The Undesirable Hero

The Undesirable Hero

But wanting to justify himself, [the expert in the law] 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 innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when 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.”  [Luke 10:25-37]

Before it was the name of hospital chains or a shorthand for do-gooders who happen to be in the right place at the right time, the phrase "Good Samaritan" was a scandalous suggestion.

Sometimes, I think we forget how upsetting Jesus' story would have been to hearers in first century Judea--to people who had traveled the road from Jerusalem to Jericho themselves on their regular commute.  And we forget that Jesus, who never wastes a detail when he invents a story, deliberately told the story the way he did in order to provoke his listeners, past and present, to see the face of God in the face of those we label "other."

I'll bet you have heard the story that we now unthinkingly call "The Good Samaritan" plenty of times--it's an old flannel-board classic from Sunday School.  Once the traveler gets left for dead by the robbers on the roadside, the structure almost perfectly follows the classic "rule of three" of good storytelling and jokes, where a pattern is set up in a first instance (the priest who walks by after crossing to the other side of the road), then the pattern is reinforced with the second (the Levite who comes along second, and does the same), and then the pattern is blown apart by the third character, who comes in like the punch line of a joke to subvert the established pattern (the Samaritan).

And maybe the phrase "punch line" is the right way to describe it, because this ending would have landed like a punch to the gut for the man who had asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" as well as for everybody else who was listening in on Jesus' reply.  See, the trouble isn't that someone at long last comes along and does the right thing and helps the man lying at the roadside: the trouble is the face of the one who does the helping.

Jesus casts one of "them"--the foreigner, the stranger, the non-citizen of Judea--as the sole character who actually does what God's commandments would have instructed you to do if you found someone laying at the side of the road.  The Samaritan actually does the will of God; the foreigner from the neighboring country (the hated neighboring country, mind you) is the one who rightly carries out what God's law said, by actually showing love for the neighbor.  That's the scandal--not that Jesus has the crazy idea that you should help people in need, but that it was possible for someone you thought you hated and distrusted (the Samaritan) actually to understand the commandment to love the neighbor best of all... and to actually do it.  The Samaritan is the hero of the story, but he's not the hero Jesus' hearers want.  He is, to borrow a line from a Batman movie, the hero we need.

The question, you'll recall, that sets this whole scene from Luke's Gospel, is that an expert in the Jewish law (not simply an attorney like we would think of today, but think of a pastor or religious scholar along with it, because "the Law" was "the Law of Moses" and not simply a secular or civil law) asks Jesus the question, "Who is my neighbor?" because he knows that the central commandments in all the Law are to love God and to love neighbor.  So he asks the question of Jesus as a way of putting limits on whom he has to care about.  He asks, "Who is my neighbor?" because he wants to find out what the boundaries are for showing compassion--is it the people who live in the same town as he does?  The same region?  Surely it only applies to fellow Jews, right, Jesus?  And Jesus has just turned that question upside down by offering up a story where "the Other"--a hated non-citizen from across the border into Samaria--shows love for the man at the roadside.

Why was the Samaritan in that area, along the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, that day?  What was his business there, and was he allowed to be there?  After all, neither Jerusalem nor Jericho were within the boundaries of the region of Samaria--so this Samaritan traveler is outside of his country!  He is a foreigner--and the worst kind of foreigner, at that!  (After all, the foreigners from the countries nearby are the easiest to hate, because they seem close and are easily pictured as threats--people from far away lands somehow can seem exotic and mysterious to us, not dangerous.  And Samaria was just on the other side of an open border with Judea.)  

Jesus turns the original question, "Who is my neighbor?" inside out, because he doesn't answer by saying, "You should help even a poor, needy Samaritan by the side of the road, because he's your neighbor too," but rather, even more radically, Jesus says, "The Samaritan you want to revile as a dangerous, shifty, threatening foreigner encroaching on your territory is actually the one who may be sent to help YOU when you are the one at the side of the road. The one you have been told to fear as the Other may yet recognize YOU as their neighbor, and still show love to you, even if you have been a hateful and fearful jerk to them."  See what Jesus has done?  He won't even let the lawyer view Samaritans as objects of pity for the lawyer to condescend to--Jesus forces all of us listening to see the ones we have learned to fear and turn away as the very ones who might well save us.  Jesus compels us to see good--the very mercy of God--in the face of the despised "other," no matter how "other" they may be.

Let's be honest here: so often, the questions that formulate in our minds are ones of fearful defensiveness.  We would have been asking why the Samaritan was traveling outside of his home country, and whether he was "allowed" to be traveling on this Judean road.  We would have been eyeing this foreign character with suspicion, clutching our purses and checking our pockets for our wallets at the mere mention of the third traveler on the road.  We still act that way when we are confronted by "the other"--fearful of the bad neighborhoods in the city where "those people" are, suspicious of who is in our town and what their business is, afraid of (or pitying of) the folks we have been taught to regard as "not our kind."  We get upset at the idea of helping out "those people" when there are so many of "our people" who need help, too.  But of course, that's exactly what the Samaritan could have said, too.  He could have said, "It's just not right to help out this Judean in front of me when there are so many Samaritans back home who need help.  I'll leave this man to die and go back to my home town to take care of my own first."  The Samaritan could well have said, "Samaritans First!" and trotted past the man laying at the roadside, confident that he was doing the right thing.  The fact that he does not is a sign that Jesus intends to blow up our age-old insistence on putting Me-and-My-Group-First.

Jesus compels us to undertake nothing less than a radical revision of what a "neighbor" is. A "neighbor," in Jesus' view, is not some subset of people I am legally responsible to "have to help" or pity in order to stay in God's good graces and stay out of hell.  A neighbor is someone, no matter how much difference of even animosity there is between us, who may yet help me when I am the one in need... even when I may not want to have to receive such help from someone I was predisposed to fear, or suspect, or hate.

Jesus dares us to see his own face--the very face of God--in the face of the foreigner who has clearly crossed out of his own country and into "our" territory on the Jerusalem-Jericho road, and to see that the ones we were most taught to be afraid or suspicious of may well be the ones who save us.  Jesus dares us to see not only a neighbor, but Christ himself, in "the Other."

That, and nothing less, is what it will take if we really want to see Jesus.

Lord Jesus, help us, not simply to pity or fear those who cross our path, but to see your presence in the face of the other.