The dramatic journey continues in Luke from the Mount of the
Transfiguration to Jerusalem and Holy Week.
First as we read two weeks ago in Luke 9 there was the incident at the
Samaritan village—as Jesus and his disciples were refused the customary
hospitality of travelers. No room in the
inn for them! And then, in last week’s reading from the first part of
the 10th chapter, the mission of the 70, sent out two by two to preach repentance and
the forgiveness of sins and the coming of the Savior and his Kingdom. There were some amazingly positive things that
happened, we’ll remember, but also doors slamming. Rejection.
An early foretaste of what it would mean to be “lambs in the midst of
wolves.”
Now the pilgrims, becoming something of a crowd as folks come out to
see them, are stopped in one of the
towns along the way by a lawyer--which we probably should understand not quite
in our modern secular sense anyway. What
we might in our context call a “canon lawyer,” in this case a rabbi specially
trained in the scriptures, a teacher of the Law of Moses, a “Torah expert,” an
important leader, someone to whom the community would go for questions and
judgments on matters of Jewish religious law and custom. He approaches Jesus to “test” him, which is
an interesting word. It’s a question
addressed by one debater to another. It’s strategic, an opening move, searching out
a weak spot. Tell me, Jesus, “what must
one do to inherit eternal life?” Throwing down the rhetorical gauntlet: show me what you’re made of.
This Jesus crowd must be creating quite a stir, a buzz, and those in
the villages who heard the message of the 70 now have come out to see what is
going on. The authorities can’t ignore
it anymore. They feel forced to step in now
to see if they can’t nip this business in the bud. To demonstrate that they are the ones the people should trust and follow--and not this
charismatic but uncredentialed country preacher from Nazareth.
Jesus is quick to turn the tables:
“You tell me.” The Lawyer then quotes Deuteronomy 6 to show
that he is on top of his game. “Love the
Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and your
neighbor as yourself.” Right in the
heart and center of Biblical Jewish teaching.
But the lawyer tries another move to see if he can’t find something he
can use: “All right, then, Jesus: who is
my neighbor?”
Jesus doesn’t quote
scripture. Instead he steps into the
preaching role that has been so effective in his ministry in the Galilee. He tells what is for us of course the familiar
Parable. A wounded victim, two stock religious
officials. We might think of them as colleagues
of the Lawyer, both of whom of course would have recited from memory the same
verse that the Lawyer has just quoted about loving God and loving neighbor, even as
they pass by and look the other way. In
Matthew 23 Jesus tells his disciples to pay attention to the words of these religious
leaders, but not to follow their example.
Probably a good bit of advice in any era. They talk the talk, but they won’t walk the
walk. “Whitewashed sepulchers,” he calls
them. Like tombs that are beautiful on
the outside but full of death and corruption within. --And then, finally, famously, the Good Samaritan
himself-- the last person in the world the rabbi or priest or Levite or any even
marginally observant Jew would ever have pictured in such a role. The hero of
the story—the most unlikely character of all ends up embodying the values that
the official defenders of the faith can’t seem to put into practice in their
personal lives.
It’s not hard to find the kinds of analogies that we would search for
to get the impact of this. Thinking this
week with a heaviness of heart about the polarities and divisions in our own
society, Questions about who our
neighbor is. In the tensions in the
African American community and among those who serve in police and public
safety positions, issues of trust and connection--and in all the latent
electricity that gets sparked across the political spectrum and in the press
and media and social platforms. We imagine settling down to talk with a circle
of Palestinian villagers in the occupied
West Bank, and to share with them the Parable of the Good Israeli. In Apartheid South Africa we venture into a
shebeen in the urban sprawl of Soweto and recount for the gathered crowd the
Parable of the Good Afrikaner. Perhaps
we gather a few Hillary supporters and tell the Parable of the Good Trump
Supporter!
We just so often put our trust in all the wrong places. That’s the idea that makes this story work. We expect one thing, we get something else
altogether. What we think is going to save us when the
chips are down, when our backs are against the wall. Who and what we think we can count on. Those two religious officials: if the victim
of the mugging was awake at all, he must have rejoiced to see them coming down
the road! We all have our own items on
the list. Our financial resources, our
education and careers, our physical fitness, our intelligence, our
respectability, our friends, our families, our political and social and
religious institutions and leaders, the fact that we go to church on Sundays or
give to good causes or support the right causes and candidates.
If we were doing an analysis of this story in an undergraduate English
Lit. course one of the bright students would probably point out fairly quickly
that the Samaritan is “a kind of Christ figure.” The unexpected outsider who gives
sacrificially of himself to save one who has done nothing to deserve that
precious gift. The stranger who pays
the debt in full, before the debtor even knows how much he owes. It is precisely in and through this Samaritan,
of all people, and not through one of those religious leaders, that the peace
and hospitality and gracious blessing of God’s kingdom is revealed.
If the Lawyer posed the question
in the first place to “test” Jesus, Jesus is testing him right back—and testing
us too, I guess. Because we all know,
don’t we, that all those places where we
most of the time turn to find our help in the day of trouble, they’re like the
house built on sand that Jesus talks about at the end of the Sermon on the Mount,
in Matthew 7. Deep down we know, though
we try to pretend otherwise, that one heavy storm will wash the whole thing
away. In the end none of that will save
us, just as the priest and Levite who passed by would save the man by the side
of the road. They just didn’t have it in
them. None have foundations deep enough
to stand against the storm of sin and death.
We know that. None of them are
able to pay the price that needs to be paid.
What the crowd may be thinking as they look at their canon lawyer this
morning. The thought that may go through
all our minds. Who will be the one who will
stop for us?
Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering
and a sacrifice to God.
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