The Samaritan

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 travelling 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 robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

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So, the parable of the Good Samaritan is an oldie and a goody. The gist of it is so well known it can be referenced in most places out there in the world and the average bear knows something about its message. I heard it casually mentioned by a news anchor just this week in reference to something someone did during the shooting at Highland Park, outside of Chicago, on the 4th of July.

So, it’s one of those parables most of us have heard so often it may have lost its punch over the years. I feel like we’ve learned to serve it up sweet and good and nice for the kids on Sunday morning and at Vacation Bible School but, like so much else in Scripture, we forget to dig more deeply into it all, too much of the time, once we’ve grown up and moved on from our Sunday school days and VBS.

So, when I stumbled across Thursday’s White House ceremony where President Biden awarded the Presidential Medals of Freedom to a handful of American civilians, some of them got me thinking about what it means to be a “Good Samaritan” and how we might wonder differently and more deeply about that this morning.

There were 17 Medals of Freedom given and all of them were impressive for many reasons. But a few stood out to me.

Photo: Susan Walsh/AP

There was Simone Biles, the most decorated American gymnast ever, who is also an advocate for athletes’ mental health and safety, for kids in foster care, and for victims of sexual assault – all of which she has accomplished as a 4 foot, 8 inch, 103 pound example of Black girl magic, from Columbus, Ohio, who has survived and thrived in the face of her experience with all of the above: her own mental health struggles, some time in the foster care system herself, and as a victim of sexual assault along with so many other gymnasts, just like her.

Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

And there was Khizr Khan, the Pakistani-American father, whose son, Humayun Khan, was killed in the Iraq war defending his fellow Americans from a car bomb attack. But Khizr Khan, a Muslim himself, got the Medal of Freedom for speaking out against an immigration ban targeting people from Muslim-majority countries, and reminding whoever would listen to him that heroes and patriots like his own Muslim son would have been kept from citizenship under such discriminatory policies.

Photo: Shaun Clark/Getty Images

And there was Megan Rapinoe, too, the queer soccer player for the US Women’s National Team. She accepted her award – pink and purple hair and all – not just for her Olympic gold medals and Women’s World Cup championships, but for her advocacy work for gender pay equality in women’s sports, racial justice, and LGBTQ+ rights.

Which brings me back to the holy questions raised by today’s Gospel and Jesus’ parable of the original “good” Samaritan. All of this begins and ends with questions, after all, and that lawyer gets the ball rolling when he asks: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus asks him a couple of questions in return: “What is written in the law? What do you read there?”

The lawyer answers correctly – “love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength…and love your neighbor as yourself” – but then he asks another question: “But who is my neighbor?” And after that tale about the sad sack who gets robbed, beaten, left for dead, and all the rest; the story about the priest and the Levite who pass him by and the Samaritan who finally stops to help; Jesus wraps it all up with still another question. Not a moral. Not a sermon. Not a lecture. But a seemingly rhetorical question: “Which one was a neighbor?”

See, in Jesus’ day Samaritans weren’t necessarily considered to be “good” or “neighbors” by those who would have been listening to Jesus. They were outsiders to those who considered themselves to be good, faithful Jews, descendants of Abraham and rightful, faithful heirs of God’s promises. To hear that a Samaritan would do a kind and gracious, loving thing for anyone, would have been a surprise – and maybe even an offensive surprise, at that. By that I mean some of Jesus’ listeners might have rather died on the side of that road than have to admit they had been saved by a Samaritan.

I learned that from Amy Jill-Levine, the brilliant Jewish, New Testament scholar – yes, you heard that correctly. She’s a Jewish, New Testament scholar, some of us have studied around here. She goes so far as to propose the notion that the Jewish lawyer in Jesus’ story couldn’t even bring himself to say “Samaritan” – that he can’t even admit that a Samaritan was the hero of the parable. Because when Jesus asks that final question, “Who was a neighbor?,” the lawyer can only answer, perhaps begrudgingly, “the one who showed him mercy.”

