by Dave Wilkinson

Luke 10:25-32

November 17, 2002

I have shared previously about an accident I had on the 23 Freeway a year ago last month. It was stop and go traffic. I stopped and was rear-ended by a woman driving an S.U.V. As I stood there next to my wounded car exchanging insurance information, several young people from our church who were returning from Oaks Christian High School drove by. They saw me talking to the other driver, honked and waved, but didn’t notice the mangled condition of my car -- that the trunk was bent up and the rear window blown out. They told me later that they said to each other, "Isn’t it wonderful that our Pastor stopped on the side of the road to help that woman after her car broke down."

I don’t want to tarnish my hard earned reputation for deeds of mercy. But I do need to tell you about how I responded to a call I received.

The call came as such calls seem to come in the early evening. A man was in trouble. He had lived in Simi Valley for two months. He had just been evicted from his apartment. The only place he could find in all of Simi Valley to spend the night was the Radisson hotel. He'd had to work two whole jobs on Saturday just to afford the rent.

Unfortunately he had failed to wash his clothes before he left his apartment. He had spent all of his money just to stay at the Radisson and hadn't left himself enough to get a load of wash done by the laundry service there. He didn't have a car.

He had called all the churches he could find in Simi Valley but could not find even one person who was willing to drive over to the Radisson hotel to bring him laundry money. Since the Christians of Simi Valley had proved so heartless he'd started to call the churches in Moorpark.

It may disappoint you to know that I did not jump into my car and rush right over to Simi Valley with laundry money. It seemed to me that the crisis of undone laundry at the Radisson was not a good reason for me to interrupt my time with my own family and my preparations for Sunday. I even suspected that the call was actually from one of my pastor friends -- or from someone else who was trying to pull my leg -- maybe Roger Kahle.

Any problems this man faced were totally of his own making. No one ever died from a dirty tee shirt. A response from me seemed to be totally unnecessary.

But I will also confess that I felt just a twinge of guilt which was sharpened by the fact that I was preparing to preach on Jesus' great Parable of the Good Samaritan. For I realize from this parable that it is sometimes easy for us to find reasons not to help.

We read in Luke about the encounter between Jesus and a lawyer who stands up to put Jesus to the test. "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"

This lawyer is a member of the Pharisee party who is a specialist in the written and oral law. This particular lawyer asks Jesus a question for the purpose of seeing what kind of answer Jesus will produce. He's not there to learn. He's there to test. The fact that he asks about eternal life gives us some clues as to what Jesus is teaching. Jesus obviously said some things and made promises about eternal life that are caught by the people and now this lawyer decides to quiz Jesus on what he's been saying.

Jesus responds by directing him to the law. "What does the law say?" Jesus asks. "How do you read?"

Now Jesus asks "how do you read?" because read is exactly what Jesus wants this lawyer to do. Pious jews wore little leather boxes on their wrists called phylacteries which contained the very passages of scripture the lawyer quotes -- "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus says to the lawyer. Look at the phylacteries on your own wrist and it will answer your question. That is what is expected. Do this continually -- that's the verb tense Jesus uses -- and you shall live.

Now we should not think that Jesus is teaching "works salvation" here. For it is impossible for anyone to fulfill the command to love God with all one's heart, soul, mind and strength apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. The law shows us how badly we need a savior. Jesus is simply saying: "This is the standard that God expects." "If you can live the way you, yourself know you ought to live, then you are in good shape." Jesus is in no sense antagonistic towards the lawyer. He joins him in honoring the law of love. "Fine. I agree with that." But Jesus does something more. He demands that the law of love be done and not just talked about.

The lawyer is a sharp fellow. He doesn't miss what Jesus is saying. He also knows that he is more proficient at debating the law than doing it. So he takes refuge behind his lawyerly armor and asks for a definition of terms.

