Subversive Stories

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In reply, Jesus said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho …” (Luke 10:30).

We’re continuing our new Race, Power and Healing series by listening to one of Jesus’ most familiar and beloved parables.  “Good Samaritan” has entered our language and even our legal system despite many people no longer knowing where the phrase originated.

This sermon series began with the Cain and Abel story (Genesis 4).  There, the key moment is Cain’s question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  Here, in Luke 10, Jesus’ parable is framed by two questions, questions that echo Genesis 4.

The two questions?  “Who is my neighbor?” asked of Jesus by “an expert in the Law,” and the way Jesus ends the parable: “Who was a neighbor to the injured man?” (verses 29 and 36).

We can become so familiar with Jesus’ parables that we forget how subversive they are.  When reading one of the parables, it’s always important to see what generated the parable—what was going on that caused Jesus to respond with a simple but often very slyly subversive story?

Here, it started with what we think of as a “theological” question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  It proceeds to a discussion about the Scripture, and an affirmation by Jesus that the “expert in the law" has answered correctly.  “Do this (that is, love God and your neighbor) and you will live,” Jesus tells him (verse 28).

But the man isn’t quite satisfied.  “He wanted to justify himself,” Luke tells us, so he asks just one more question: “Who is my neighbor?”  The man wants to get a gold star from Jesus; Jesus instead hands him a hand grenade of a story.  A story that has the wrong hero—and the wrong “bad guys.”

The man who was attacked, robbed and injured is presumably Jewish, as were the priest and the Levite who “passed by on the other side,” offering no aid to the injured man.  The priest and Levite were actually observing the Law (kind of): as religious leaders, God’s Law prohibited them from coming into contact with (what may well have looked like) a dead body.  So they were likely able to “justify” their not stopping, their passing by on the other side, by an appeal to Scripture.  Besides, the robbers might still be lurking nearby!

The Samaritans and Jews of Jesus’ day had a relationship that was as fraught with a history of conflict and tension, with injustice and indifference, with racial, ethnic and class hostilities as is the current situation between white and black Americans.  

By making the Samaritan the hero of the story, Jesus is doing far more than teaching us we should “be nice” to the less-fortunate, should always be ready to “help a neighbor in need.”  Two Jewish men refused to help their Jewish neighbor, refused to be their brother’s keeper.  A Samaritan, who had many ways to justify ignoring an injured Jew, treated him instead as a neighbor, a brother, a member of a common family.

The expert in the law asked a nice and tidy question about definitions: “Who is my neighbor?”  Jesus responds with a story about behavior: “Who was a neighbor, who acted like a neighbor, to the injured man?”

The answer was obvious to the religion expert.  Now that he knows the answer, what will he do?

Pretend that Jesus is telling this story today.  He wouldn’t use a Samaritan—most of us wouldn’t get it, being unfamiliar with “Samaritans.”  Imagine this story as “The Good Illegal Alien” or “The Good Muslim” or “The Good [you fill in the blank]”.  Imagine who might play the roles of the priest and the Levite in this updated version.  What are you thinking and feeling?  And what might “go and do likewise” look for you?

2 Comments

Thanks, Jan--stay tuned!
What a wonderful and thoughtful post. I would love to write out a skit to act this story out and end with the question: what might "go and do likewise" look for you?

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