Through a lens of mercy
There was a conversation this week in an internet forum for church leaders, that was centered around safety training and devices, like automated external defibrillators (or AEDs), and whether or not a church should have one. One commenter was worried that if the church had one, but it’s use was not effective, that maybe the people who aided in the emergency would be liable for damages. “Oh, no!” another commenter assured everyone. “There are Good Samaritan laws to protect people in situations like that.”
And that made me chuckle a bit. Not because it’s untrue, but because I’m not sure THE Good Samaritan would appreciate his story and name being used that way. That conversation, and those laws that do protect people who are trying to help in an emergency, are all about limits, right? They are about trying to find the boundaries or guardrails for compassionate acts. They are looking to protect those who reach out in compassion, but boundaries, guardrails, and protection are not really domain of the Good Samaritan in today’s reading.
That said, they might be the domain of the man who tries to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Not one to be easily caught in a test, Jesus turns all Socratic on him, and asks a question back, “If you’re so smart, you tell me.” OK, he didn’t say it that way, but I hear it in his voice. What he really said was, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?”
And the man, an expert in the law of Moses, answers beautifully. Drawing on texts in Deuteronomy and Leviticus, 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.” Jesus congratulates him, and the story could be over. But it’s not.
The lawyer won’t let him off so easy, and at the same time seems to want to know just how easy he can take it and still “get in.” The first question was a test, but the second question is personal. He wants to know the limits. He wants to know the minimum expectation. He wants to know just how much he needs to do and have it “count.” Wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
And Jesus tells a story to answer it. The setting of the story isn’t really a coincidence. Just a chapter or so earlier Luke told us that Jesus had set his face toward Jerusalem for what would be the last time. Sometime in the days or weeks ahead, Jesus knows that he will travel this exact same road from Jericho to Jerusalem, a notoriously dangerous road to travel. Jesus knows, the lawyer questioning him knows, the fictional character in the parable knows, everyone listening to this story in 1st century Judea knows, that traveling this road comes with no guarantee of safety. In fact, the setting is a sort of set piece, giving a heads up to the people listening of what to expect.
And what is expected is exactly what happens. The unidentified traveler was beaten and robbed and left for dead in a ditch. But don’t worry! There on the horizon are two folks who most certainly would help. Fellow Jews we can assume, people of faith, leaders in their community are coming right down the road in the hour of this man’s need. But nope, they both passed by on the other side of the road.
Next a Samaritan is seen coming down the road. Samaritans, it turns out, featured prominently in a story just before this one, and they are the same people who just refused to let Jesus enter their own town just because he’s Jewish. Samaritans and the Jewish people have long-standing beef between them, and in a parable like this you can expect the Samaritan to be the bad guy, to be the one who gets it wrong, to be the bad example. So we are supposed to imagine what the Samaritan might do – ignore the dying man at best, maybe even kick him while he down at worst.
But in Jesus’ story that isn’t what happens! It’s supposed to be shocking. We’ve heard it called “the good Samaritan” so many times – we’ve even written laws that bear his name – that the shock has worn off. But no one expect this man who is a stranger in every sense of the word to give this man two minutes of attention, and yet it is he, the Samaritan, the enemy, the stranger, who is moved with pity. He pours healing oil and wine on his wounds to tend to them, clean them out, and disinfect them. He binds up them up to protect them. He brings his animal near, lifts the man on top of it, and takes him to an inn and took care of him for the day. He gives his own money in the moment and promises even more generosity if it’s needed to help care for this stranger. Whatever his plans were, he just changed them. Wherever he was going on this dangerous road, he made a detour. The most important thing for him to do, he determined, was to take care of the man right in front of him.
The Samaritan’s caring and healing actions would have knocked the lawyer and everyone else listening to Jesus completely off guard. This isn’t how the story is supposed to go at all! The enemy isn’t supposed to do right, and even if he did, a good Jew would rather DIE than be helped by a Samaritan. But even still, the Samaritan, the good Samaritan, cared for the man.
So, Jesus says, “Back to your question. Who do you think the neighbor was? What limits do you put on neighborliness?”
