cepreaching.org