Cast Aside?

July 15, 2007     Proper 10 C

Amos 7:7-17             Psalm 82

Colossians 1:1-14         St. Luke 10:25-37

In the Mediterranean world questions are rarely perceived as requests for information. They are almost always viewed with suspicion as a challenge to personal honor. The hope is that the person who is asked a question will not know the answer and be shamed by ignorance. Lest the reader miss the point, Luke explicitly states that the lawyer's intent was to "test" Jesus.

In this seven-scene parable, the Samaritan stands at the center:

1. The robbers strip and leave their victim half dead (v. 30). Now, no one can identify the victim's ethnicity by his garments or his accent, two very common ways of identifying a stranger in antiquity. Helping him carries a risk.

2. The priest, riding a donkey in accord with his elite status, notices the victim and ponders. If the victim is dead or is a non-Judean, the priest would be defiled by touching him and have to return toJerusalem for purification. Those who just saw him gloriously fulfilling his priestly role would now see him returning in shame for purification. The risk is too great. Recalling Sirach 12:1-7, the priest rides on (v. 31).

3. The Levite may have come even closer to examine the victim (v. 32). Even though the road is not straight, the Levite very likely saw the priest's response to the victim from afar. If the priest did not give first aid, why should the Levite? That would be a challenge to the priest, an insult. Moreover, if this victim is one of those who live in Shechem (i.e., a Samaritan), Sirach 50:25-26 reports what God thinks of such. The Levite, too, passes on.

4. The Samaritan is a shocking third character in this story. Listeners would have expected "a Judean layperson." But this hated enemy is the first to feel compassion (v. 33)! The Hebrew word, related to womb, describes an inner gut-feeling.

5. He offers the first aid (wine, oil, and bandages), which the Levite could have done but neglected to do (v. 34). The Samaritan's risk is that this victim might hate him upon re-gaining consciousness. Samaritan wine and oil were considered impure and would have made the (very likely) Judean victim impure too! In a certain sense, the Samaritan in this story line will be  "damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't."

6. The Samaritan then does what the priest might have done but didn't: he places the victim on his animal, takes him to an inn, and continues to care for him (v. 34)

7. Finally, the Samaritan, in contrast to the robbers, promises to return and pay any additional expenses (v. 35). This is perhaps the most foolish part of this story. If the victim should die, his family, who will not be able to find the robbers, may kill his benefactor instead. Or if the victim survives, he may rage at this Samaritan for making him impure with Samaritan wine and oil. It is impossible to underestimate the importance of purity, that is, the determination to "be holy as the Lord is holy" (Lev 11:44 and elsewhere). The thrust of the parable is not lost on the lawyer. Now Jesus thrusts the final shaming question: "Which of the three became a neighbor to the victim?"

Origin, a third Century Church Father interpreted the parable in this way:

     To interpret the parable of the Good Samaritan, one of the elders used to say that the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho was Adam. He said Jerusalem was paradise, Jericho was the world, and the thieves were enemy powers. The priest was the law, the Levite the prophets, and the Samaritan Christ.

Adam's wounds were his disobedience, the animal that carried him was the body of the Lord, and the "pandochium" or inn, open to all who wished to enter, was the Church. The two denarii represented the Father and the Son, and the innkeeper was the head of the Church, who was entrusted with its administration. The promised return of the Samaritan was a figure of the second coming of the Savior.

The Samaritan was carrying oil, oil to make his face shine as scripture says, referring surely to the face of the man he cared for. He cleansed the man's wounds with oil to soothe the inflammation and with wine that made them clean, and then placed him on his own mount, that is, on his own body, since he had condescended to assume our humanity.

This Samaritan bore our sins and suffered on our behalf; he carried the half dead man to the inn which takes in everyone, denying no one its help; in other words, to the Church. To this inn Jesus invites all when he says: Come to me, all who labor and are overburdened, and I will give you new strength.

After bringing in the man half dead the Samaritan did not immediately depart, but remained and dressed his wounds by night as well as by day, showing his concern and doing everything he could for him.

In the morning when he wished to set out again he took from his own purse silver coins, from his own sterling money, two denarii to pay the innkeeper, clearly the angel of the Church, and ordered him to nurse with all diligence and restore to health the man whom for a short time he himself had personally tended.

I think the two denarii stand for knowledge of the Father and the Son in the Father. This was given to the angel as a recompense, so that he would care more diligently for the man entrusted to him. He was also promised that whatever he spent of his own in healing him would be repaid.

This guardian of souls who showed mercy to the man who fell into the hands of theives was a better neighbor to him than were either the law or the prophets, and he proved this more by deeds than by words.

The astute lawyer immediately recognizes this new, impending shame. The lawyer's question was: "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus' question is:  "To whom must you become a neighbor?" The lawyer realizes that one must become a neighbor to anyone and everyone in need. One must reach out with compassion to all people, even to one's enemies.

Too often this parable has been read as a pleasant moral lesson of kindness and neighborliness. Fleshing out all the characters in their Mediterranean cultural characteristics gives the parable a fresh look. A hated outsider extends compassionate love to his enemy. What a masterful attack on communal prejudice!

In Luke's dramatic construction, Jesus' acceptance of the lawyer's reply leads to a further question on his part. He wanted to "justify himself," to get the whole thing straight. He asks, "And who is my neighbor?" The dramatic exchange is the springboard for the parable of the Good Samaritan.

But the parable does not really answer the lawyer's question. It ends by reversing it: "Which of the three proved neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?"

It is right here that the point of the parable lies. "You shall love your neighbor" does not mean that you may love some people but not others; rather, it means: be a neighbor to another, not just indulging in general sentiments of benevolence, but doing concrete acts for the person in concrete need.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer would offer this as a summary: "Neighborliness is not a quality in other people, it is simply their claim on ourselves. We have literally no time to sit down and ask ourselves whether so-and-so is our neighbor or not. We must get into action and obey; we must behave like a neighbor to him." There is no one whom we may cast aside. For we have all been drawn together in Christ, not to gloat, but to serve.