By Kristin Berkey-Abbott
Luke 10:25-37
If we made a list of the most famous Gospel stories, the ones that Christians and non-Christians alike know, the Good Samaritan would be at the top of the list, eclipsed perhaps only by the Christmas and Easter texts and the Prodigal Son, and maybe a multiplying of loaves and fishes. Think about how much we see references to Good Samaritans in our culture. We’ve got Good Samaritan laws that protect us if we try to help but things go wrong, and some places have Bad Samaritan laws to prosecute us if we don’t help. We’ve got hospitals and other charities, like Samaritan’s Purse, named after the major character in this story. But this story has so much more depth to it than just a parable about why we should do good deeds. In fact, we’ll return to it as we look at the texts for the next 2 Sundays, the Mary and Martha text and the Lord’s Prayer. They come right after each other, and many a Biblical scholar says that we should read them together. Happily, the Revised Common Lectionary lets us do that.
Today’s parable is a text about how we should treat each other, but it’s also a text about how NOT to treat each other. And let’s always keep in mind the question that prompts Jesus to tell this story—and it’s not just one question, it’s questions, plural. Jesus responds to a questioner, an expert in the law, a questioner who already knows the answers—or at least, thinks he does.
Throughout the ministry of Jesus, people ask the first question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The answer is always the same: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbor as yourself.” But that’s not enough for our legal expert. No, he wants Jesus to answer another question that has reverberated, both through the ministry of Jesus and down the centuries. He wants Jesus to settle the question once and for all—who is a neighbor? Who deserves this love? What if my neighbor deserving of love has wrong beliefs or acts in ways I think are wrong? What if their very existence is wrong?
Jesus answers as he so often does, giving us a parable that contains more than a simple story, and this parable contains signals that may be lost to us as readers in the 21st century. Think about the road from Jericho to Jerusalem. New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine notes that it’s an 18 mile stretch of rocky path that goes from 2500 feet above sea level, about the height of the mountains around Asheville, down 825 feet. In the late 60’s, the Romans paved it so that Rome could move troops efficiently and destroy Jerusalem. In short, it was a dangerous road, both for individual travelers and for whole culture.
That’s not to say we should blame the traveler for what happens to him—although that might be our first inclination. If we can blame the victim, maybe we can convince ourselves that it won’t happen to us: beaten up, robbed, left for dead in a ditch.
But then, help arrives—except that it doesn’t. Jesus names the next two travelers as a Priest and a Levite—people with extra money, people with authority, people respected by the larger culture. What might a modern equivalent be of these two travelers? A doctor and a lawyer, perhaps. A bishop and a seminary professor, maybe. A pastor and a teacher. I could go on and on.
We might expect them to stop, and we might see it as hypocrisy when they don’t. They might have very good reasons for not stopping—chief among them that it might be a trap—the man in the ditch might be a decoy, and people who stop to help might find themselves under attack. There are other reasons why they might not stop. Some people might mention purity codes, but Judaic law allows for one to stop and make sure a dead body is a dead body not a living victim—the priest could have done that without risking ritual impurity. And another point of interest: a priest who is not in the Temple in Jerusalem is technically off the clock. Would he see himself as obligated?
Clearly not. Which brings us to that most famous Samaritan. You probably remember from past sermons that Samaritans were despised groups of people on the lowest rungs of society. What would our modern equivalent be? A custodian, perhaps, or a day laborer of some sort, the driver who delivers the Amazon packages, the person who works in the chicken processing plant, or maybe the person who cooks the food at McDonald’s.
The Samaritan, the one who commands no respect, the outsider goes the extra mile—so many extra miles! Binding wounds, taking him to an inn, paying for care, promising to return to check on the victim and to pay any additional costs involved in caring for the victim. The Samaritan goes above and beyond the call of duty, while the priest and the Levite ignore the call completely.
In this Gospel, it's easy to see the Good Samaritan as a Christ figure: the outsider who stops to help, who takes charge of the victimized who have been left to bleed to death by the side of the road, the one who finds care for the victim and pays for it. We could also see the man in the ditch as the Christ figure: ambushed, left for dead, cared for, and restored to life.
Maybe it’s because I’m doing intense chaplaincy training this summer that led me to notice part of the story that is rarely emphasized. It’s not only the Samaritan who restores the victim to life. The Samaritan starts the process of rescue, and hands off the rest of the care to the innkeeper.
