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The Good Samaritan
Published 11 July 2010
Rev Clive Skewes, Assistant Minister at St John's UCA Mt Waverley
Lessons -- Amos 7:7-17; Psalm 82; Luke 10:25-37
(This sermon is informed by Kenneth Bailey's studies on the cultural and literary framework of the parables in 'Through Peasant Eyes'.)
We all know and can give others the gist of this parable if asked. But if we ignore the dialogue around it, Jesus' real message can pass over people's heads.
A lawyer decides to test Jesus. His subject is 'inheriting eternal life'. The question seems pointless. For what can anyone _do_ to inherit anything? Only legal heirs inherit. Israel's inheritance was the land of promise, always God's gift, not Israel's active achievement. Under God's orders Israel was to _possess_ its inheritance. At the end of the Old Testament period 'inherit the land' became equated with 'the salvation God extends to his people'. A writing outside the biblical canon, Slavonic Enoch, taught that Paradise is prepared for the righteous and then listed the qualifications of the righteous: various acts of charity, and stipulating they must walk faultlessly before the Lord. Perhaps such ideas from Enoch and other sources led the lawyer to phrase his question, 'What shall I _do_ . . . ?' He expected to secure from Jesus a list of actions which could be further debated.
Jesus could have cut short the debate by pointing out inheritance is always a gift. Instead he goes along with the lawyer's concentration on the law. He asks him, 'What do you read in the law?' -- 'What do you, a Jew, recite in worship?' In turn the lawyer quotes Israel's Creed, the two great commandments demanding unlimited and unqualified love for God and your neighbour. The lawyer has answered his own question.
The lawyer has been thinking of life after this life, but Jesus widens the discussion to all of life, for eternal life means something like eternal presence. 'Do this, i.e. keep on doing this now and now you will live -- come alive.'
Who can really do this? The requirements, if you must think in terms of requirements are limitless. And there is another question: What compensation can you ever make for all your failures to do this?
But the lawyer hasn't given up hope that there is still something he can do. Jesus has quoted the law. Now the lawyer wants some creative, interpretative commentary. 'But who is my neighbour?' In the lawyer's world there were a variety of definitions of 'the neighbour'. Each definition included some people and excluded others.
Who is our neighbour? Do we live in the lawyer's limited world, or do we live in another?
The answer the lawyer expected from Jesus was, 'Your relative and your friend.' Then he could say he had done all that. Then Jesus would have to praise him and say, 'You have truly fulfilled the law,' and the lawyer could bask in the public praise of his good works and enjoy an honour and confidence based on his achievement.
But Jesus wants to ask the lawyer a second question which will transform the discussion. So he tells a parable. He puts the parable in an actual setting: the 17-mile road to Jericho, a road that had been dangerous throughout history, subject to ambushes from brigands and thieves.
The traveller in the parable must have struggled with his attackers for he was beaten so badly he was rendered unconscious and also stripped of his clothing - - both significant details. Being unconscious he could not speak. Being unable to speak he could not identify himself. The Middle Eastern world was composed of many different ethnic-religious communities speaking an amazing number of languages and dialects, including several varieties of Hebrew. If you met a stranger on the road you could ask him a question and his language would identify his origin. But this man was unconscious.
However you could also identify people by their dress. Not only did different nationalities and races have their own distinctive clothing, there were differences in dress between various villages.
But this man was unconscious and naked. So how could a traveller identify him? How could you tell if he was of your family or clan or ethnic community? How could you tell if he was a neighbour?
That was important because the religious definitions which excluded those people who are 'not my neighbour' also laid down that you did not help or assist such people, for thereby you were strengthening the hand of a potential enemy. From the point of view of some devout Jews you might be strengthening the hand of a renegade, a heretic, a sinner. And since God hates sinners you could be acting against God.
So, unable to speak, stripped of his clothing, this near-dead traveller has been reduced to a mere human being. Who will turn aside to help him?
A Priest came along. Priests came from the upper classes, the aristocracy. No one of any status walked through the desert. Only the poor. So almost certainly the Priest would be riding. The Priest lived by this code: 'If you do a good turn, know to whom you do it . . . give to a devout man, do not go to the help of a sinner.' Our modern version is, 'Give to the poor, but only to the deserving poor.'
On the other hand he knew the rabbis taught that if you saw one of your fellows 'drowning, mauled or attacked, you were bound to save him'. But did the Priest actually _see_ the man attacked? And how could he be sure he was a neighbour? Further, what if the man was dead? According to the law contact with a dead person ritually defiled you. In a world where antisepsis was unknown these proscriptions had some basis in hygiene. But they also had a religious basis.
For a priest, ritual defilement was always a major concern. A priest collected, distributed and ate the tithes of the temple. If he was defiled he could do none of these things. His family and servants would suffer the consequences. He would be banned from officiating at any of the worship services and from wearing his phylacteries. To restore his ritual purity he would have to stand with the unclean at the Eastern Gate in front of the Temple altar -- a procedure designed to shame the guilty 'for their remission in contracting uncleanness'. Further he would have to find a red heifer, a time-consuming and costly process, and reduce it to ashes in a ritual that occupied a whole week. The Priest is struggling to be a good man but his code has very stringent rules for abstention from sin and attaining sanctity.
But what if the man is not dead? Couldn't the Priest just check him out? How could he? The law prescribed he must not approach any closer than 4 cubits (~ 2m) to a dead body otherwise he would be unclean. The code of the Priest precluded giving any help.
