Unexpected Neighbours

When we hear stories of Jesus, and parables, the stories he told, we come to those stories with expectations. I like to invite us to look for the unexpected, the new angles, even into the shadows …

In the story we hear from Luke, Jesus responds to a question with a story. Today, I’m asking us to wonder, where do we place Jesus in that parable?

Perhaps the expected answer is that Jesus is the Samaritan, the example of a good neighbour. The one whose heart goes out to the person bleeding by the side of the road. The one who stops, offers care, invests their time and money in the healing of this stranger.

And this is no simple stranger. The Samaritans, remember, are an enemy of the people of Israel. They interpret the stories differently. They worship God differently. The Samaritans are ‘them’, definitely not ‘us’. Jesus chooses to make the example of a good neighbour someone unexpected, and made more obvious in this unexpectedness by the passing by of the two holy men of the people of Israel, the priest and the Levite. The Samaritan, as with outsiders like Moabite Ruth in older stories, is a well-known trope in our gospel stories. At the time, their presence in the stories would have shocked listeners to attention. Samaritans worshiped God in a different city, in different ways. But these people understand what God is doing here, why don’t you, who worship God our way?

I do wonder, even with the provocative trope of the Samaritan as exemplar Christ-like neighbour, is that the only place we could situate Jesus in the parable? What could we see of his teaching about neighbours if we look for the unexpected, if we locate him with another character?

Shall we place Jesus with the inn-keeper? Hmm.

Though it is a caring one, it is a paid role, and that’s not Jesus, is it?

In the parable, the inn keeper is a tool, or more generously a partner with the Samaritan in the provision of care and healing. The inn keeper acts not out of benevolence themselves, but more as an extension of the generosity of the Samaritan, who pays for the care the inn keeper will give on the Samaritan’s behalf. This seems an unlikely place to situate Jesus, or at least not the point.

What about with the holy men. From our two thousand years of receiving the stories of priests and Levites under the suspicion of a critical Jesus, this seems improbable.

I say improbable, but they are Israel’s holy men, and surely that’s where Jesus’ live audience might have expected to place Jesus in a story, right? Rabbi, teacher, healer, Son of God, prophet – holy man, yes?

But the priest walks on by. The Levite – member of the hereditary holy tribe of Israel – walks on by. And in this story’s set up, that is clearly not the right choice. Not the Christ-like choice.

Perhaps Jesus works with the expectations of his audience with these two examples – that shock factor, to wake the people up to the law of love that has become obscured by the practices and attitudes of holy men too caught up in the letter of the Law?

Have you been in a bible study when someone, usually well-meaning, has made excuses, given reasons, for the priest and the Levite to need to pass by?

A family needed the ancient Jewish equivalent of last rights. He was on his way to the Temple or some sacred ritual, could not be made ritually unclean for then he’d be unable to perform important functions for the community …

We want the priest and the Levite to be not quite so wrong, not so far from the Jesus-example of neighbour we see in the Samaritan. Why? Because very often, that is where we find ourselves in this story, as it plays out on our streets, in our neighbourhoods, on our doorsteps, every day. Subtly, unconsciously, we try to place Jesus with the holy men even when Jesus clearly does not place himself there. We know the ‘right’ answer here is to be with Jesus.

But in this story the priest and the Levite are tools in a classic storytelling three-part point. And we need to be reminded, first, that the point is not to condemn every person who has not had the capacity to help every person in need.

In the time of Jesus, you were most aware of the needs right before you. No social media, no TV, radio, or internet. Today, the needs of victims of the bombs falling in Ukraine, earth quaking in Afghanistan, sea levels rising on Pacific islands, are as close to us as the person physically across the street. And no, we cannot possibly meet them all, each one of us. We do not need to make the priest and the Levite less wrong so as to feel better about ourselves for the times we cannot, or do not, help someone in need.

That’s not to say this story should not confront and challenge us at all.

The point of this story is to answer a question: who is my neighbour? The context of the question, as the version we heard puts it, is to find a loophole in the great command, to trick Jesus into making a mistake, or into giving this lawyer an excuse with the priest and the Levite for passing by.