In chaplaincy training we’ve been focusing on self-care and care for others. We’re encouraged to take a self-care break after each patient encounter if possible, and we have spent time discerning what that self-care looks like. It’s very different from any other professional setting I’ve experienced, settings where we’re expected to do the self-care on our own time, off the clock, so that we can more efficiently do what the boss is paying us to do. In chaplaincy training, we’re reminded again and again that a chaplain, or any member of the care team really, can only do so much without burnout. Mind you, we’re not allowed to say we’re done with our day and go home after an hour of work. We still have care taking to do. But we are expected to minister to ourselves as well as to others in the hospital.
Scholar Jeanne Stevenson Moessner notes that the Good Samaritan knows how to practice care for others and self care at the same time: ". . . the Samaritan finished his journey while meeting the need of a wounded and marginal person. . . . He relied in a sense on the communal, on a type of teamwork as represented by the inn and by the host at the inn" (p. 66). She goes on to talk about the types of care that the inn might represent: an AA meeting, a shelter, a round of chemotherapy, or even, a church.
In other words, part of what this parable lifts up is that we can care for others but we don’t have to be the sole provider. In fact, if we see ourselves as the only one who can provide care, we’re on a fast path to burnout and despair. Our world needs us to avoid burnout and despair. There are so many broken and bleeding bodies in the world’s ditches. This parable is one of the most famous for a reason—we’re in a world where people are ambushed and countries are attacked and it feels like the whole world is broken and bleeding.
Jesus answers the simple question of who is our neighbor. Jesus also answers the more thorny question: how to be a neighbor and how to love our neighbors. It’s not by being judgmental and telling others how they are failing morally. No, we are called to help as we are able, in all the ways that we are able, and to enlist others who will help.
You may have heard that old news adage, “if it bleeds, it leads.” But all too often, we only hear about the bleeding. We don’t hear about the ones who rescue. We hear about all the people who might be a threat to us, not the ones who do good in the world. The Good Samaritan may be one of the more famous parables, but it certainly doesn’t influence news programming, which focuses on the ones doing the breaking, not the ones doing the bandaging.
Happily, we, too, have an inn where we can bring our broken and bleeding attention spans. We can use our time here in this building to repair our souls. We can take spiritual practices with us into the world to repair ourselves on a daily and an hourly basis. In her powerful novel Father Melancholy’s Daughter, Gail Godwin says that the opposite of sin is “to heal what is split in the world.” It might seem like the world is too far split apart to heal it—but Jesus insists, over and over again, that we can sew a seam of love and repair the fabric of life throughout all of creation.
If we made a list of the most famous Gospel stories, the ones that Christians and non-Christians alike know, the Good Samaritan would be at the top of the list, eclipsed perhaps only by the Christmas and Easter texts and the Prodigal Son, and maybe a multiplying of loaves and fishes. Think about how much we see references to Good Samaritans in our culture. We’ve got Good Samaritan laws that protect us if we try to help but things go wrong, and some places have Bad Samaritan laws to prosecute us if we don’t help. We’ve got hospitals and other charities, like Samaritan’s Purse, named after the major character in this story. But this story has so much more depth to it than just a parable about why we should do good deeds. In fact, we’ll return to it as we look at the texts for the next 2 Sundays, the Mary and Martha text and the Lord’s Prayer. They come right after each other, and many a Biblical scholar says that we should read them together. Happily, the Revised Common Lectionary lets us do that.
Today’s parable is a text about how we should treat each other, but it’s also a text about how NOT to treat each other. And let’s always keep in mind the question that prompts Jesus to tell this story—and it’s not just one question, it’s questions, plural. Jesus responds to a questioner, an expert in the law, a questioner who already knows the answers—or at least, thinks he does.
Throughout the ministry of Jesus, people ask the first question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The answer is always the same: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbor as yourself.” But that’s not enough for our legal expert. No, he wants Jesus to answer another question that has reverberated, both through the ministry of Jesus and down the centuries. He wants Jesus to settle the question once and for all—who is a neighbor? Who deserves this love? What if my neighbor deserving of love has wrong beliefs or acts in ways I think are wrong? What if their very existence is wrong?
Jesus answers as he so often does, giving us a parable that contains more than a simple story, and this parable contains signals that may be lost to us as readers in the 21st century. Think about the road from Jericho to Jerusalem. New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine notes that it’s an 18 mile stretch of rocky path that goes from 2500 feet above sea level, about the height of the mountains around Asheville, down 825 feet. In the late 60’s, the Romans paved it so that Rome could move troops efficiently and destroy Jerusalem. In short, it was a dangerous road, both for individual travelers and for whole culture.
That’s not to say we should blame the traveler for what happens to him—although that might be our first inclination. If we can blame the victim, maybe we can convince ourselves that it won’t happen to us: beaten up, robbed, left for dead in a ditch.
