Saint Luke 10:25-37
The flip side of all the sadness and despair of July 4 were the heartening tales of “Good Samaritans” who came to the aid if their neighbors in the aftermath of the carnage of the Highland Park Parade.
The story of the little boy walking the streets, all alone, after his mother had been killed and his father died protecting him. He was spotted by Dana and Greg Ring who tried to get him to the police. The cops Greg said, “looked like they were getting ready for war. I'll never forget. I pulled up, and I said, 'This is not our kid. It's not his blood; he's OK. What should we do?'
"And the cop said, 'We can't be babysitters now. Can you take care of him?'
"We said, 'Of course.'"1
And they did until Aiden, now an orphan, was reunited with his grandparents.
Or the shopkeepers who, amid the mayhem just threw open their doors and hid people in their backrooms sometimes for hours.
Or, Karen Britten, who shortly after the pandemonium “was back in her home near the parade route making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and handing out old Beanie Baby toys to help comfort nearly 30 adults and children who took shelter in her basement.”2
“Good Samaritans” who rushed to the aid of people they did not know to offer comfort and support. Jesus’ parable has been lived out among us at an excruciatingly painful level.
The lawyer’s question was purely theoretical, but he wasn’t being a jerk. Lawyers, rabbis, and other learned folk were always putting each other to the test by asking questions.
Think about an ethics class in college where the students were asks to wrestle with some hypothetical situation until fifty minutes went by while they debated the issue.
Jesus and the lawyer don’t waste this kind of time. He asks. Jesus asks. And the question is on the table. Dr. Fred B. Craddock, wrote in his commentary:
The lawyer knew the answers to his own questions, and in both cases, Jesus expresses full agreement. Then what is wrong with this conversation?
Asking questions in order to gain an advantage over another is not a kingdom exercise. The goal of witnessing or of theological conversation is not to outwit another. Having right answers does not mean one knows God.
The problem with the lawyer, Craddock points out, is that he is “asking a question with no intention of implementing the answer.”3
So, Jesus launches into a little, but now famous, story about one the one who knew God and showed it by doing God’s will, but this story had a surprise ending and it was especially surprising for one group of listeners.
These stories always had a formula. First, they would expect that the half-dead guy in the ditch to be one of them. Second, it would be no surprise to a Jewish peasant that the two who passed by were a priest or Levite.
Just as today we hear the words “elite” or “woke” bandied about as if it were something vile. “Given the upper-class status of the priest and the Levite ... an audience would look askance at the scandalous, merciless act of the priest and the Levite.”4 No surprise there.
The surprise comes when Jesus introduces a hero. And who do you think were the most surprised people in the crowd when Jesus said that the hero was a Samaritan?
I don’t expect you to remember this but the last time we were together Jesus very own disciples had asked permission to burn a Samaritan village to the ground when they were not welcomed warmly. Remember?
And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” But Jesus turned and rebuked them.5
They had to have remembered that rebuke. It had to still be ringing in their ears when Jesus launched into this little story. And while they were rebuked over their desire for violence the enmity between them and the Samaritans was probably not quenched by a simple scolding. Samaritans were still their mortal enemies.
To make matters worse, if this story was true to form, they, “the good guys,” would be the heros. They would be the ones who swooped in to save the day.
Instead, Jesus makes the hero a Samaritan (A Samaritan!) who the hearers expected to behave at least as badly as the priest and Levite, and probably worse. “Jesus does not introduce the Samaritan in order to dissolve his listeners’ preconceptions but in order to play off them.”
Again, another warning from Dr. Craddock:
Great care should be given in our culture to analogies to the Samaritan. Often poor analogies trivialize a text. Remember that this man who delayed his own journey, expended great energy, risked danger to himself, spent two days wages with the assurance of more, and promised to follow up on his activity was ceremonially unclean, socially an outcast, and religiously a heretic. This is a profile not easily matched.7
Maybe we don’t even have to try to match it because maybe, we have been identifying with the wrong people in the story all along.
We have all felt like the priest or Levite, haven’t we? I have every time I have spent a lot of good money on tickets to the Lyric Opera and have to walk past while giving nothing to a Streetwise vendor because all I have in my pocket is the twenty I have been saving for my glass of wine and sweet treat at intermission.
And how I would have loved to be that Samaritan! Rushing in and saving the day! How I would love to be seen as a one-man Florence Nightingale or Mother Theresa. But I know I am not that.
So, who am I in the story? Only a young person might see this.
Dr. James D. Howell is the amazing preacher and pastor of the Myers Park United Methodist Church who remembered teaching New Testament to some adolescents at a Catholic camp years ago. To get them thinking, I asked: “With whom in this story do you identify? Instead of saying, not ‘just the busy dudes,’ or ‘not just the helpful Samaritan,’ they said, ‘the guy beaten up by the side of the road.’”8
Ever feel like him? I am sure the people of Highland Park, and Uvalde, and Buffalo do. I am sure the people of Ukraine do. I’m sure that people in neighborhoods where gun violence is the norm do.
I am sure that you did too last week while preparing the brats, burgers, and potato salad for your annual Independence Day picnic when you turned on your television for a half-a-second and cried out, “Not again.”
We may have never thought of this before because we’ve always identified with the priest or the Levite or, at our very best the Samaritan but never thought of ourselves as the guy in the ditch.
The important thing to remember about him is that he didn’t care who rendered him aid. He needed help and he accepted it from whoever it was offered. When your broken and bloodied and scared out of your wits you really don’t care who’s by your side. This is not a time for pop quizzes or theological purity tests. This is a time to accept the grace that is coming to you in whatever form it comes.
The shopkeepers and citizens of Highland Park didn’t ask a million questions before they let the frightened parade-goers in the door. They didn’t ask if the person they were helping belonged to Trinity Episcopal or Immaculate Conception Catholic. They didn’t ask if you were a member of North Suburban Synagogue Beth El, Highland Park Presbyterian or Galilee United Methodist. They didn’t ask if you were a believer or a non-believer. They didn’t ask about your marital status or care if you were gay or straight. They didn’t even ask if you were a Republican or a Democrat. If you needed help, they gave it.
Still, said nurse practitioner Jacquie Toia, “We did what we could to take care of the immediate needs, and that’s probably the real tragedy — we didn’t have enough hands to do what needed to be done.”9
There will never be enough! There will always be a need for those who remember that there was a time when they were deep in a ditch but were helped by somebody who took the time to care.
It shouldn’t but it often takes a tragedy to remind us of our needs and the needs of others.
So, what is Jesus' word to the guy who thought this was all a game? When it dawned on him that a neighbor was one who showed mercy, kindness, pity, concern no matter who the person in need was Jesus simply said, “Go and do likewise.” Go and do.
And that is his word for us this morning too. “Go and do likewise.”
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