There are two questions he could ask. He could ask "who is my God?" But he assumes that he already knows the answer to that one. He goes to the next question: "Who is my neighbor?" The word the lawyer uses is not the word for the "nearby one" (ho perioikos) but the word for the "significant one" (ho plesion). He is not asking: "Who lives close to me?" but "who is validly a part of my community? If I must love my neighbor as myself in order to achieve heaven, then surely you must give me a list of who my neighbor is." If the list is short enough, if you draw the circle narrow enough, I will be able on my own efforts and my own strength to achieve this goal." What the lawyer wants is a legal definition he can refer to in case the subject ever comes up. Since he is a lawyer, and knows the value of precise language, he wants Jesus to give him an answer like: "a neighbor (hereinafter referred to as the party of the first part) is to be construed as meaning a person of Jewish descent whose legal residence is within a radius of no more that three statute miles from one's own legal residence unless there is another person of Jewish descent (hereinafter referred to as the party of the second part) living closer to the party of the first part than one is oneself, in which case the party of the second part is to be construed as neighbor to the party of the first part and one is oneself relieved of all responsibility of any sort whatsoever."

The lawyer's question plainly suggests limits to love. "There must be those to whom the obligation to love does not apply." He wants to focus attention on the worthiness of the recipient of love, rather than on the heart of the one who is doing the loving.

It is in response to this question that Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. Remember that in this parable Jesus is not dealing with the question "what must I do to be saved?" The question is "who is my neighbor?" The setting of the parable is the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.

It was a dangerous road. Jerusalem sits at 2,300 feet above sea level and Jericho, in the Jordan Rift Valley, is about 1,000 feet below sea level. That's a drop of about 3,400 feet in less than twenty miles. It is a narrow road with lots of twists and turns which makes it the happy hunting ground of bandits. As late as the fifth century A.D. it was called the "bloody way."

The victim is apparently a Jew although this is not stated. He is obviously reckless and foolhardy. People didn't travel the Jericho road by themselves if they were carrying goods or valuables. They traveled in convoy. This man had no one to blame but himself for what happens to him -- like my caller from the Radisson who could have stayed at Motel 6, been downtown by a Laundromat and had money left to do his wash.

We also can reasonably assume something else about this victim. We can assume that he was traveling on that road in order to cross the Jordan at Jericho to travel north to galilee along the east bank of the Jordan. That was a longer road than the direct road north, but the direct route went through the country of the Samaritans. People went out of their way to avoid contact with the Samaritans. And it is on this road of rejection that a Samaritan comes and saves his life. That is a part of the sting in Jesus' story.

The man is attacked, robbed, beaten, stripped, and left half-dead. This presents passer-bys with a problem. People could recognize where other people in the Middle-East came from by the pattern of the clothes they wore. That's still true today where each Arab village has a characteristic color of headdress. But this guy can't talk so you can't ask him where he's from. And you can't tell by looking at him because he doesn't have any clothes on. This is the problem! How is a person to tell whether or not the victim is a member of his community -- whether or not he is his neighbor? That's a problem that faces the Priest and the Levite.

Jesus shows his great ability as a story teller here. He draws us into the narrative. He doesn't say why the Priest and Levite pass by. He invites us to empathize with the characters and come to our own conclusions. And I am sure that this lawyer, who was a Pharisee and who had no use for the priestly tradition, could think of a thousand reasons why they did what they did.

Perhaps, he thinks, the Priest and the Levite fear for their own safety. Here is a man lying at the side of the road. Maybe he has ketchup on him. Maybe it's a trick and he has friends hiding behind that big rock. If we stop our car and get out to help, maybe suddenly all his friends will pounce on us. Or maybe the thieves are still there. Maybe they didn't get enough from him and if I stop they will get me too.

Or maybe it's a matter of schedule. They may be very busy. Jesus makes it clear that it takes a full day of the Samaritan's time to help this man. How many people can afford a whole day? But probably it's a matter of law. Jesus says that the man was left"half-dead." Half dead. How interesting. Jesus could have said "badly wounded" or "in bad shape" or "in severe shock." But none of those would have the trauma for the Pharisee as the phrase "half-dead."

What if the Priest or the Levite go to help and the man isn't half-dead but dead? It's hard to tell from across the road. Or what if they are carrying him and he dies? Then the Priest and the Levite are unclean. The pharisee knows the law. They can't lead in worship or participate in worship after touching a dead man. They won't be able to do their job. They will have to submit to complicated rites to purify themselves. They will have to throw away all of the clothes they were wearing and all the property they had with them when they touched the body.

