You Already Know
THE FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Deuteronomy 30:9-14 • Luke 10:25-37
A popular way to tackle Jesus’s story of the Good Samaritan is to “translate” it into modern-day terms. For example, the oil and wine that the Samaritan applied to the injured man’s wounds are like modern-day Neosporin. (Wine was the antiseptic, and oil the soothing ointment.) The two denarii that the Samaritan gave the innkeeper to care for the injured man was worth between six-hundred and a thousand dollars—not accounting for recent inflation.
The steep, notoriously dangerous road from the capital city Jerusalem to the smaller town of Jericho wasn’t much like 49. But on both roads, it’s tempting to sail right by many types of people on the roadside in need of help.
The “priest” in the story of the Good Samaritan could be any official religious leader. The “Levite” was perhaps a non-ordained person who assisted with services in the Temple—so, an equivalent in our church might be an acolyte, lector, choir member, or officer on our vestry. In any case, the priest and the Levite are people you’d most expect to help the injured man, but instead they hurry past on the other side of the road.
Avoiding some of these uncomfortable parallels, modern-day preachers often claim that the priest and the Levite are afraid of being ritually “defiled” by the injured or possibly dead body of the beaten man. But this interpretation lets us blame the priest and the Levite’s lack of compassion on a caricature of ancient Judaism. In reality, the priest and the Levite reflect our shared human impulse to turn away from or rush past people in pain or in need.
As for the Samaritan, there’s really no way to name a modern equivalent without offending someone. Sometimes, preachers encourage us to think of the Samaritans as the oppressed and the marginalized, the excluded and reviled, the outcasts and the downtrodden. When that happens, we can congratulate ourselves that, unlike most other types of Christians, we just love the Samaritans of our day.
But Samaritans felt to Jesus’s audience more like powerful or aggressive enemies than like the oppressed or marginalized. The inhabitants of Samaria changed over the long biblical story of Israel, but Samaritans were depicted as aggressors, not the dispossessed. When Jacob and his family settled nearby, the inhabitants of Samaria attacked them. When the kingdom of Israel split in two after the reigns of David and Solomon, the northern kingdom set up its own temple in Samaria to compete with the Temple in Jerusalem. When the wicked king Ahaz ruled in Jerusalem, the warriors of Samaria invaded and took two-hundred thousand Judeans captive. When Samaritan territory was invaded by the Assyrian empire, the Assyrians mixed its population with other groups. Israelites near Jerusalem then saw Samaritan religion and culture as a dilution or distortion of their own.
Today, I’m going to say something truly shocking for a compassionate, actively merciful congregation like St. Paul’s: I don’t think Jesus liked Samaritans all that much. He didn’t despise them or want them destroyed or anything. But for Jesus, Samaritans just seem to be the most conveniently located group of people he could use to jolt or even shame his people into deeper faithfulness to their own God.
In Luke’s gospel—and only Luke’s gospel—we hear stories that took place or were told along Jesus’s long road trip from his home in Galilee in the north to Jerusalem in the south, passing through the region of Samaria.
Two weeks ago, we heard how Jesus and his disciples entered a Samaritan village along their way. When the Samaritans didn’t welcome them, James and John offered to command heavenly fire to burn the whole village down. Their words echoed those of the prophet Elijah, who once upon a time called down fire to consume a hundred men in the king of Samaria’s army (2 Kings 1:9-16). Jesus did rebuke James and John for their offer, but he didn’t exactly launch into a speech about how every human being is equally worthy of God’s inclusive love either.
Today, of course, Jesus tells a story of in which a priest and a Levite pass by a wounded man, while a Samaritan binds his wounds, carries him on his own animal, and pays for his lodging at an inn until he’s well again. This story echoes another incident from Israel’s ancient past with Samaria, during the reign of King Ahaz in Jerusalem.* While Ahaz was worshiping foreign gods, attackers from Samaria invaded and captured Ahaz’s people. But then, a prophet warned the Samaritan warriors that enslaving the Judeans would enrage the Lord. So, the warriors in Samaria decided to anoint their captives with oil, load the feeble ones onto donkeys, and return all of them to none other than Jericho (2 Chronicles 28:8-15). Jesus’s story of the Good Samaritan alludes to this obscure episode: a Samaritan treats wounds with oil, gives the weak a ride on his animal, and sees a wounded man safely to Jericho. With this story and its echoes in Israel’s past, Jesus reminds his people that when the leaders of Jerusalem falter in honoring God, heeding prophets, and extending God’s mercy, their enemies step up to show them how it’s done.
A few months from now, we’ll hear yet another story about Samaritans in Luke’s gospel. Jesus heals ten lepers, and nine of them run quickly on their way. But the one Samaritan leper turns back, praises God, and thanks Jesus. Jesus asks, more or less, “Weren’t there ten lepers? Where are the other nine? Did not one of them come back to praise God except this foreigner?” (Luke 17:11-19).
For Jesus in the gospel of Luke, Samaritans are foreigners who on occasion outdo the Israelites in thanking God and in showing mercy. And Jesus uses their example to tell his fellow Israelites, “If these bullies and apostates can show mercy and praise God once in a while, then surely you can too.”
I don’t dare propose an equivalent of Samaritans for an audience of modern-day Northwest Arkansans. Not only would I offend someone, but today’s gospel isn’t really about Samaritans. It’s about Jesus’s mission to his own people, to remind them of the God they already know.
Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan to a man who already knows the answers to his own questions. He asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” And when Jesus asks this man what’s written in the law, he rattles off the answer by heart: Love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. When this man has a follow-up question—“who is my neighbor?”—Jesus tells this story. Then, the man correctly identifies the “neighbor” as the character in the story who shows mercy.
This questioner already has what he needs. He has the fundamental teachings of Scripture memorized. More than that, he has an instinct for mercy and compassion encoded in his very being. As we heard in our first reading today, “the word”—the Lord’s teaching—“is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”
Throughout Luke’s gospel, Jesus consistently reminds people that they already have everything they need to inherit the kingdom. They have the teachings, the prophets, the ingrained ability to treat others with justice and compassion.
Jesus’s responses to these people vary widely. To one seeker, Jesus says, “come, follow me” (18:18-25). To another, Jesus says, “Return to your home” (8:39). And to today’s questioner he says, “go and do likewise.” Jesus’s goal on the long road to Jerusalem isn’t to accumulate the largest throng of followers, let alone worshippers. Instead, he relieves his people’s anxiety about both earthly wealth and eternal life. Along his way through Samaria, he leavens his own people with those who realize just how little more they need, because of how much justice and mercy they already know by heart.
* I learned about this parallel from Amy-Jill Levine’s book Short Stories By Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (HarperCollins, 2014).
© 2022 The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas