“The Samaritan Secret”
Pr. David Hewitt – KOG – July 11, 2010

     There once was a magician on a cruise ship who performed the same tricks in his show every week, but it didn’t matter, because there were different crowds each time. But the captain and his pet parrot saw the same tricks, over and over, and eventually the parrot figured out how the magician did them, and would yell out in the middle of the show, “Look, it’s not the same hat,” and “Look, he’s hiding the flowers under the table,” and “Hey, why are all the cards the ace of spades!”  The magician was furious, but what could he do? It was his boss’s parrot.

     Well, one day tragedy struck, and the ship sank.  The only survivors were the magician and the parrot, both sitting on the same big plank in the middle of the ocean. For days all they did was sit and stare at each other, until finally the parrot said, “Okay, I give up. Where did you hide the ship?”

     The parrot was sure that the magician was trying to “trip him up.” The parrot was wrong.  In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus was sure that the lawyer – really a Jewish religious scholar – was just one among many religious leaders trying to trip him up. Jesus was right.

     Luke writes that this scholar “stood up to test Jesus.” (Lk. 10:25) Why? Why would anyone, especially a religious person, want to trip the great teacher, Jesus, up?  Well, let’s remind ourselves that Jesus was very controversial in his own time. Jewish religion had set up rules and regulations: you could only do good at these times, by avoiding those people, and only under these circumstances. But Jesus ignored these so-called “rules.” If something needed to be said now, He said it.  If something needed to be done now, He did it.  If someone could use some healing, but it was the Sabbath and you were supposed to wait, He healed the person anyway. If the crowd listening to Him was hungry and they could walk several miles and get their own food, He created His own food and fed them, now, anyway.  If someone was sick, but they were considered “religiously unclean” and were not to be touched, Jesus touched and healed them, any-way.  And He connected all that He did to having faith that God will take care of you now, and for eternity.

     “Teacher,” the scholar asked Jesus, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  You see, he was “testing” Jesus by asking Him to “flesh out” His theology – to defend and justify all the revolutionary things Jesus was doing and saying, and just how it led to salvation. But Jesus answered a question with a question: “What is written in the Law [of God]? What do you read there?” he asked the scholar. Suddenly the tables were turned, and Jesus was testing the tester!  The scholar then responded that one should love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. Now the scholar knew he had given the right answer, which was what, as a scholar, was the only thing he was called upon to do – give answers.

     But, in response, Jesus said MORE than “You have given the right answer.” He ALSO said, “Do this, and you will live.” Now “Do this” in the original Greek really means, “Keep doing this, over and over and over, day after day after day, and you will live.” Uh oh. What Jesus said may have made the scholar uncomfortable. To love my neighbor – all the time – no matter WHO it is? Surely not! For the scholar knew that some people could contaminate you if you tried to help them – lepers, sinners, tax collectors, Samaritans, and Gentiles. These were just some of the folk that all REAL religious, upright people in Israel knew to avoid. Yet these were the very people that Jesus insisted on helping & healing over & over again. So then we get to the crux of the matter, when the scholar has one question for Jesus in return: “And who is my neighbor – the neighbor that I am called to love?”

     In reply, Jesus launches into His clinching argument, the parable itself. A man on a deserted road is robbed, badly injured, and left for dead. Then, a Jewish priest and Levite priest see the man, turn away, walk around him and pass him by. In Jesus’ eyes, the two priests represent the typical religious man – too focused on worshiping in the Temple and learning in the synagogue – too focused on their own lives – and not focused enough on serving people in need.

     But then a third man comes down the road, and ministers to the injured man, here to save the day. The crowd expects him to be one of them, a good Jew. But instead, Jesus shocked and disturbed his listeners; the hero was a Samaritan! Now you have to understand: Samaritans and Jews hated each other; all you have to do is look at other events in Jesus’ life, like when Jesus asked for water from a Samaritan woman, she was surprised; no good Jew even recognizes the existence of a Samaritan. Amazingly, just a few days before Jesus speaks the Good Samaritan parable, a group of Samaritans had tried to stop Jesus and His disciples from going through Samaria; His disciples hated Samaritans so much that they wanted Jesus to send fire down from heaven and burn them all up! Jesus turned and rebuked the disciples for their “Samaritan hatred.” (Lk. 9:55)And at least once, when the Jewish leaders criticized Jesus, they insulted Him as they best knew how. They said to Him, “Are we not right in saying that You are a Samaritan and have a demon?” (John 8:48)  Jesus chooses to make the hero out to be a hated Samaritan so that His listeners will better understand His point. For if this outsider, this heretic, this Samaritan, can be the person who is the best kind of neighbor, then ANYONE – any human being – can, at any moment in time, be the best kind of neighbor to someone who is in trouble.