Not even able to say the word Samaritan, the man answered, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
We often hear this story and quickly want to get to the moral of the story. We want to distill it down to one simple truth or direction for action. “Jesus said the Samaritan cared for a man in need. I better go care for someone who is needy.” But there are a few problem with doing this. It’s not a BAD moral, but I don’t think it’s all that Jesus was trying to say. The story itself gives us some hints that there’s more to learn.
First of all, it doesn’t take a Samaritan to make the point that it’s good to care for a person in need. In fact, not only does it not take a Samaritan, but it doesn’t take a priest nor a Levite either. All you need to make the point that it’s good to help people in need with this story are two people who don’t and one who does.
Instead, this is a story highlights that there are two groups of people who may share a geographical border, but who in no way consider themselves neighbors like we might use the word- like the people who know to come to the back door instead of the front, like the people you give your extra key to in case you lose one, like people who might shovel your walk if you don’t get to it in the morning or while you’re traveling, like people who you’ll bring soup to when they’re sick, or rush over to in the middle of the night if the call comes that something just feels off in their chest. Instead at best these people who live in proximity to each other are indifferent to each other, strangers, at worst, they are generational enemies.
This story isn’t just about doing something nice for someone in need; it’s saying something about to whom we show compassion. It’s about who we see as our neighbor. It’s about Jesus’ completely unlimited definition of that word, and his challenge to us that we might share that definition.
That’s not an easy challenge to pick up, is it? It goes against what feel like very natural and rational instincts. We teach them and encourage them in our children from a very young age – be cautious around strangers. Don’t share your name with an adult you don’t know. Don’t talk to strangers. Certainly don’t go anywhere with them or let them in your home. These kinds of rules and cautions, unfortunately make a lot of good sense, and I’m not suggesting we should change what we teach to our children.
But when it comes to adults, and it comes to a stranger in need, and it comes to all the artificial barriers history and culture and fear and and the desire to protect our own people and our own wealth and our comfort have put up – – well, I believe Jesus is telling us to push back against those boundaries. I believe Jesus is telling us that the way to experience all the abundance of life that he makes possible is to tear down these barriers and look at the world, look at strangers, with mercy – because through the lens of mercy, we will be able to see that strangers are really our neighbors.
Mercy is something that can be taught through experience. You may know of the research studies conducted in the 1950s and 60 on rhesus monkeys. Let me be clear these studies would NOT pass any ethics boards today, and rightly so. But in these studies baby monkeys were isolated from their mothers and eventually even other monkeys as companions, and it was shown learned that those who didn’t receive love or tenderness or compassion struggled to be able to show it to others.
We might be able to restate this learning in a positive way, many compassionate and merciful people had others who showed them compassion and mercy. Something can happen to MAKE Good Samaritans, those who see beyond the boundaries of logic or culture or indoctrination to care for those whom they meet. So on our way to trying to be more merciful people, it can help us to acknowledge the mercy we have received.
Because we have. For all the times we have tried to figure out the limits of being good, for all the times we have tried to judge just who “counts” as a neighbor so we don’t have to worry about wasting too much energy or time or even risking our lives for other, for all the times we have tried to organize our compassion and dole it out just enough at a time, we have that many times and more received mercy from its divine source.
That’s the promise we look forward to in this Lenten season, with our faces set toward Jerusalem. That’s the promise as we begin to walk toward Jesus’s triumphal entry into the city on Palm Sunday, that quickly turned into a manhunt, sped up by betrayal, and delivered him to public humiliation, beatings, and being robbed of his life. The promise is that even when we are part of the crowds who turn on him, the disciples who disavow any knowledge of him, the one who betrays him into the hands of his executor, he chooses to show us mercy.
We have been shown compassion. We have been shown mercy. The one who could choose to see us as stranger or enemy, has chosen instead to call us neighbor and friend. Because of this, because we know what it feels like to be loved when we didn’t expect it, when it was outside the bounds and limits of what anyone would consider reasonable, we are equipped to do the same.
Who will be a neighbor to the ones who have fallen in the ditch? The ones who are beaten down by oppressive systems, hatred and fear, greed and hunger for power? Who will show mercy to those who are fleeing violence and poverty and persecution?
With God’s strength and the Spirit’s leading, it will be those of us who have known the mercy they need. With God’s strength and the Spirit’s leading, may we go and do likewise.
