Samaritan Lives Matter

Luke 10:25-37

Just them a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the inn keeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and who I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

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When I was a camp counselor, one summer we had the chance to teach this parable to elementary school kids, and of course, being at camp, that meant putting on a skit. And in good summer camp fashion, that meant turning the characters into modern day equivalents. The person who was jumped was just a random person, the priest was a character the kids could understand, so was the Levite, being a lawyer, but the Samaritan was a bit harder to put into context. There wasn’t time to explain the history of long relationship between Samaritans and the Jews in Jesus’ audience, so we asked the kids to think of a kind of person nobody wanted to be around. They decided on ‘smelly kid.’ So, the parable of the ‘good smelly kid,’ it was, and we made a skit out of it. It was great fun, except the camper who joyfully volunteered to be the hero of the narrative was then labeled the ‘smelly kid’ for the rest of the week. And even in jest, at that young age, teasing does not make for a fun and wholesome camp experience. But that’s the heart of this story, isn’t it? That the names we call each other, the assumptions, the way we treat each other, make a big difference on how we live in community together, on how we self-segregate.

So I propose another modern reading of this story, in light of recent ongoing events, because we hear this Good Samaritan tale so often I think we have forgotten how difficult it was to hear initially. It might go something like this: A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Now, of course, what kind of man do we imagine in that first line? And what difference does it make to how we hear the rest of the story? Was it a white man from a nice suburban neighborhood? Was it a black man from a nice suburban neighborhood? Was it a poor man? A young man? Is this the man we are supposed to identify with? Picture a man traveling by foot along a road alone, who is suddenly attacked - how do you picture the attackers? Pay attention to how you listen to these stories, how you fill in the details that aren’t given. Now, this man has been robbed, stripped, and beats bloody to the point of unconsciousness. He might well be dead, for all appearances.

So we each have our images of the scene so far. Have you ever crossed paths with such a one? Someone who is so beaten down, physically or emotionally or otherwise, who seems at first glance to be beyond all hope of saving? We tend to either pity or avoid suffering, don’t we? There’s a common phrase I hear when somebody ‘out there’ has experienced such suffering: “There but for the grace of God go I.” I tend to think we mean well when we say it, as though reminding ourselves that we are no different from the one who has been beaten bloody, but more often than not it serves only to say that we are somehow more ‘blessed,’ and we keep our distance rather than reaching out in compassion. 

If we’ve not experienced such suffering ourselves, it can be startling to really consider our common humanity, lest we risk losing our own sense of comfort and control. We can respond to suffering by either keeping far away from it, or by working to prevent the suffering of others. Like the priest in the parable today, who kept far away. He had the public and ordained role of caring for the least of these, and yet he avoided that call. Granted, it could have made him ritually unclean if that body on the side of the road had been dead. Maybe the priest was on his way to a very important meeting. Maybe his mind was elsewhere and he didn’t really take in the gravity of the situation. We can make all kinds of excuses for the priest, but in the end, he didn’t stop to help. The priest crossed to the other side of the road, much like we do when we see on the sidewalk somebody who makes us uncomfortable. 

Then came the Levite. We elect political leaders, lawyers and such, to protect us, to uphold the law, to see justice done. But this Levite avoided his responsibility as well. What was going on with him? Did he think that by stopping he would also be at risk of attack? Had he already seen too many of these beatings and thought justice a lost cause? Looking at the news lately, I can understand how many would find the pursuit of justice to feel like a lost cause. And after the shootings in Orlando, I can understand a little of the fear of attack, but only the slightest sense of that fear. Maybe this lawyer had compassion fatigue, was through with trying to save the world. Again, we can make all the excuses, but we will never know, because it’s just a story told to illustrate a point.

So comes the Samaritan. What shall we say for him? I suppose it would depend on the audience who would best fit into his role. Samaritans were not welcome, were not heroes, were not safe. For the Samaritan, stopping most definitely meant risking his safety, he had no recourse to retaliate if those robbers were still around. For the Samaritan, his help might not have even been welcome if the one who had been left for dead had any choice in the matter. Who might that Samaritan be for you? Who is the kind of person who makes you most uncomfortable? Who would you cross the street to avoid? What kind of person would make you so angry you would rather die than accept help from them? Who have you been told your whole life is incapable of compassion?

See, this story is told as an illustration of eternal life. It paints a picture of the way we cut and divide our communities, the way we splinter the Body of Christ, even when we’ve made an ‘ordered’ system for those who are ‘supposed’ to care for others. And in the middle of it, there is mercy. In the midst of life as it is comes compassion from the place we have been taught to least expect it. In the middle of eternal life, at the heart of it, lies the free gift of a God who joins us in our pain, who steps into our hurt, who risks everything to gather us up and carry us to wholeness.

Martin Luther King, Jr. has said that the question of this parable is not “what happens to me if I help the one stranded at the side of the road,” but “what happens to the one who is stranded if I don’t help?” That, my friends, is the question of eternal life. Because we do not need to be afraid for our own survival, we are free to tend to the survival and the full thriving of our neighbors. And who is our neighbor? Anyone who needs mercy, anyone who offers us mercy, everyone to whom God has given life. Because the gift of life eternal is the gift of mercy. It is the mercy which heals the cosmos, which stops the killing, which rebuilds after every tragedy and steps in to bind up the brokenhearted. It is the mercy of eternal life which reveals the Divine Image in every person, which looks at our fractured history and declares with power and compassion that Samaritan lives matter, that female lives matter, that Black lives matter, that homeless lives matter, that mentally ill lives matter, that every marginalized life matters, no matter how we divide and devour one another.

This is how we live into our inheritance. This is the God who loves us, who walks with us, who died and rose again for us. The God of mercy and compassion has formed us all in the Image of mercy and compassion, and we are already walking in the inheritance of life eternal, in the here and now. Thanks be to God.