Unexpected Neighbor

Unexpected Neighbor
Luke 10:25-37

Christian Community Presbyterian Church, Bowie MD
July 10, 2022

Oh no! Not another sermon about the “Good Samaritan”! How many sermons have you heard preached on this parable? More than your fingers can count, I imagine. I can’t think how many I have heard or read. This will be the sixth sermon I’ve preached directly on it and I’m sure I referenced it many times in other sermons. We know the parable forwards and backwards, don’t we? You and I can recite it in our sleep. What more could any of us possibly learn from it? Bear with me while we navigate this well-worn Jerusalem-Jericho road once again.

The parable is multi-layered. It is more than a variation of “Be helpful when you come across people in trouble.” Jesus wasn’t planting a little conscience thought-bomb to make us feel guilty when we ignore a homeless person, a panhandler, or someone in obvious distress.

Commentator James Wallace says that the parable “lays down a big challenge but makes an even bigger offering of gospel or good news.” He goes on to claim that this parable is “a story for people who recognize that they are on a journey—not just a journey from womb to tomb, but from birth to rebirth, from partial life to abundant life. The gospel proclaims what God pours into the hearts of all those who journey in a dangerous world.”(1)

Unfortunately events since we last gathered in worship—the massive shooting by law enforcement officers of a man in Akron, Ohio; the sniper-like shooting at the Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois—these mini-insurrections which daily seize the fear parts of our brains reinforce just how dangerous our world is.

Jesus was very aware of the dangers that his world presented. The threat of over-policing by the occupying Roman forces was always present. That’s why he told his followers early on in his ministry, “When anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile” (Matthew 5:41). And it wasn’t just the military. People behave badly. Jesus said, “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well” (Matthew 5:39-40).

Jesus was on a journey. He was determined to go to Jerusalem. He was going to his death. There he would, in effect, be passed by. Priests, Levites, and lawyers, like the one whose question prompted the parable, will steer clear of him and jeer at him, and thereby rob him of his personhood and leave him for dead in the ditches of Roman prosecutorial malfeasance. Little did anyone know that he would recover victoriously.

The lawyer’s story arc is similar. He too was also on a journey. He was seeking life or perhaps a greater intimacy with God. He asked an honest question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus was sensitive to that. He probed the man’s understanding of what he was asking and the man rightly cited the applicable teachings from the Torah. Jesus commended him and told him that if he did what he had said, he would gain life.

But the lawyer, true to his legal advocacy training, wanted to prove that he was right. So he asked, “Who is my neighbor?” This is a question of linits or boundaries. Remember when Peter was talking with Jesus about forgiving and suggested that it would be generous to forgive someone seven times. To which Jesus responded, “seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:22). Peter was trying to find the limit beyond which he didn’t have to go. The legal expert was trying the same tactic. Where’s the boundary? Who’s in? Who’s out?

That’s not a road Jesus will go down.

So Jesus tells a story. In various sermons heard in our lifetimes, we have been excoriated for living like the priest and Levite, that is, crossing the road to go around the victim, not wanting to get involved. And we have been urged to be like the Samaritan, generous, caring, disregarding the fact that the victim was a Jew, who considered the Samaritan a persona non grata.

If we pay close attention to the details of the parable, we would have to stop and ask, What a Samaritan was doing on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem which is clearly Jewish territory, not particularly close to Samaria which was several days’ journey walking to the north of Jerusalem. Where was the Border Patrol? The story’s setting seems implausible. We don’t know the visceral reaction of the lawyer, but anyone listening in on the conversation would have immediately thought, “What the . . . ?”

The Shakespeare in Central Park repertory company has a habit of moving the bard’s plays out of Elizabethan England into contemporary settings. So how would we relocate the parable today? A truckload of illegal immigrants dying in the desert? Ukrainian refugees in Poland or Syrian refugees in Sweden? Uighurs in rehabilitation camps in China? Women seeking reproductive health options in the United States? All could be possible scenarios; all could be the unfortunate traveler attacked and left for dead by perpetrators of systemic privilege, misogyny, racism, or any of a number of phobias directed toward anyone who is different.

Rather than relocating the parable, let’s look at how the actors are cast. Many of Jesus’ parables invite listeners, sometimes compel them, to see themselves in any or all of the roles portrayed. New Testament scholars often note that some roles seem to be custom-made for Jesus.

So let’s recast the parable. In what role would we cast Jesus? There is no indication in all of the gospel that Jesus could be the attacker. It’s just not him. Nor is it likely that he would be the priest or the Levite. Jesus rarely dodged anything controversial unless his ideological assailants avoided his counter-questioning. In fact, Jesus often jumped in feet first. Jesus could be the victim. I have heard a sermon taken that way; perhaps you have too.

