Samaritans Can Be Good

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
July 15, 2007; 7th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 10, Year C
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 10:25-37) -- Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?" 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." And he said to him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live."

But wanting to justify himself, he 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."
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Last week I preached about how good people can behave in evil ways. My illustration concerned an experiment in 1972 at Stanford University, when a group of normal, undergraduate college students turned violent and cruel when placed in the setting of a mock jail playing the parts of "guards" and "prisoners." In the toxicity of that environment, nice, bright college kids behaved in evil and depraved ways. I said that the Stanford experiment is a reminder that each one of us nice, normal people has within us a potential for evil. In toxic circumstances, we are all capable of terrible acts of violence and cruelty.

Today I would like to flip that coin on its other side. The story of the Good Samaritan is a reminder that bad people also have the potential to behave in very good ways. It is also a story about prejudice.

The hostility between Jew and Samaritan had centuries of history behind it by the time Jesus was born. They did not like each other and avoided any contact. Although the direct route between Galilee and Jerusalem was through Samaria, most Jewish travelers would take a long, circuitous detour in order to avoid passing through Samaritan territory. A couple of weeks ago we heard how Jesus and his company traveled through Samaria on their way to Jerusalem and were treated with such contempt that James and John asked Jesus with great seriousness, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" Jesus declined.

James and John (and Jesus) would have been raised from childhood being taught that Samaritans were bad people -- half-breeds, mongrels, dirty, filthy, immoral. A Samaritan was so unclean that if the shadow of a Samaritan happened to cross your own shadow, you were rendered unclean and would need a rite of ritual purification in order to be able to return to worship. From the scripture, we read in Ecclesiasticus: "Two nations my soul detests, and the third is not even a people. Those who live in Seir and the Philistines, and the foolish people that live in Shechem." (50:25-26) Simply put, Samaritans were dogs, and worse than dogs, according to the conventional view.

In fact, the Jewish listeners to Jesus' story may have been rather horrified at the prospect of someone, possibly a fellow Jew, even being helped by a Samaritan. The oil and the wine that the Samaritan poured on the injured man's wounds would have been regarded as unclean oil and unclean wine. Listeners to Jesus' story would have assumed that the injured man must have been unconscious, or he would have fought to protest and prevent such attentions from a Samaritan.

The behavior of the priest and the Levite were more reasonable, according to conventional standards. After all, the Scripture forbids the touching of a corpse. Someone who was religiously observant such as a priest or a Levite would not run the risk of lending personal aid to a person who was bleeding and possibly dead. These are unclean actions forbidden by the Torah. Lest we judge them too harshly, how many problems and sufferings do we ignore because they simply are not our business, not in our neighborhood? Don't interfere. You might get sued.

Nothing could be more scandalous to Jesus' audience than for him to offer a Samaritan as the moral example for a parable. Imagine if you will a story that begins, "A young woman was mugged and thrown into a ditch where she was helpless. Along came a registered sex offender who stopped to attend to her." Or, "A U.S. serviceman was injured and alone when an al-Qaeda operative came upon him." I hope you feel a bit of squeamishness at the prospect of hearing a story from a religious teacher where the hero and moral example for the story will be a convicted sex offender or a member of al-Qaeda. If you find yourself a bit uncomfortable or inwardly repulsed, you have experienced some of the emotional explosiveness of the original parable.

When you add the implied insult toward the respected offices of the priest and Levite, you recognize that this is a story charged with political and social dynamite. Jesus is turning the presumptions of the world upside down.

"Which of these three was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" If it can be conceived that a Samaritan can be my neighbor, then anyone and everyone is my neighbor, no exceptions. If it can be conceived that a Samaritan can be the agent of good, than anyone might have a potential for goodness and virtue, no exceptions.

Such an inclusive context makes the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves a radical notion. Jesus dissolves the comfortable and familiar boundaries between us and other, friend and enemy, righteous and unrighteous, clean and unclean, right and wrong.

Last week I said that every one of us good normal people has the potential for evil. This week I am saying that every one of them, those bad, evil people has the potential for good. My comfortable categories for judging the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, are false props that say more about my prejudice than they say about truth.

We are left with the vulnerable commandment to love. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind. Love your neighbor as yourself. And, anyone can be your neighbor -- bloody corpse, Samaritan, sex offender, al-Qaeda. Anyone is capable of being neighborly.

These are the kinds of stories that make people uncomfortable. Jesus was good at making people uncomfortable. Jesus made enough people uncomfortable that they decided he deserved to die. Jesus makes me uncomfortable. He tells me to look for the good in people that I don't want to see good in. But that's one of the major themes in all of the Scriptures. Over and over in the stories in the Bible, God upends our conventional views of the way we think things are. God surprises us.

God takes us to the place where we discover God's presence and grace in the unexpected person and unexpected place! Sarah the barren woman; Jacob the supplanter; a burning bush; Joseph, the youngest, the spoiled dreamer; Moses the murderer; manna in the wilderness; water from the rock; Rahab the harlot; Ehud the left-handed; Deborah the female judge; Gideon the fearful; Jephthah the Gileadite, the son of a prostitute; David the youngest; the widow of Zarephath; Ruth the Moabite; Jeremiah the boy prophet; Hosea the betrayed; Jonah the unwilling; Amos a dresser of sycamores; women like Esther and Judith; Cyrus the Persian; Jesus the Galilean; the Canaanite woman; a crucified criminal-blasphemer; uneducated fishermen; an Ethiopian eunuch; Cornelius the Roman Centurion; Saul the persecutor; the Samaritan woman at the well; the Good Samaritan.

Surprise! Surprise! God is a surprise. God consistently finds ways to bring up short our presuppositions and to create goodness, virtue and new life out of brokenness, otherness, and death.

We are left on our heels. Open to the possibility that God's goodness may break upon us from the most unexpected direction and unexpected person. So we are left vulnerable and unsure. We can never put someone on the shelf, comfortably sealed in our categories of judgment -- those are the bad guys; those are the good guys.

Everyone has the capacity to commit evil. Everyone has the capacity to do good. We can never know with certainty. We are left with the complementary commandments: "Judge not" and "Love." Love God; love neighbor; love self. On these commandments hang all the law and the prophets.