'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."'
--Luke 10: 25-37
In
the summer going into my last year of seminary I was fortunate enough to study
for three weeks in the Holy Land, visiting places like Jerusalem, Bethlehem,
and Galilee. One of the routes we took was the road between Jericho and
Jerusalem, which has not really changed all that much in the last 2000
years. Now, as then, it is about a 17
mile stretch, dropping some 3600 feet in sea level and changing from a Mediterranean climate
to a desert one. It is still narrow and rocky
with sudden turnings, the perfect hiding spot for bandits. Driving along the road makes you realize just
how intentional Jesus was in setting arguably his most famous parable on Jericho
Road.
The
parable of the good Samaritan is so well known that the character has become
something of a secularized saint. We
name hospitals and community service awards after the good Samaritan because
the story’s message rings loud and clear.
You don’t have to have a theology degree to understand that, just as the
Samaritan acted neighborly to the man in the ditch, we, along with the lawyer
whose question prompted parable, are to go and do likewise. What complicates
things, what makes the parable’s message a bit more difficult for some of hear
to hear perhaps, is when we take a good look at its setting and all that it entails.
Understanding
the dangers of Jericho Road helps give the parable a lot of its punch. If Jesus had said, “A man was walking down a
street in Jerusalem and fell into the hands of robbers,” we might still feel sadness for him, but we likely would
not feel the dread. Anyone that heard
Jesus mention Jericho Road would have thought to themselves, “Oh god no! He did not go down THAT road!” The fate that befell the man in the parable was
the same as a great many who dared head down Jericho Road: robbed, beaten, left for dead. Saint Jerome, the man who translated the
Bible from Greek into Latin, referred to Jericho Road as the Bloody Way because
of all the violence that sojourners encountered.
H.V. Morton, who was a renowned travel journalist in England in the 20s
and 30s, once wrote how the locals warned travelers like him to get home before
dark, lest they encounter trouble along Jericho Road. It was not a road that anyone traveled willingly.
Yet
this is the setting for one of Jesus’ most radical teachings on compassion and
mercy. It is on this road, a road of
risk and fear, where poverty and violence abound, that “being a neighbor” gets
redefined. We begin with the man (likely a Jew), who falls prey to a group of bandits.
One might have heard Jesus mention the road between Jerusalem and Jericho and immediately thought, “Well, what
did he expect? He shouldn’t have gone
down that road anyway. He was just
asking for trouble!” The story continues with a priest and a Levite, who walk past on the other side. Seeing as how they were forbidden by the Law to approach a dead body, who could blame them for
not stopping? Why would they risk injury to themselves? They surely had good reason for hurrying up
and getting to their destination. Up to
this point we shouldn’t be at all surprised by the way the story is playing out.
It’s
the inclusion of the Samaritan that truly flips the script, though. It cannot be stressed enough how much Jews
and Samaritans hated each other. Samaritans were a mixed-race people who
rejected the sacredness of Mount Zion and ignored traditional Jewish laws and
customs. They were trouble-makers, their
towns were considered the ghettos of the day, they were not welcome among Jews, and
they didn’t particularly welcome Jews themselves—as evidenced in the reading
two weeks ago when a Samaritan village soundly rejected Jesus, prompting two of
the disciples to want to call down fire from heaven to consume the
heathens. Yet it is one of these that
the man encounters on this ever-dangerous road, one of these who treats him as
a neighbor. The magnitude of the audience’s
astonishment at the way the parable plays out is exemplified in the lawyer’s
response when Jesus asks which one was a neighbor to the man in need. The lawyer begrudgingly mutters, “The one who
showed him mercy.” He can’t even bring
himself to say, “The Samaritan showed him mercy,” because of how outrageous the
concept seemed. A Samaritan. Along Jericho Road. Mercy.
Talk about unbelievable.
A Japanese icon of the parable of the good Samaritan.
Some
things, though, never change. Just as
the literal Jericho Road is still pretty treacherous, so are the equally troublesome
figurative Jericho Roads, which are everywhere.
They can be found in just about every city, and are the places where crime runs rampant. Ironically so many of
them are named after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Rev. Traci Blackmon, a prominent pastor
and preacher in the United Church of Christ, tells the story of her time as a
church leader in St. Louis, which has Delmar Boulevard, a clear divide between an
affluent south side of St. Louis and an impoverished north side that is filled
with so much poverty and violence that the life expectancy is 26 years shorter
than on the other side of the road. Delmar Boulevard is one of the modern-day Jericho Roads, where unacceptable treatment of people becomes
an acceptable condition, where the modern-day Samaritans live. These are the roads that we avoid at all cost, but
they are the roads that so many folks face each and every day. Every now and then, often times after we hear stories like the parable of the good Samaritan, folks will dare to venture onto the Jericho
Roads to offer rescue or repair, shifting into crisis mode for a bit, but so
often when things calm down those good-natured folks head back to the other
side, and things gradually return to normal along the Jericho Roads, where
the inhumane and cruel behaviors once again become acceptable, where the bandits thrive and today’s
Samaritans tear each other apart. We all
know where the Jericho Roads are. Some
of us live on them. Some of us dare to
drive on them day after day. But we
all know where they are, and we can’t blame folks for avoiding them.
We regularly preach this parable as an example of charitable giving, but it is so much more than that. It was then, and it is now, about transforming our cultural expectations
and understandings of who are our neighbors and what are our
neighborhoods. A story about someone being
beaten on Jericho Road was hardly surprising to anyone who heard it, but. no one would have expected to
find mercy on Jericho Road, and even fewer would have expected to receive mercy
from one as reviled as a Samaritan. This
parable is meant to tamper responses like, “That traveler shouldn’t have been
on that road to begin with!” and to quell the power that fear has over us, fear
of “that part of town” and “those people” who live there. This parable engaged deep-seated prejudices that
had become acceptable behavior at that time, and it called the lawyer and
everyone else who heard it into a cultural transformation. For us today these questions are laid in
front of us: Where are our Jericho
Roads? How do we respond to those who dare
traverse it? And who are our Samaritans, showing us how to be merciful?
Whether
we are talking about a poor, predominantly non-white part of a city, or the
border of a country overflowing with folks seeking refuge, the Jericho Roads
are as real and as scary for folks today as when this parable was first
taught. Yet now, as then, Jesus is
there. He is the one who dares go down
those roads day after day. He is the one
who gets beaten, broken, and left for dead in the ditch. We walk and drive by him each time we
venture along our Jericho Roads, but do
we really see him? And when we do, will
we have the compassion and the mercy to care for him, to be in relationship
with him and to be transformed by that relationship? As the golden-tongued preacher, John
Chrysostom, once said: “If we cannot find
Jesus in the one who is hurting outside of our church, then we will not find
him inside the church!”
The border between the United States and Mexico, a modern-day Jericho Road.
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