And I learned something else from Amy Jill-Levine about this parable, too – something that is lost on so many 21st Century readers of Jesus’ parable. Nowhere in the Biblical text do we read the phrase “Good Samaritan.” That’s a title we’ve added to the mix over the course of the last 2,000 years, but it’s not something Jesus, or the Gospel writer ever says – “Good Samaritan.” This guy, this Samaritan, was just kind and merciful and loving and compassionate – and a neighbor. Like a Samaritan is wont to be, presumably. And this would have been hard, holy, surprising news for Jesus’ listeners to acknowledge.

Likewise, Simone Biles is a “good” young Black woman, for sure. She’s strong, brave, compassionate and tremendously hard-working – as young Black women are wont to be. She’s exceptional, not in spite of her Blackness, but because she’s a child of God.

Kzhir Khan, and his son Humayun, are not and were not “good” or “exceptional” in spite of the fact that they are Muslim. They are and were faithful, wise, brave and patriotic children of God – as Muslims in this country and around the world are wont to be.

And the same goes for Megan Rapinoe, lesbian activist for women’s rights, racial justice and more. She’s not “good” in spite of herself. She is kind, compassionate, fair-minded and on a quest for equality because her life’s experience – like so many queer people like her – has shown her what it’s like to live on the margins in a world that still doesn’t accept her fully – as a woman, as a gay person, and as an elite athlete who is both of those things, and a child of God, too.

So let’s start asking better questions. And let’s “go and do likewise” – looking for and loving our neighbor in surprising people and places – as Jesus invites us to do. Let’s wonder, more often, about “the other,” “the outsider,” “the hurting,” “the broken,” “the lost,” “the whatever.” Let’s see them each – and all – as our neighbors and as God’s children.

And let’s learn from them, listen to them, and respect them with humility, compassion and openness – not because it’s exceptional, but because it’s expected – as a natural, grateful, faithful response from anyone who has received the same kind of grace, and more, from the God we know in Jesus.

Amen

Shake It Off

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road.

Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house.

Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’

“Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”

The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

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I learned a new thing this week, thanks to Liv Larson Andrews, the pastor at Salem Lutheran Church, in Spokane, Washington. She wrote about how her yoga instructor has her yoga students literally shake themselves as part of their practice, which seems odd. Shake themselves. Like a full body shake. It seems odd because whenever I’ve done yoga and when I think about yoga, I think about slow, deliberate, strong and stretching, methodical sort of movements, not what I imagine a full-body shake might be like.

But the logic, the rationale, the explanation – one might say, the theology – of this shaking exercise, comes from the notion that mammals, in the wild, if they have survived an attack, often shake their bodies once they have regained their safety because, smarter people than me – including certain yoga instructors, apparently – believe this literal, physical, sometimes violent shaking completes the trauma cycle.

(I was going to show a video, but I didn’t want to scare the kids. Watching an animal escape an attack like I’m describing might be a little gross and scary for some. But have you ever seen footage of a giraffe, or a gazelle, a zebra, or a wildebeest survive and escape an attack by a lion? Can’t you see, or imagine, or remember how they very often, literally shake themselves, when it’s over? It’s something like a dog after a bath. You can Google it. It’s a thing.)

And there’s a name for it, even, “Therapeutic Tremoring,” because sometimes it looks like a seizure, too … a full-body tremor … like you’re as cold as you’ve ever been; chilled to the bone and unable to get warm again. Whatever the case, the thinking is it helps to release muscular tension, to burn excess adrenaline, and to calm an over-charged nervous system.

And it’s not just for animals. Maybe you’ve experienced it or maybe you’ve seen some people do it when they get, what I will scientifically call the “heebie jeebies,” right? … when we’ve been scared suddenly, or disgusted and grossed out by something … we feel that shiver up our spine or we do our own full-body shimmy to try to shake off or shake out whatever has disturbed us in the moment.

Anyway, while there is a ton of stuff we could wrestle with in this reading from Luke’s Gospel this morning – this long litany of marching orders from Jesus to his first faithful followers – I had already been wrestling with this bit where he tells them to wipe the dust from their feet, when I came across this stuff about shaking and trauma, “therapeutic tremoring,” and our natural inclination, if not need, for such behavior and practice in our lives – especially these days.

