Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
Preached on January 26, 2020 at Davis Community Church, Davis, California, here’s a meditation on Luke 10.25-37 and Chief Seattle (“We know this: all things are bound up in each other like the blood that binds the family.”
From this unconventional reading of the text, I wonder what would happen if we were to stay curious, if we were to look for and point out and honor and celebrate the good we find in those who seem so different from ourselves; if we can know them as sisters and brothers . . . kin . . . family . . . the neighbor God calls us to love as much as we love ourselves, as our very selves . . . if we were to practice curiosity rather than criticism, if we were to name and honor and celebrate their virtues, then we could build bridges rather than walls, we would find ways to cross over into one another’s lives, and we’ll heal our wounded humanity.
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1.
In the Gospel of Luke, the Parable of the Good Samaritan is set in the middle of ethnic, racial, political, and religious tension. The overall purpose of the literary art we call The Gospel of Luke is to present the way of Jesus as a way to heal our humanity, to tear down the walls that separate us, to help us find harmony and wholeness. Luke wants us to know that Jesus is not a parochial prophet whose purpose is to re-establish the power of the Jewish people; Jesus, for Luke, is not a religiously-oriented politician whose goal is to reconstitute the nation of Israel.
Jesus, says Luke, preaches the Kingdom of God. But God’s Kingdom can never be identified with any existing political power, it will never be cozy with a king, or with a provincial kingdom or nation. The Kingdom Jesus knows is more like a kin-dom, more of a commonwealth made up of a diverse people in relationship with one another, living and working together for the common good.
Luke’s purpose is to show that Jesus heals not only our personal wounds, but our societal ones as well. Luke wrote his Gospel to show the relevance of Jesus to the social problems of the world, the tensions that are tearing us apart, hurting our humanity, wounding the world. The way of Jesus, he believes (and so do I), is one way we can help heal our wounded humanity, the way of Jesus works for the wellbeing of the world.
2.
The Parable of the Good Samaritan comes as the climax to a larger section of Luke’s Gospel that tells the story of Jesus’ journey from Galilee in the north to Jerusalem in the south. It’s a journey that will take Jesus through Samaria, a land inhabited by a people whose racial-ethnic and religious heritage is considered by many Jews of his day as inferior to their own.
Through the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke shows Jesus undermining any sense of racial, ethnic, religious or any other kind of supremacy some people might think they posses over others.
The way of Jesus is always a way that makes room for the “other.” The way of Jesus is always a way that remains immensely curious about the “other.” The way of Jesus is a way of naming, honoring, and celebrating the good that always exists in the “other.”
What might happen in our world if we were to practice curiosity rather than criticism, if we were to create habits of looking for the good in others, even when it seems hard to find? What might happen in our families and schools and workplaces if we bucked the current trend of incivility, suspicion, blaming and name-calling and, instead, called out about the good we see in others, the beauty of their lives, and the gifts of our diversity?
If we follow in the way of Jesus, says Luke, we will find a way to cross over the artificial edifices that we erect, dividing the kin-dom of God, harming our humanity, and wounding the world.
3.
Usually, the Parable of the Good Samaritan is interpreted as an encounter between Jesus and a Jewish religious scholar whose bias and prejudice needed to be exposed and whose bigotry needed to be shamed.
That conventional interpretation goes something like this—
A lawyer stands up to test Jesus. That shouldn’t sound surprising. With the President’s impeachment trial looming over us, we’re familiar with one side trying to discredit the other. So it is in this confrontation. “Lawyer” is our word for the biblical word, “scribe,” who is an expert on Jewish religious law—in other words, the man’s a Jewish religious expert.
The expert challenges Jesus over the true interpretation of a doctrinal issue. The expert wants to trap Jesus, and, by doing so, shame him in front of the crowds. If the expert can prove his own religious superiority, he can then prove Jesus’ inferiority and by doing so, sour the crowds on this pretender who seems to endanger the way things are.
According to the usual interpretation, Jesus sees through the trap and then tells the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and by doing so Jesus traps and shames the Jewish expert instead, and exposes his religious, ethnic and racial bigotry.
This is a useful way to interpret the text. Our bigotries need to be unmasked, but do we need to be shamed for holding them? Shame, frankly, is a poor motivator for personal transformation. Shame rarely changes the heart. Instead, shame usually builds greater resistances. When we’re shamed, few of us change. Instead, we dig in and look for a way to retaliate.
And so, shame gives birth to anger, and anger gives birth to retaliation, and retaliation perpetuates the trouble that plagues us.
So, I want to interpret this story differently, unconventionally—because our times require something new; what we’ve always done and believed isn’t working.
