The Good Samaritan

If you were to try and figure out which of the parables was the best known,, I suspect you would find a toss up between this week's gospel and the Prodigal Son story. The term "Good Samaritan" is familiar to lots of folks who wouldn't know it came from the Bible originally.

The problem is that when we know something quite well - we find it hard to actually "hear" what the story is saying.

I like what theologian David Lose has to say. ?He notes that the lawyer asks Jesus "Who IS my neighbour?" and we can read this story looking at who our neighbour might be. MMM - I wonder - is it the Muslim who has moved in across the street? ?Is my neighbour that annoying person who curbs his dog on our driveway, or that kid who skateboards incessantly from morning tonight? Surely my neighbour is not that wait staff person with the piercing through her eyebrow and the full sleeve tattoo of a transport truck and a snake curling up her arm?

But Lose sees something beyond this that I missed. ?He points out that Jesus changes the question. ?He doesn't say "This Samaritan is the neighbour" but rather asks "Who WAS a neighbour?" ?In other words, who acted like a neighbour? ?It is a subtle distinction but it makes for different reading. WHat if I see myself as the one saved by the Samaritan - who has been neighbour to me?

Lose says:

"Ultimately, I don?t think these two readings are all that far apart. Truth be told, I think they are intimately related to each other. Because perhaps the only way we can see ourselves as the Samaritan ? the one called to give help and healing to those in need ? is first to recognize how often we have been the traveler left for dead. Once you?ve been encountered by radical grace and love, that is, it?s hard to look at anything ? or anyone ? quite the same.

 

So perhaps this week . . . we are invited to think about what kind of community we want to be. Certainly many of our congregations are communities that have been formed and nurtured by a shared faith, shared ethnicity and experience, and shared traditions. And there is nothing wrong with that.

 

But we are also invited, I believe, to be a community that is also bound together by our shared need, by an awareness of our common vulnerability, by a sense that God has worked through so many people to care for us, wants still to meet our needs through others (and sometimes through those we would least expect or want to help us), and also invites us to look around and care for those similarly in need.

 

Might we see ourselves, that is, as those who, having recognized ourselves as the traveler left for dead in a ditch by the road, can now arise to reach out to others in need? By God?s grace ? and in part through your preaching ? I believe we can. Thanks be to God"

 

How are you reading this parable? ?You will find it at Luke 10:25-37.

 

The other great readings this week are:

Amos 7:7-17 ( what acts as a "plumb Line" in your life?)

Psalm 82 (If we use this Psalm as our "plumb line", how do our practices of compassion and justice line up with the justice and compassion of God?)

Colossians 1:1-14 (This is a prayer I pray for you this week - and a great prayer for you to pray for others and yourself!)

 

What thoughts do you have to share with the rest of us?

 

Rev. Marie