But for our thinking today I want to put Jesus in the only role that is left. What if the Jesus were the Samaritan? After all, increasingly he was becoming a pariah to the religious establishment which ultimately engineered his arrest, trial, and execution.

And let’s put ourselves in the role of the unfortunate traveler. You and I have been beaten up and robbed. That’s the upshot of sin in our lives. Temptation has put us on the well-traveled road rife with pleasures which will beat up our sense of justice, rob us of our dignity, strip us of our humanity, and leave us thrown into the ditch of slow and certain dying. If it weren’t for Jesus, we would have been left for dead on the roadside of life. But Jesus came along. He risked his life to bind our wounds. He brought us to the inn of redemption. He paid for our care. We were in no state to argue or refuse. He did it.

Imagine the surprise of the innkeeper (surely Jewish) when the Samaritan brought a half-dead Jew to his hostelry, paid in advance for the man’s care, and promised to pay any additional expenses that might arise. Tell me you know a health insurance company that will do that! But that’s what Jesus did. Jesus will do whatever is necessary to bring us to wholeness and health.

Radio personality Paul Harvey’s signature line was, “And now for the rest of the story.” I would like to know the rest of this story, wouldn’t you? What happened to the man so graciously deposited at the inn? I am sure that the innkeeper told him about the Samaritan who brought him to the healing shelter of the inn. Did the event change his life?

You know Robert Frost’s poem:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.(2)

What road did the man leave on from the inn? Did the recovered Jew take the more traveled road which maintained discriminatory attitudes towards Samaritans and others not part of the dominant, privileged class? Or did he take the less traveled road of life away from that inn, a road which recognized God’s image in all human beings? Did the events on the Jericho-Jerusalem road, the care-giving Samaritan, and the convalescent inn make a difference in his life?

Studies often show that poor people will give away a greater percentage of their meager means than people with more to come and go on. Robert H. Frank has written that luck matters more than we think. The more prosperous a person is, the more likely the person will credit their own skills rather than a certain ordering of events or conjunction of people that resulted in their being in the right place at the right time. Academic studies have shown that people who recognize luck as a force in their lives are 25% more generous that self-made individuals.

The traveler in Jesus’ parable started out with bad luck, beset by thugs who robbed him and beat him near to death. The man’s luck was further worsened because two important, respectable people failed to minister to him. But then his luck changed. The Samaritan came along and the whole story changed; the man’s luck went from negative to positive.

According to Frank, social scientists have found that luck “produces a remarkable array of physical, psychological, and social changes.” In one study, a portion of the respondents diaried for thirty weeks things that made them grateful. “The newly grateful had less frequent and less severe aches and pains and improved sleep quality. They reported greater happiness and alertness. They described themselves as more outgoing and compassionate, and less likely to feel lonely and isolated.”(3)

Did the patched-up and healed victim feel gratitude because of the care the Samaritan had given him? Do we feel gratitude for what Jesus has done for us, taking us from the ditches holding our sin-beaten lives and restoring us to the wholeness and spiritual health that God intended? Did the recovered traveler have a new understanding of “neighbor” as a result of his bad luck and greater good luck? Did he see Samaritans – today’s immigrants, people of color, people disadvantaged by work peonage and poverty, people ill-served by educational systems, people understanding their sexuality in different ways – did the man see all people differently? Would the saved and healed man pass by on the other side of the road if he ever came across someone in the same condition he had been in? Would all lives matter to him when he takes the road away from the inn? Will he be neutral or will he take action?

In the wake of several nationally reverberating shooting deaths, retired news anchor Dan Rather reflected the thoughts of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and South African bishop Desmond Tutu:

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must—at that moment—become the center of the universe.”(4)

The Samaritan took the side of the victim, the one tormented. He interfered in the way of the world that had left the traveler for dead. The Samaritan stood up for human dignity. Jesus takes the side of all victims, everyone who is tormented, even when self-professed good churchpeople do the tormenting. Whenever and wherever that happens, Jesus is there, kneeling at the side of the road, binding wounds. There is the center of the universe, the heart of God’s own self.

Jesus concluded his parable and asked his hearer: “‘Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ [Then the lawyer] said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’ ”

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to you, O Lord, our rock, our redeemer, our Samaritan neighbor. Amen.

    (1) James A. Wallace, C.Ss.R, “Luke 10:25-37 – Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), Year C, vol. 3, 239.
    (2) From The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1916, 1923, 1928, 1930, 1934, 1939, 1947, 1949, © 1969 by Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Copyright 1936, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1947, 1948, 1951, 1953, 1954, © 1956, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962 by Robert Frost. Copyright © 1962, 1967, 1970 by Leslie Frost Ballantine.
    (3) Robert H. Frank, “Why Luck Matters–Much More Than You Think,” The Atlantic, vol. 317, no. 4, (May 2016), 22.
    (4) Dan Rather, Facebook, July 7, 2016, 2:17 p.m. EDT.