Calling this character the "good" Samaritan is not a choice that Jesus makes, it is the choice of the translators and the interpreters of the text. However, it has become so ingrained in our understanding of these words of Jesus, that I have no doubt I will sow confusion by calling it the “Parable of the Priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan” in the previous post.
When Jesus tells the parable, he is building in a few
expectations. One is that the priest and
the Levite (a temple worker) ought to be expected to be those who would tend to
the beaten man. But they pass by on the
other side...was it leaving him for dead or leaving him to die? I
heard an attempt to rationalize their behavior in a sermon once. They left him for dead because a dead body would make them ceremonially unclean and delay their temple duties. The Law of Moses is pretty clear in this matter. It would take a special ceremony and a certain number of days for them to become ritually clean once again, thus impacting their service in the House of the Lord. Thus, this somehow justified their not checking on him, not getting 'involved'.
But Jesus is not telling a parable about ceremonial
cleanliness and uncleanliness. He’s
telling a parable about mercy and about neighbors. The first demonstrating the proof of the
second. And these men, who lead in the
worship and service of God, they both fail the test.
This distinguishes them from the Samaritan who is a Good Neighbor
(just like State Farm…can’t drown out the jingle) because he shows mercy.
But here’s what bugs me.
Jesus chose the Samaritan as the one who shows mercy because Samaritans
are ‘no good’ in the religious understanding of the Jews of Judea and
Samaria. We caught a hint of that when
James and John offered to bring down heaven-fire upon the Samaritan village back in Luke 9 (see posts from
two weeks ago). We also see it in the
story of the Woman of Sychar, or the Woman at the Well, in John 4.
We are surprised that the Samaritan is the Good Guy because
the expectation is that he is not good.
As we are surprised that the priest and the Levite are the Bad Guys, because
the expectation is that they are not bad.
It bugs me how little progress we seem to have made on the
understanding of ‘neighbor’. We still
have our “Samaritans”, people judged by something that makes them inherently bad
except and until we can identify the ‘good’ ones. But even more, that there are our “priests”
and “Levites”, people judged by something that makes them inherently good except
and until we can identify the ‘bad’ ones.
And it really bugs me that I have just come around to one of
the wisest sayings in the last century, “I have a dream that my four little
children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the
color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
I do not know what bugs me more, that it took me this long
to come around to something I have heard from Martin Luthor King Jr. for most
of my life, or that we have advanced so pitifully slow in making it reality.
pastor pete
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