Take a look at this morning’s Gospel reading and read between the lines.
To understand the metaphor, understand the Samaritans: bastard Jews – religiously and biologically. In 581, Babylonians moved into Samaria and intermarry with Jews there. You cannot do this if you want to keep the religion and the culture pure. By marrying their captors, the Samaritans “gentiled themselves,” at least in the eyes of a “good Jew.” In 535, at the end of the exilic period, the Jews come back to Judea and seek to build a Temple. The Samaritans offer to help. Jews say, “No thanks” (not after you married your captors)…so Samaritans build there own.
Now look at this morning’s reading: the Scribe who asks the question ‘who is my neighbor’ should know the answer but asks anyway (there’s one in every class). Jesus got the Scribe to put two things together that a good Jew cannot – Samaritan and neighbor. To the Scribe, the Samaritan is beyond the pale of God’s forgiveness. For Jesus, that just isn’t possible.
To the Jews listening to Jesus tell the story, the next expected category (after priest and deacon (Levite)), would be a Jewish layperson but Jesus gives this coveted spot to a Samaritan, who is moved with compassion.
The hearer of the story discovers that God’s love is limitless. To the Jew of Jesus’ time, love is limited – not everyone is my neighbor. If God’s love is limitless, so must yours be, Jesus tells the hearer. So must ours.
No one listening is surprised that the Priest and Levite do not touch the guy in the ditch. If either had stopped to help, they would become unclean and would need to go through all sorts of rituals for getting ‘unsuspended’ – they kept the law. For those listening, the point is not to help the one in the ditch, but in keeping the law.
But in keeping man’s law, they broke God’s law, which raises the question: is the law made for us, or are we made for the law?
A priest could not raise this question. Neither could a deacon. It was up to a previously rejected; ostracized, humiliated, last resort of a character to make this clear for those struggling to believe.
God takes the weak and makes them strong.
So where is the arrogance the title suggests? It’s mine. I am just arrogant enough, I said to a friend the other day, that I edit Luke’s Gospel when I read chapter ten. You see, I think the Samaritan said something to the man in the ditch. I think he bent down and whispered something that Luke forgot to write down.
It is the same whispering that compelled people into action last week when the shooting started. It was the same message that made strangers carry strangers, cover each other, and hold a lifeless body until help arrived.
“I do not wish to be saved without you.”
That is what the Samaritan says in my head as he bends down to care for the sick, dress the wounds, and lug him to safety.
“I do not wish to be saved without you.”
You matter to God, so you matter to me. No matter what you look like, what your DNA says about you, or how you identify yourself as a child of God. You matter. You are His and therefore you matter to me.
I do not wish to be saved without you.
That. Changes. Everything.
~pjd