     There were many listeners at that time who probably objected to what Jesus was saying. Jesus, they might have asked, are you saying that this Samaritan, who did not even recognize the Jewish Scriptures or the Temple in Jerusalem, who did not worship in the right places nor believe all the right things, are you saying, Jesus, that this Samaritan will be saved, while other good Jews will not? And Jesus might respond by pointing out, from our Old Testament reading today, that just a few verses after Leviticus 19:18, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ it says in 19:34, ‘Love the alien as yourself.’ Love is not just between people we get along with. Jesus knew that we sinful humans, both then and now, seek to interpret the command, “Love your neighbor,” to mean, “Love those most like you. Love those you like the most.” In this way we limit the amount of love we give. Re-read this parable sometime, and, instead of “Samaritan,” fill in the blank with another term describing a group of people you hate or dislike intensely. Then you will receive the full power of Jesus’ parable: instead of the Good Samaritan, it could be: the good liberal, the good conservative, the good homosexual, the good racist, good Muslim, good Buddhist. Shocking, what Jesus was saying!

     So Jesus asks the scholar, and us, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” And the scholar, not wanting even to SAY that horrible word, ‘Samaritan,’ struggles even to say, “The one who showed him mercy.” “Go and do likewise,” replies our Lord.

     “Go and do likewise.” Do. Do. Do. Is this works’ righteousness? No, and I’ll tell you why what the Samaritan does is done by faith and not works: because with all that the Samaritan did, he got nothing out of it. Here he was, (unlike the other two, who were there “by chance,” it says) a man with a schedule, a man whom Jesus says was “travelling” – a man in a hurry, a man on a business trip. And, unlike the other two – who walked around the hurting man and who took great care not even to get a really good look at the victim – this Samaritan walked right up and SAW how badly the fellow was injured and FELT deep in his gut the pain and agony he was going through; and he felt…he felt something that came from God…he felt compassion.  So he did a lot. He nursed and bandaged the man’s wounds. He went out of his way to take him to an inn to care for him all that night. He paid good money to the innkeeper to take care of him further and promised to come back, see how he was doing, and pay more. He did this for a total stranger. And he didn’t get anything out of it. He knew that life was not about him, but about God and whoever God wanted him to help at any given time.

     This is the Samaritan Secret: it’s a totally reversed way of thinking about life. Let me show you two circles. Here’s the first one.  This is a good person who takes care of him or herself first, then, with what’s left, takes care of family and friends, then, with what’s left, helps one’s neighbors. Left off of this chart are, perhaps, many people.  Like I say, this person sees him or herself as a good person; others might even call him or her a smart, practical person – that’s the world’s view, not Christ’s. These are the people who walk by on the road to Jericho, because to help is to take risks, to court danger, to possibly waste time, maybe even be blamed for the injured man’s death; in any case, it’s too messy to get involved.

     The second circle is the Samaritan’s way – Jesus’ way. What’s most important – who is in the center of the circle – is who is most in need at that moment. Notice that that person is not “labeled” anything – not labeled first as a friend, or family member, neighbor, co-worker, or stranger; the person is simply the one person most in need of help at that time, taken from any so-called category. But helping that person may mean helping someone who is not the usual person I help, not the person I typically am most comfortable helping – you know, someone that I know will help me back. And then, in the last circle, I put myself behind all of these others.

     Even when you are seemingly the most needy person at the time – like I have often been over these last six weeks, with my broken leg – it’s always important to think about how you can help others first. And we can’t figure that out that alone. We need to rely on the Holy Spirit, and be constantly in a prayer-like attitude, being as open as possible, as I say here, and listen to what God is saying to you at any moment, how you can be as Jesus was in His life on earth, and be His heart, hands and voice right then and there.

     It’s being more than religious, more than friendly. As Jesus said, “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of Your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?”   (Matthew 5:43-47)

     What was most at issue between the scholar and Jesus was what it really means to “love your neighbor as yourself.” For Jesus, it was being a neighbor to everyone around. While up at Confirmation Camp Diane and I visited a Mennonite-Amish museum. There I saw a story. Some people came up to an Amish man and asked him if he was a Christian. He said, “Don’t ask me, I could say anything.” He pointed all around him. “Ask them. They’ll know.”  You and I are called to the deepest purposes and most profound joys in life – a life of loving service, the life of Christ. We are called to be like the Samaritan in the parable, AND the Samaritan on the Cross, the One who was hated for our sake, for seeking to save us; the One who found us, dying in sin, on the side of the road, and lifted us up; the One who was called by His enemies, “A Samaritan and a Demon” just because He put our needs – our need for guidance now, and salvation for all eternity – before His needs. You and I, are called to live the secret of the Samaritan.