The story of the Good Samaritan is a familiar one, a beloved parable, a parable that many folks would point to and say: “this story is what being a Christian is all about.” And they would be right. But because it is so beloved, and so familiar, sometimes we start feeling a little comfortable with the story. We begin to feel as though we have the story all figured out. Jesus is telling us this parable, this clever little story, to remind us that being a Christian is about being nice, about helping people with broken down cars on the side of the road, right? Isn’t that was Jesus is telling us?
This story is told as a part of a conversation, an encounter between Jesus and the lawyer, the scholar of the law of Moses. The lawyer stands up to test Jesus – a great beginning to their relationship – and asks: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus, in typical Jesus fashion, answers the man’s question with another question: “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” In other words: “You have studied the Bible – what do you learn there?” And the man, a scholar who has studied the Scriptures for years, knows the right answer from Deuteronomy and Leviticus: “You shall love the Lord you God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus says: “You have given the right answer – now go and do these things, go actually love God and love your neighbor and you will find the true life you are looking for.”
But the lawyer, the scholar of the law just couldn’t leave well enough alone. Maybe he felt approved by Jesus, justified by giving the right answer – so he asks one more question: “And who is my neighbor?” You see, this lawyer was trained in the law of Moses, the law given on Mt. Sinai that gives some pretty clear rules about who is in and who is out of the community of God’s Chosen People. The lawyer knew that the command was to love God and to love neighbor, but he figured he could find a loophole in this most important commandment – if he could get Jesus to say: “well of course your neighbor is the person just like you – Jewish, male, educated, and rich” then he could be very smug about his dislike and his distaste for all the other folks out there – all the folks who were different from him – the Gentiles, the women, the working class folks, the poor.
And in response to the question: “Who is my neighbor,” Jesus tells this story, this familiar, beloved, well-worn story about a man beaten and robbed, and some good religious folks – maybe like the lawyer himself – who just kept on walking, leaving the man bleeding in the dirt. And the one who stops, the one who has compassion, the one who goes way above and beyond in his merciful response, even to the point of laying down his own money to see the injured man whole again – is a Samaritan. If Jesus were to tell us this story today, here in this community, I imagine it might go something like this:
It was late, and the man knew that he needed to get home quickly. The road from Aragon to Taylorsville was scenic during the day to be sure, but at night all sorts of rough types hid out in all the nooks and crannies in the hills, and the man knew that it wasn’t the safest road to be on at that hour. His car was not in the best shape, and was prone to just giving out on him without much notice. And as if on cue, his car began to sputter and the engine died, forcing him to coast to the side of the road. He waited there a moment – of all the nights to forget a cell phone! – and crossed his fingers, hoping that someone would come along in just a moment to help him out or maybe give him a ride. It was just about at that moment that the four men stepped out of the trees and without saying a whole lot began to viciously punch and kick the man, leaving him wallet-less, coatless, and breathless on the ground. He was left bleeding in the drainage ditch on the side of the road, barely able to move, barely clinging to life.
And that is where the man lay, all night long, coming in and out of consciousness through the seemingly endless night, with no other cars coming down the road. And in the morning, traffic began to pick up again on the road from Aragon to Taylorsville, and a car pulled into sight of the man. In the car was a United Methodist pastor, hurrying on his way to a meeting in Atlanta. The pastor saw the man, saw his broken down car, saw the blood, and kept on driving. I don’t know why, he just did – maybe it was just easier to keep driving and pretend that he hadn’t seen what he had just seen. A second car came the other way, this time driven by a deacon of the Baptist church, on his way to his weekly prayer breakfast. The deacon saw the man, saw the bruises, saw the ditch he was lying in, saw him there without a coat, and kept on driving. I don’t know why, he just did – maybe the whole thing was just too messy, too much – and maybe it was some sort of trick or a trap, some kind of a con. So he kept driving.
