I’ve often
remarked at what a different role the Bible plays in the lives of people today
from the place it had in the culture in which I grew up.
Stop right
there. Just so your mind doesn’t wander
off track here, wondering if you’re going to have to endure a lament about the
poor Bible not being read and obeyed any more, let me disabuse you of that fear
right now. No, I am not for spending any
of your time or mine, in or out of church, bemoaning the loss of the Bible or
anything else in the supposedly good old days.
Even though
sunset has come to the day, earlier my ministry, when I could say “please join
me in saying the 23rd Psalm,” and have 90% of my audience know what
I was talking about and be able to say it with me, a couple of biblical phrases
still hang on. One is the term “Good
Samaritan.” I haven’t taken a poll to
see how many people recognize it, but my sense is that, somewhat like the
popular title of another of Jesus’ parables, “The Prodigal Son,” the words “Good
Samaritan” still have some use in English speech.
Be aware
that “Good Samaritan” is a phrase that nowhere appears in the biblical
text. It most likely appeared in some
edition of the Bible as an editorial title at the top of the page or
passage. If you know a modicum about
first century Jews, you know that they generally despised Samaritans as a
religiously conservative and ethnically impure group that pious Jews avoided at
all costs, to the point of taking the long way around Samaria to get from Judea
to Galilee, for example, rather than choosing the shortcut. So the descriptor “Good” attached to
Samaritan was at least in part a nod to the attitude that all the rest of the
Samaritans were, to put it kindly, not so good.
As Jessie
Weston argues in From Ritual to Romance,
things that start off with a degree of, let’s say, religious significance have
a way of devolving over time into the stuff of romance—and ultimately
degenerate into entertainment rather than retaining their original power. A similar process over the centuries has made
“good Samaritan” less of a radical figure making a radical point (by Jesus) and
more of a kindly soul who stops to help people who are in a fix, especially
strangers. That is not such a bad thing;
but I want to suggest that we not go there quite so quickly, nor stay there
quite so long.
Luke’s
story is set within an acrimonious confrontation—one of many, progressively
tense—between Jesus and the religious elite of his day. This time a lawyer, who is a religious figure
versed in Torah, the Law of Moses, not a secular attorney, is interesting in
tripping Jesus up. “What must I do to
inherit eternal life?” It doesn’t sound
all that tricky, does it? Jesus returns
the question with a question. “What is
in the Law? What do you read
there?” And the lawyer answers with the
Shema, which we know as “the Summary of the Law,” the heart of it. But Jesus’ agreement doesn’t go very far with
him. He has to justify himself, so he
asks another question, “And who is my neighbor?” That is the question that the parable
purports to answer. But notice that the
tables turn as Jesus’ reaches the climax of his story. The question that the story answers is not
“who is my neighbor” but “who does the neighborly thing?” And the answer, which in the world of Twitter
might be #neversaytheirname, is, of course, the Samaritan.
Don’t you
just love it? The smart aleck gets his
comeuppance. Jesus proves his wit and
wisdom. Oh, how we love to vilify the
villain! But before this parable became
Sunday morning entertainment, remember that it was a piece of radical
sociology. Jesus specialized in crossing
boundaries and obliterating them. Not a
few of his heroes were in fact Samaritans, tax collectors, women, widows,
children, lepers, prostitutes, and other ragtag and bobtail people generally
outside the Law and the borders of respectability. They were heroes not because
they were morally superior but because the boundaries had been drawn all wrong
to begin with. Outside/inside, a
division with which human beings are historically and transculturally
enchanted, is a concept is turned on its head in the kingdom of God. Those who think they are righteous and have
the certificate to prove it turn out not to be.
And those who have no claim at all on things like righteousness (which
means living in right relationship to God and others), or mercy, or grace, are
those who are invited to sit at the welcome table despite their table
manners.
Rather than
become stuck in a game of vilifying the villain, let’s see what happens when we
take the principle of the Good Samaritan and see where it might lead us
today.