Now, I’m not sure Jesus would have described any of it this way, don’t get me wrong. But it resonates with me as a practical and holy way to consider what Jesus is getting at, nonetheless. See in other popular translations of this text, we’re told Jesus tells his followers not to “wipe,” like we just heard, but to “SHAKE” the dust from their feet, in protest of those who refuse welcome and receive them.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that these last few weeks, months, and years, really, have been an exercise in some measure of trauma for people on the planet. I’m not sure we can gauge if things are any worse for us than they have been for previous generations, or that we have it any harder or that we’ve been any more traumatized – as white, middle-class, people in the United States of America; any more traumatized than so many others have been in our own country or around the world these days or over the course of time, I mean.

But it’s all relative. And we aren’t used to what we’ve been dealing with lately. Because we are bombarded with however much bad news and anxiety and stress and trauma we can consume thanks to Social Media and by way of 24-Hour news; never mind the many and various ways we suffer and struggle in our own lives more up-close and personally. (Take a moment to close your eyes and think about the litany of things that give you pause or stress, anxiety or fear these days…)

That wasn’t hard to conjure, was it? That list is long and easy to write, for many of us, isn’t it? I’ve heard it said that our hearts and minds, our brains and nervous systems aren’t wired to manage all that the world continues to pile on these days, in the world as we know it. (Pandemics and politics; war in Ukraine, war in Yemen; gun violence and school shootings; we know too many things about too much ugliness in our lives and in this world.)

So I wonder if Jesus’ invitation to wipe off or shake off the dust of it all is nothing more and nothing less than an exercise in and invitation to faithful self-care.

Remember what he said: “whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you … go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you.’” It makes me think of that social media meme that’s become so popular recently, with all of the political and cultural division in our country … you know the one that says something like, “We don’t have to agree on everything in order to be friends.”

I understand the sentiment. I get the point. I believe the intent to be good. But I’ve never seen it posted by someone who feels like they are being oppressed, abused, taken advantage of, or traumatized. The wildebeest or the zebra or the gazelle who has been attacked – even though she escapes – wouldn’t post that meme on her Twitter feed after making it back to her herd.

So, I also understand that it can’t apply in every circumstance. If you’re a racist or a bigot or a hateful homophobe – who doesn’t want to learn why or how not to be those things – you may not be able to be friends with everyone. We can share communion. We can worship, learn and serve together – and I think that we should try. The Kingdom of God is as near to you as it is to me as it is to “them,” whoever “they” might be – even if I think they’re wrong about what that Kingdom looks like.

But if you – or the hearts and minds and lives of vulnerable people you care about are not safe in the presence of or by way of the policies, politics and theology someone else endorses – the truth is you can’t be “friends” in the fullest sense of that word. We can be kind and cordial with one another – to a point – but there came a time when even Jesus wiped the dust from his feet in protest of those who refused to receive him. And I believe we’re allowed to do that, too – for the sake of our own safety and sanity and well-being in this world.

And I hope this is a place where all of that happens – where we are kind and cordial and gracious, of course – but also where we can wipe the dust of this broken world from our feet and shake the trauma and anxiety, the suffering and struggle from our shoes and from our souls, for however long it will last, so that we can head back out there and try again.

I hope our confession, when we offer it, and our forgiveness, when we receive it, is a chance to shake off the dust of our own shame and sin – and that which we share as the Body of Christ in the world – so that we can live and move and breathe with an unburdened, liberated, clean slate once again.

I hope the water of baptism we’re invited to touch as often as we can get our hands on it – changes us all, every day with God’s love – and that it’s a chance to wipe away the fear and frustration, the sadness and the despair that threatens us so much of the time, these days.

And I hope that, somehow, we are a vision of the Kingdom that has come among us – the Kingdom that has come for us – the Kingdom that is meant to be shared by us – for the sake of the world, until we are all friends, bound together by a real, deep, love, care and concern for one another, and by the grace of God – that can’t be shaken – and that will redeem us all, in Jesus Christ the Lord.

Amen