A meditation on the Good Samaritan

I am planning, for the first Sunday of 2009, to preach on the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). As I have read, prayed over, and daydreamed about the passage for the past couple of weeks, I have become convinced of at least four things.

1. Jesus changes the question that we need to ask. The lawyer asks Jesus the question, "Who is my neighbor?" What is noteworthy is that Jesus never answers that question. Look again at the parable. Does Jesus ever say that the injured traveler is the Samaritan's neighbor? No. But in v. 36 he asks which man "proved to be a neighbor." So the question is not "Who is my neighbor?" The question is this: "Am I a neighbor?" In other words, do I treat those with whom I come into contact in a neighborly fashion? This is a startling question. We dare not ignore any class of people, and we need not go out of our way to find someone to love in the Samaritan way. We need only look at whomever is in front of us. I suspect that if I learned to look at my surroundings this way, I would find plenty of pain and poverty to which to minister.
   
2. Proper worship of God always leads to sacrificial, self-forgetful love. This story would have been shocking to Jesus' lawyer listener precisely because it was a hated, half-breed Samaritan who was the hero of Jesus' story. Additional reflection shows how disturbing the story must have been to this Jewish legal expert. The Samaritans were despised for being impure ethnically and religiously. But the Samaritans did have the Mosaic Law. This Samaritan man should have known that he faced ritual defilement if the man died. But he stopped anyway, and in doing so proved himself a better master of the Law than either priest or Levite. If concerns for orthodoxy do not translate to orthopraxy, then we do not really know the truth (Hos 4:6).
   
3. A key measure of our love is how we serve those who are different from us. The barriers broken down in this story are probably the most cited features of the parable. But the implications are far-reaching. The Bible study that does not welcome people who are different for fear of disrupting their "fellowship," or the congregation that in a dozen small ways lets the family whose skin color or first language is different know that they are not welcome, or the family that will not say hello to their next-door neighbor because they do not approve of the neighbor's lifestyle... All of these attitudes and behaviors fail the test of the Samaritan way of love.
4. Jesus Christ Himself is the true Good Samaritan. If all I am left with from this parable are the first three convictions, then I am left with Pharisaism that has replaced one set of laws with another. The reality is that I am the traveler left on the side of the road, beaten and bloodied by my own sin, with no right to expect any help from God. I could not love this way even if I were inclined to try, which I was not until Christ laid hold of me. He loved me and paid for my healing at great cost to Himself, bearing God's wrath in my place and washing me in his blood. Only as a ransomed and recreated being can I walk in the Samaritan way, which is in reality the way of Christ himself.

There is much more to say about this parable than what I have said here (those who attend Bethel do not get to skip the worship service on January 4th by reading this). But as Christmas and the New Year rapidly approach, these are the sorts of things I want to be thinking about for my own soul's sake, for my family, and for my church.

What Americans owe to the Puritans

This essay at Culture11 gives credit to the Puritans for America's "egalitarian political idealism, our love of genuinely humane and liberating learning, and our human enjoyment and happiness." It is hardly a popular idea, a reality the author, Peter Lawler, readily admits. But I am inclined to agree with him as he sketches the development of education and democracy among the Puritans.

Americans owe much to their Puritan forebears, even if we have turned the label into an insult. Though come to think of it, I believe the word "Puritan" was also an insult in the 16th century (according to J.I. Packer's lectures on the Puritans at Reformed Theological Seminary). So maybe things have not changed so much. Though we have largely absorbed and expanded their beliefs regarding education and democracy, we have left their ideals regarding the communal good behind (an ideal we might want to revisit in light of the current economic situation), and even within the church we shy away from being identified with them.

The essay is worth reading. Check it out and let me know what you think.

HT: JT