The
Samaritan is a model neighbor precisely because he is alert, aware, and willing
to embrace the defenseless. The story
without belaboring details surely suggests that he is willing to risk being
beaten or perhaps killed himself simply by stopping to see what the matter
was. He is resourceful, pouring on oil
and wine. He is liberal in giving his
time to one who has absolutely no claim on it.
He is generous in paying a stranger’s bill. He is merciful. He gets nothing out of the deal, except
perhaps the satisfaction of helping. Remember,
too, that he is not a historical person, but rather a credible character in a
story told to make a point. One might
surmise that, as a despised Samaritan in a country where he is subject to an
attitude that might be called “Samaritan Lives Don’t Matter” he might have
suffered just enough ridicule or violence or sorrow or debasement or some form
of pain to have discovered that all pain is one, and that somehow he himself,
not an unknown Jew, is in fact lying there half dead in the ditch.
So we get
the point. “Go and do likewise.” But I want to suggest that what the Bible is
really about is not just giving us a moral readjustment, let alone permission
to congratulate ourselves for doing a bit of social action here and there. Once we see what the Samaritan is really
about—openness, courage, oneness with those in despair—biblical faith—I’d
rather personify it and call it Jesus—pushes us to take the next step and the
next and the next. And I’m convinced
that the essence of neighborliness neither exists in nor stops at pausing to
help someone stranded on the highway, although I’ve been happy enough on a
number of occasions to have someone stop and help me when I’d otherwise have
been totally stranded.
Neighborliness
may start with Mr. Rogers (of blessed memory), but it goes way beyond his nice
little neighborhood.
It begins to
rearrange us into patterns of connectedness not only with people in need, but
people very much unlike us, people who are abhorrent to us. And it doesn’t stop with people. Neighborliness opens our eyes to see our link
to animals, to plants, to rocks and dirt and fire and water and air and
fruit. Yes, to practice even the most
basic care and openness for the defenseless is a part of a large project of
reimagining the entirety of creation, including our place in the scheme of
things. And, believe me, none of this is
any more way-out than the notion of modeling behavior after a fictitious
Samaritan was for our smart-alecky lawyer.
I’ve
recently read an amazing book called Braiding
Sweetgrass. Its author, Robin Wall
Kemmerer, is a Native American, a biologist, and a challenging thinker. She presents a compelling case for an
alternative view of life on the planet that stands in stark contrast to our
market-driven, ego-minded, dominion-over-all-other-species approach that does
not seem to be working too well for the good of the earth or its
inhabitants. She has me thinking. Of course, I suppose, the hardnosed skeptics
among us, not to mention the convinced capitalists, would make quick hamburger
of Kemmerer’s Native American views of thankfulness for the gifts of nature,
for the intelligence of plants, for the interrelatedness of all animal life,
indeed all life, including human life.
All worked up over gun violence and rampant killings and economic
injustice and its parent, white superiority, we might find it hard to believe
that being neighborly actually means something as mundane as caring about frogs
and salamanders. But in a poignant
passage, Kemmerer describes how a bunch of college students in a herpetology
class are out on a rainy night in the country, endeavoring to save salamanders
trying to cross a road to make it on to the next part of a life cycle before automobiles
squash them. She writes:
Salamanders are so very much the “other,” cold, slimy creatures verging on repulsive to the warm-blooded Homo sapiens. Their startling otherness makes it all the more remarkable that we were here tonight in their defense. Amphibians offer few of the warm fuzzy feelings that fuel our protection of charismatic mammals that look back at us with Bambi’s grateful eyes. They bring us face to face with our innate xenophobia, sometimes directed at other species and sometimes directed at our own, whether in this hollow or in deserts halfway around the globe. Being with salamanders gives honor to otherness, offers an antidote to the poison of xenophobia. Each time we rescue slippery, spotted beings we attest to their right to be, to live in the sovereign territory of their own lives.[1]
© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2016
[1] Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the
Teachings of Plants (Milkweed
Editions: Kindle Edition, 2013), p.
358.
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