The gospel before us today contains the parable known as the Good Samaritan. We begin with a lawyer easing his way smoothly through the crowds to speak with Jesus. He is, perhaps, a bit like a politician in an election year wanting to be seen in the right place, needing a public ‘sound bite of approval’ from Jesus about how well he loves his neighbour. Jesus and the lawyer dialogue about the greatest commandment; “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.” But wanting to be especially in tune with Jesus, the lawyer asks the question, “Who is my neighbour?”
In response to this, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. We are invited to identify ourselves with this traveller who comes alone down the difficult terrain on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. This road has been dangerous all through history. Pompey had to wipe out a stronghold of brigands when he went through. The Crusaders built a fort at the halfway mark to protect pilgrims. Robbers in this area have always been a serious threat. So, the fate of this traveller is almost anticipated from the beginning. He is beaten, robbed, stripped of his clothes and left for dead. The fact that he is naked by the side of the road is not accidental. Now the traveller cannot be identified. If we see someone for the first time, there are probably two major ways of identifying them. One is by listening to their accent, at which point we can say, “Ah, they’re from so and so.” A second way that we identify people is by looking at the clothes they wear. In the Holy Land in the first century, there were many different cultures and religions. Each had their traditional dress that identified them and marked them out. But this man is near death. He cannot speak and he has no clothes. He is unidentifiable.
Luke wants us to identify with the traveller in this state. Within each of us there is a vulnerable human being on a journey. We all have parts of ourselves that are wounded, parts of ourselves that are alone, poor, unlovely, vulnerable, in need, perhaps even parts of us that are injured or dead. These are the aspects of ourselves that are in need of the grace of God; they lie waiting, as it were, by the side of the road, waiting for Christ to come with the oil and wine of healing balm. Who will be the Christ figure who will come and bring the healing and forgiveness this wounded person so desperately needs? Or we can ask another question. If God is sending us out to be people in mission, who are the people in need and where are they? Who are the people we are avoiding, the ones we treat as less than human?
Well, in the parable, we sit with the near dead traveller. Who should come along first? Not just any wayfarers, but members of the religious establishment, who we be expect to assist an injured person. But the priest, when confronted by the half dead, mute, stripped body, is paralysed for he cannot identify him. What if this wounded man is a non-Jew, or a sinner, or even just plain dead? Contact with this person will render him ritually impure, defiled, especially if he turns out to be dead. Dead bodies are at the top of the list of things that render someone ritually impure. Ritual impurity would be a major problem. The priest would be unable to use the tithes he is carrying so his family would not eat. He would be shamed in public. He would have to go to the cost of purifying himself at the temple. That process was humiliating, time consuming, and costly. It’s all too hard and too risky. The priest walks by on the other side. The next person is the Levite. He is a kind of lay-assistant in the temple hierarchy. He takes a closer look, but he’s seen the boss walk on by, and if it’s too hard for the boss to sort out then it’s too hard for the Levite as well. So he walks on by.
So we come now to the major shock in the parable, for unexpectedly, the next person is a Samaritan. Centuries of pious reflection have dulled our sensibilities to the hatred that existed between Jews and Samaritans. This hatred ran deep; it was the Samaritans who had opposed the building of the Jerusalem temple after the return of the exiles. It was the Samaritans who in the second century BC had helped the Syrian rulers in their wars against the Jews. It was the Samaritans who had defiled the Jerusalem temple by scattering bones of a corpse so that the festival of the Passover could not be celebrated. The Samaritans were therefore heretics, schismatic, apostates, people to spit on. They were more to be despised than unbelievers. But, it is the Samaritan who will unmask the pious quackery of the lawyer questioning Jesus. The Samaritan becomes the one who demonstrates what love of neighbour looks like and who shows us what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.
All through Luke’s gospel, it is the compassion of God and the hospitality of God that stands behind the coming of Jesus. Compassionate hospitality motivates God and marks out the character of Jesus’ mission and ministry. Here we are presented with a paradigm of this compassionate vision. First of all, the Samaritan makes up for the failings of the priest and Levite. Using oil and wine, elements of the daily temple sacrifice, he performs deeds of mercy and loving-kindness. He binds up his wounds (shades of the Ezekiel’s description of God as the Good Shepherd). He then takes the wounded traveller and pays for his recuperation, keeping him free from debt and from certain slavery, thus making up for the treachery of the robbers. In doing all this, he becomes the one who embodies true worship of God in his care of this broken, wounded person, the one who ministers Christ’s healing touch to him. The hated Samaritan demonstrates the profound, costly, steadfast love of God. This cost is further illustrated when he goes to the inn. This would be like a Palestinian today, taking a Jewish bomb victim back into a Jewish town. In doing this, the Samaritan risks death by retaliation. The wounded man’s community, of course, would want someone to pay. The Samaritan would be a soft target. It would have been safer to go to a friend’s house, or to his own home. But no. The Samaritan, the unknown stranger, at great risk to himself, enables the wounded man to return home without hope of ever being reimbursed. This is a breath taking picture of God’s grace. Jesus is saying that the traditional leaders of Israel have failed. So God will use others to bind up the wounds of the sufferer, and fully pay the price of restoration.
There is so much Jesus wants us to see in this simple story. Are you the wounded person by the road? God is not coming to accuse you or beat you up or blame you or suggest you are there because you have sinned. Please put that idea firmly out of your head. No! Christ comes to you as a compassionate, forgiving and healing presence. He comes to raise you up, to heal and restore those bruises with his healing touch, to welcome you home into an intimate communion with him. Jesus comes to search us out, to pick us up from the roadside, to bind up our wounds, to bring us home, even if it means risking his life to do so.
Perhaps part of you is the lawyer coming to Jesus thinking you have worked jolly hard for God and wanting God’s approval and blessing. The lawyer is in a subtle trap of thinking his work earns him a place in heaven, justifying himself by his piety and good works. This story lifts that demanding burden from his shoulders. Salvation is given by God’s as gift, a gift freely given. We can’t earn it and we don’t have to. God simply loves us and accepts us as we are, even if the truth is that we are broken, wounded and vulnerable. Notice too, how God chooses an outsider as his agent of compassionate love. This parable, therefore, is a sharp attack on communal and racial prejudice. It demands that we take another look at those our society despises. Who are the people we treat as sub-human, or pretend don’t really exist? Criminals perhaps, the mentally ill, migrants, tangata whenua? Jesus is challenging us to be open to the Spirit speaking to us in the voices of those we despise.
Finally, this story totally rephrases the original question. Instead of asking, “Who is my neighbour?” the disciple of Jesus must ask, “To whom must I become a neighbour?” Of course my neighbour is everyone in need, even if that person is my enemy. We need to think again about what it means to be sent by God to be engaged in mission. God sends us into our community to sit with the broken hearted, the wounded, the unlovable. To do that, we must face our own wounds and prejudices and ask God to heal them so that we can be comfortable with those God loves, yet are unlovely and unlovable to us. Pray for God’s healing for those parts of ourselves, and ask God to show us how we can be with hurting parts of our community, how we can bind up the broken and how we can embody the compassion and the hospitality God.