The Priest comes along and he is prevented from helping by the legal and ethical system which the lawyer knows so well. If the man is a non-Jew, he has no responsibility for him. If the man is dead, the priest will be defiled. If he is defiled, then he must get a red-heifer, rather difficult to find, it must be burned and the ceremonies of cleansing must take place back in Jerusalem. All of this will take time. It will be very expensive for him and, until it is finished, he cannot collect tithes. The economic impact on the priest and those who depend on him for their livelihood, his family, his servants, the poor of the village -- will be enormous.

The priest breaks out in a sweat from the weight of the decision he faces. "Is he a Jew? Does he keep the law? Is he a member of my community? Is he alive? If so, I must help him. But if the answer to any of these questions is "no", I can go on my way with a clear conscience. He decides to go on.

In the third scene we see the Levite -- a kind of assistant priest. The Levite, like the priest, has finished his time of service in the temple and is heading home.

There seems to be a subtle significance in the order of the travelers. The response of the Levite is already decided by the decision of the Priest. The Levite would know that there was a priest ahead of him on the road. He could perhaps see him through the clear air or tell from the track of his sandal's in the dirt or find out from a traveler coming the other way. Traveling on such a road it was important to know who was in front of you. The Levite comes to the place where the beaten man is lying. He knows that the priest has already been there. "If the priest has come by and decided to leave this unknown, half-dead man alone, surely I, the lowly Levite, should not go through the laws again and come up with a second conclusion." It never pays to second-guess your boss -- any more than it pays for me to second guess all of the churches in Simi Valley. The Levite, too, passes by.

The Priest and the Levite don’t fail to help because they were necessarily bad people. They were maybe good people in a bad system -- a system that drew the circles of brotherhood small and made them run down a religious checklist before they could decide to help or not help.

At this point in the story, the lawyer would, perhaps, be feeling several things. He would perhaps be wrestling with the question, "What would I have done if I were on that road?" Perhaps he felt personally convicted by Jesus' words and saw his own paralysis of loved mirrored in the Priest and the Levite.

Perhaps -- but I doubt it.

Because this Lawyer probably doesn't see much connection between himself and the characters in the story. He doesn't like Priests and Levites. They are part of the group that aren't a part of his group.

The Priests are part of the group called the Sadducees. They are rich. They don't care about the poor the way the Pharisees do. They aren't really strict about the law and they tend to play footsie with the occupying Romans. I suspect that the lawyer says to himself: "I like this story. Jesus certainly knows what those Priests are made of."

And finally, of course, the third person will be a layperson, right? And of course, naturally, he will be a Pharisee because the Pharisees, for all their uptightness, are the only group in Israel that really care about social justice. If anyone is going to be awarded honors for rescuing the wounded man, it will be a member of the Lawyer's own club -- or at least that's what the lawyer thinks.

To this point I think the lawyer has been enjoying the story as a good joke about the priesthood he despises. He's thinking, "You know, I'm not going to be so much against this Jesus after all."

And then Jesus hands him a grenade and pulls the pin: "But a Samaritan as he journeyed came..." We’ll talk about him next week.

I am purposefully staying away from a lot of contemporary application of this parable. Jesus invites us to listen to the parable and invites us to each make our own application. That is the purpose of a parable. The word parable literally means "something set along side something else to explain it." We are invited to look in and see where we are reflected. But to guide our thinking, let me propose two questions for consideration.

First, who, indeed is our neighbor? Not "who lives next door to us, but whom do we treat as significant? How big have we drawn our circle of concern?

Second, what is there in us that prevents us from helping another person? Fear? Selfishness? Laziness? Over-commitment to secondary things? Or perhaps, like the Priest and the Levite, our understanding of religious duty. If there is anything that is holding you back from "neighboring" ask yourself, "is that God's will for my life?

You know, I personally don't like those questions. They make me ask some things about myself that would just as soon not ask. And yet, if I am to deal honestly with what Jesus is saying in this parable, I believe that those are the very questions I must ask.