The Levite would almost certainly have known there was a priest ahead of him. A traveller on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho can see the road ahead a considerable way. And the word 'likewise' indicates the Levite was descending and following the Priest. The Levite was a lay official. He would not be bound by as many regulations as the Priest. He was only bound to observe ritual cleanliness while carrying out his duties in the Temple worship. So if he gave help and the man was dead, or died on his hands, the repercussions were not as serious.
He came quite close to the injured man. He probably crossed the defilement line of 4 cubits to satisfy his curiosity. Why then did the Levite decide against offering aid? Were there still sufficient difficulties for him to fear defilement? Did he fear the robbers? Or was he deterred by the example of the Priest? If the Priest on the road ahead did nothing, why should he, a mere Levite, trouble himself? Could he undertake a dangerous course of action from which the Priest had just shrunk? To help could not be a duty, otherwise the Priest would not have omitted to give aid. So if he thrust himself upon the situation now, wouldn't that be a kind of affront to his superior, a criticism of the Priest's interpretation of the law? When the professional reads the data one way, who is the poor layman to call his judgement into question? Like the Priest the Levite cannot find out if the wounded man is a neighbour. In spite of his religious profession, nothing in his orientation leads him to help the wounded traveller. He fades from the scene like the Priest.
Priest, Levite, is a natural sequence in this story. As a delegation Priests and Levites went up to Jerusalem to serve at the temple and after their specified two weeks returned home. In the same way 'the delegation of Israel', the laymen, went up with them. So the audience now would be expecting the appearance of a Jewish layman. After their term of service all three would be on their way home.
But shock and dismay! The sequence is interrupted. One of the hated Samaritans comes along the road. Between Jews and Samaritans there were centuries of animosity. Samaritans were classed with Philistines and Edomites as those whom a Jew was to detest. The Mishna declared, 'He that eats the bread of a Samaritan is like one who eats the flesh of swine.'
The Samaritans brought much of this enmity on their own heads. Their ancestors had resisted the return of the Jews after the Babylonian exile and tried to sabotage the rebuilding of Jerusalem. A few years before the telling of this story Samaritans defiled the Temple by scattering human bones in the Temple court. The Samaritans were publicly cursed in the synagogues. A daily prayer was offered asking God not to give Samaritans a part in eternal life.
Kenneth Bailey confesses that in his twenty years in the Middle East he has never had the courage to tell a story to Palestinians about a noble Israeli nor to Armenians about a noble Turk. Only if you have lived in a community which has a hated bitter enemy can you understand the courage of Jesus in making a despised Samaritan morally superior to the religious leadership of the audience.
The Samaritan however is not a Gentile. He is bound by the same Torah as the Priest and the Levite. It tells them his neighbour is his countryman and relative. A foreigner in Judea, the Samaritan is less likely than the Priest or Levite to give help. He too would have seen the road ahead and the actions of the other two. He could say to himself, 'This unconscious man is probably a Jew and those Jews have left him to die.'
In fact if he went to the man's help he faced a great danger. The frightful custom of blood-revenge was deeply rooted in the Jewish community. Not even Moses could eradicate it. He could only mitigate revenge by limiting it to an eye for an eye. Even in the 19th Century the law of retaliation remained in all its vigour and was energetically executed by the tribes. Retaliation applied if any bodily injury was sustained. If the real murderer or offender could not be reached the avengers of blood would kill any members of the family, no matter how remote, and finally members of the confederation. We are dealing with an irrational response, not a reasoned action. Even the stranger who involves himself in an accident is considered partially, if not totally, responsible in the absence of miscreants. After all why did he stop?
So the Samaritan put himself in extreme danger. Thieves could still be in the area. He would be ritually defiled. But his courage and bravery are seen when he brings the man to the inn. He might not get out alive. Desert inns were notorious places for prostitution and blood-shedding of unwary travellers. The wounded man has no money so if he can't pay his bill when he leaves he can be arrested for debt. Not all the bandits confined themselves to the countryside caves.
The Samaritan not only compensates for the failure of the Priest and the Levite, he compensates even for the robbers. He reverses their actions by paying for the traveller's board, leaves him taken care of and promises to return.
Why did the Samaritan put himself out for an unknown stranger, a potential enemy, at such great risk and cost to himself? The answer is implied in the lawyer's answer in verse 37 -- he was the one who was moved by mercy, compassion. The Greek word for compassion means he had a deep gut level, visceral reaction to the plight of the wounded man which breaks down all the walls erected by codes and custom. In the gospels 'compassion' is always associated with Jesus and points to his Messiah-ship. He sees the crowds as sheep without a shepherd and has compassion on them.
The hated Samaritan shares this quality of Jesus, for notice the order of the first aid he gives. He binds up the wounds, pouring on oil and wine. We would expect he would first clean and soften the wounds with oil, disinfect them with wine and then bandage them. Why this reverse order? Because in Scripture this is the imagery used of God when he acts to save his people. One example: Hosea 6 says 'he has torn, he will bind up, he will revive us, he will raise us up, he will come to us'. Time and again God heals by first binding up his people's wounds. God comes to the aid of the wounded traveller through the agency of a Samaritan, a rejected outsider.
When the traditional leaders of the community fail, God's agent arrives to bind up the wounds, to take control.
The Good Samaritan is not far from the lawyer. He stands before him incarnate in Jewish flesh, though hidden from him in the form of the One soon to be as an outsider, whom the lawyer believed he should hate as much as the Jews hated the Samaritans. (See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 1/11, 419.)
Jesus has cast himself in the role of the Samaritan, who appears dramatically on the scene to bind up the wounds of the suffering as the unique agent of God's costly demonstration of unexpected love. (Bailey.)
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