I want to move beyond the usual use of the text that wants to point out our bigotries and shame us into crossing over toward people who are different from us. Instead, I want to inspire a more creative and integrative approach to the healing of our humanity—an approach I think is more in line with Jesus. As I have come to know Jesus, I don’t see Jesus using shame against us. Whenever Jesus finds shame in a person, he liberates them from it; he never traps them in it. Shame maybe be a common manipulative tool for most of us, but it isn’t the way of Jesus.
4.
I think it’s quite possible that the lawyer who comes to Jesus wasn’t a Jewish expert, but a Samaritan one. The Samaritans had scribes too, just like the Jews. And I think there’s a telling clue for this interpretation at the end of chapter nine, where we find the only geographic indicator in this larger section of Luke’s Gospel.
At the end of chapter nine, Jesus is traveling south toward Jerusalem. Messengers have gone ahead to prepare the Samaritan villages for the visit of this popular Jewish peasant healer and teacher. But the Samaritan villagers say, “No thanks. Jews don’t like us; we don’t like Jews. Didn’t you see the sign at the border: ‘No Jews allowed’?”
Jesus is not welcome here, but Jesus doesn’t see their hostility; he sees their common humanity.
What follows in the tenth chapter of Luke is devoted to what’s called “the mission of the seventy.” Jesus sends out seventy of his followers in pairs to be bearers of peace. It’s a mission of peace in a hostile setting. Jesus says to those he sends, “Go on your way. I am sending you out like lambs in the midst of wolves. The world needs peace, but don’t expect them to buy it. Too many of your sisters and brothers are still captive to discord and division, hatred and hostility. But blessed are any who happen to see a new vision of peace and are brave enough to enter it.”
Jesus and his followers are traveling through Samaria, preaching peace, trying to pull down walls, heal the divisions that keep humanity wounded and broken.
Just then, a religious expert, a Samaritan religious expert, comes to test Jesus. More hostility. Another rejection of the offer of peace. The expert wants to show why Jews and Samaritans can’t get along, why Jesus shouldn’t be there in Samaria preaching a peace that can’t exist between peoples.
But Jesus finds common ground between the two different peoples. “Your people and my people agree,” he tells the expert, “the way to the fullness of life is to ‘Love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind; we are to love our neighbor as our self.”
Still unable to reach across the wall, maybe afraid of what bringing down the wall may require of him, the Samaritan expert says, “Alright, then, who is my neighbor?”
He expects Jesus to say, “The neighbor is anyone who’s Jewish.”
Instead, Jesus tells a story: ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a Jewish priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’
And the Samaritan religious expert replied, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ That is, the Samaritan man who crossed over the line separating the peoples because he saw only their common humanity.
And Jesus said, ’Go and do likewise.’
5.
What has Jesus done? He models the way to build a bridge between peoples.
The Samaritan expert wanted to show why Jews and Samaritans can’t get along, why Jesus, a Jew, shouldn’t be there in Samaria preaching a peace that can’t exist between peoples. A false peace. A utopian peace. A peace that would require him to love big, risk big—bigger than he’d ever loved or risked before.
Jesus found the common ground between two peoples, and he went even further—he named and honored and celebrated the good he saw in the other. The Samaritans showed him hostility. But Jesus didn’t return it. Instead, he looked for, and found, the good in the other. He named the beauty that he saw among the poor villagers of Samaria, the way they cared for each other when they weren’t driven by their fears, the compassion he knew lived within them. And so, he made the Samaritans the heroes of his story. He named the virtues of a people others considered enemies. I think he knew the principle that “people will generally live up to the exceptions we have for them.” The saying’s not always true, but it’s more true than we give it credit for.
We are, whether we’ll see it or not, kin . . . family. And if we don’t learn to lean into that reality, if we don’t cross over into each other’s lives, we’ll all suffer, and the earth with us.
But if we stay curious, if we look for and point out and honor and celebrate the good we find in those who seem so different from ourselves; if we can know them as sisters and brothers . . . kin . . . family . . . the neighbor God calls us to love as much as we love ourselves, as our very selves . . . if we can practice curiosity rather than criticism, if we can name and honor and celebrate their virtues, then we will build bridges rather than walls, we will find ways to cross over into one another’s lives, and we’ll heal our wounded humanity.
Let us, in the silence now, bring to mind someone who may be like the Samaritan was to Jesus, someone we could easily turn into an “other” we can dismiss or even despise; let us pray for the spiritual gift of a genuine curiosity that’ll bridge the gap between you, and help heal our common humanity.
[Silence]
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Note: in the next section in Luke’s Gospel, the story of Mary and Martha, this theme continues. Luke reinforces the teaching by showing that Jesus names another “people” who suffered from being “othered”—that is, women. He names, honors, and celebrates the good he sees in women and tears down another wall that divides humanity. But I ran out of time for exposition of this example of the way Jesus continues to cross over barriers and divisions that wound our humanity.