But then, help arrives—except that it doesn’t. Jesus names the next two travelers as a Priest and a Levite—people with extra money, people with authority, people respected by the larger culture. What might a modern equivalent be of these two travelers? A doctor and a lawyer, perhaps. A bishop and a seminary professor, maybe. A pastor and a teacher. I could go on and on.
We might expect them to stop, and we might see it as hypocrisy when they don’t. They might have very good reasons for not stopping—chief among them that it might be a trap—the man in the ditch might be a decoy, and people who stop to help might find themselves under attack. There are other reasons why they might not stop. Some people might mention purity codes, but Judaic law allows for one to stop and make sure a dead body is a dead body not a living victim—the priest could have done that without risking ritual impurity. And another point of interest: a priest who is not in the Temple in Jerusalem is technically off the clock. Would he see himself as obligated?
Clearly not. Which brings us to that most famous Samaritan. You probably remember from past sermons that Samaritans were despised groups of people on the lowest rungs of society. What would our modern equivalent be? A custodian, perhaps, or a day laborer of some sort, the driver who delivers the Amazon packages, the person who works in the chicken processing plant, or maybe the person who cooks the food at McDonald’s.
The Samaritan, the one who commands no respect, the outsider goes the extra mile—so many extra miles! Binding wounds, taking him to an inn, paying for care, promising to return to check on the victim and to pay any additional costs involved in caring for the victim. The Samaritan goes above and beyond the call of duty, while the priest and the Levite ignore the call completely.
In this Gospel, it's easy to see the Good Samaritan as a Christ figure: the outsider who stops to help, who takes charge of the victimized who have been left to bleed to death by the side of the road, the one who finds care for the victim and pays for it. We could also see the man in the ditch as the Christ figure: ambushed, left for dead, cared for, and restored to life.
Maybe it’s because I’m doing intense chaplaincy training this summer that led me to notice part of the story that is rarely emphasized. It’s not only the Samaritan who restores the victim to life. The Samaritan starts the process of rescue, and hands off the rest of the care to the innkeeper.
In chaplaincy training we’ve been focusing on self-care and care for others. We’re encouraged to take a self-care break after each patient encounter if possible, and we have spent time discerning what that self-care looks like. It’s very different from any other professional setting I’ve experienced, settings where we’re expected to do the self-care on our own time, off the clock, so that we can more efficiently do what the boss is paying us to do. In chaplaincy training, we’re reminded again and again that a chaplain, or any member of the care team really, can only do so much without burnout. Mind you, we’re not allowed to say we’re done with our day and go home after an hour of work. We still have care taking to do. But we are expected to minister to ourselves as well as to others in the hospital.
Scholar Jeanne Stevenson Moessner notes that the Good Samaritan knows how to practice care for others and self care at the same time: ". . . the Samaritan finished his journey while meeting the need of a wounded and marginal person. . . . He relied in a sense on the communal, on a type of teamwork as represented by the inn and by the host at the inn" (p. 66). She goes on to talk about the types of care that the inn might represent: an AA meeting, a shelter, a round of chemotherapy, or even, a church.
In other words, part of what this parable lifts up is that we can care for others but we don’t have to be the sole provider. In fact, if we see ourselves as the only one who can provide care, we’re on a fast path to burnout and despair. Our world needs us to avoid burnout and despair. There are so many broken and bleeding bodies in the world’s ditches. This parable is one of the most famous for a reason—we’re in a world where people are ambushed and countries are attacked and it feels like the whole world is broken and bleeding.
Jesus answers the simple question of who is our neighbor. Jesus also answers the more thorny question: how to be a neighbor and how to love our neighbors. It’s not by being judgmental and telling others how they are failing morally. No, we are called to help as we are able, in all the ways that we are able, and to enlist others who will help.
You may have heard that old news adage, “if it bleeds, it leads.” But all too often, we only hear about the bleeding. We don’t hear about the ones who rescue. We hear about all the people who might be a threat to us, not the ones who do good in the world. The Good Samaritan may be one of the more famous parables, but it certainly doesn’t influence news programming, which focuses on the ones doing the breaking, not the ones doing the bandaging.
Happily, we, too, have an inn where we can bring our broken and bleeding attention spans. We can use our time here in this building to repair our souls. We can take spiritual practices with us into the world to repair ourselves on a daily and an hourly basis. In her powerful novel Father Melancholy’s Daughter, Gail Godwin says that the opposite of sin is “to heal what is split in the world.” It might seem like the world is too far split apart to heal it—but Jesus insists, over and over again, that we can sew a seam of love and repair the fabric of life throughout all of creation.
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