The third car that came down the road from Aragon to Taylorsville that morning was driven by Omar, a Muslim immigrant from Pakistan. He was driving to a business meeting in Cartersville, to see about opening a gas station there, but as he drove down the road, he saw the broken down car and the broken and bleeding man in the ditch, and was deeply moved with compassion. Without hesitation, he pulled his car over. He ran to the side of the injured man, and with a first-aid kit from his trunk, he began to clean the man’s wounds and to bandage him up as best as he could. He then gently picked up the man, placed him in the back seat of his car, and drove him to the Cartersville Medical Center. After carrying the man into the hospital, he gave the nurse his MasterCard and said: “whatever it costs to make him well, just put it on my card. No matter how much – his medical care is on me.”
And the question that Jesus asks is this: “Which of these three, of the Methodist, the Baptist, or the Muslim, was a neighbor to the man in the ditch?” Now you may be asking yourself: “What is this preacher talking about? I thought this story was about priests and Levites and Samaritans!” Well, Samaritans were the religious and cultural enemies of the Jews, who lived in the region between Jerusalem and the Galilee. So when Jesus tells us that a Samaritan is the one who is really compassionate, the one who shows us what it is like to be a neighbor – you can almost hear the lawyer (and probably the rest of the crowd) steaming, fuming, angry at even the suggestion that the cruel, evil, sub-human Samaritans could even be capable of such a thing. When Jesus asks the lawyer: “Which of these was a neighbor to the beaten man?” the answer is obvious, but the lawyer can’t even say the word “Samaritan” – he’s that mad. He says instead: “The one who showed him mercy.” The lawyer had been looking for Jesus to draw a line and say: “Your love can stop here. To have eternal life, you only have to love these people, but you are fine hating those people.” But Jesus real words are these: “There are no lines, no boundaries, for love. Who is your neighbor? Every single human being on the face of this earth. Especially the ones you hate. Those are the ones that you are commanded by the Living God of Heaven and Earth to love, even as you love your own self.”
This story is far from an easy lesson on being nice to those stranded on the roadside. It is a deep, hard, difficult challenge to our hearts, to our practice of love and mercy. One writer suggests this: “Think of yourself as the person in the ditch, and then ask ‘Is there anyone, from any group, about whom we would rather die than acknowledge “She offered help” or “He showed compassion?” More, is there any group whose members might rather die that help us?’” Then with that picture in your mind, you get a taste of what Jesus is asking – love that one. Show extravagant mercy and care for that one. This is what Jesus is asking of us, we who are seeking to love God and love our neighbor.
And this is the best part – after Jesus totally throws us through a loop, telling us to love the one that it is hardest for us to love, to make that our work and our job – after we are left with our jaw on the floor – Jesus tells us to “Go and do likewise.” “Get out there and do it! Don’t just sit there, don’t just think about at night when you are reading your Bible – go out and do it!” Love God! Love your neighbor! You are free to do so! Jesus lays out an incredibly difficult path and says: “Alright! Get out there and love! Get out there and show complete strangers – the ones you don’t know and the ones you know you don’t like – show them the radical love of God.” You see, for the lawyer, the law was his gospel, his guiding rule, his path to follow. But for us, in Jesus Christ, the gospel is our law – we are commanded to love everyone, everyone – no ifs, ands, or buts – commanded to love everyone. And this is the law that we follow. The law of love. And we don’t follow it out of duty or obligation – we follow the gospel, the good news of God’s deep love for every human being – we follow the gospel as our law out of our love for God. Because when we love God with all that we are, and when we love our neighbor with all that we have to give, we enter into a new way of living, a love way, a kingdom way, and we become more and more human through the power of God’s love working in us and through us.
My dad, when he was giving the eulogy for his mother, my Grammy, said that he always imagined her as a sort of “angel on the loose. A person just looking for a way to help, a way to do some good, a way to love.” And she did – through work with Al-Anon, folks with mental illness, and her church, my Grammy was always looking for a way to help a neighbor of any stripe that was in need. And that’s who we are, isn’t it – who we are as the church? A team of angels on the loose, actively looking, watching with our eyes open for a neighbor in need, eager to respond with the radical love of God in Jesus Christ. We know that we have been shown amazing grace, been given life-changing love even when we were far off from God, and so we are charged and challenged with loving the world in return. So get out there, y’all. Go and do it! Love God with all that you are! Love your neighbor as you love yourself – no lines. No boundaries. No loopholes. Just love. Amen.
