SUNDAY REFLECTION for OPEN PRAIRIE UCC – JUNE 11, 2017
THE GOOD SAMARITAN
Today I would like you to think of the story of The Good Samaritan in two different ways;
One way would be how a biblical scholar might look at it, with a more ACADEMIC point of view, and the other is a more SPIRITUAL interpretation.
I believe there can be more than one interpretation of bible passages…
…but before I launch into that, let’s review the story.
There’s really not much to it. Here’s a summary:
A man traveling down
from Jerusalem to Jericho
is beaten by robbers
who leave him half dead.
A Priest walked by without helping.
A Levite walked by without helping,
but a Samaritan had compassion,
bound his wounds
and took him to an inn.
and He gave the innkeeper
money to take care of him
until his return.
This story seems simple to understand, on it’s own, with no other context.
We can picture ourselves being ANY ONE of those characters, right?
We can imagine ourselves
as a victim
We can imagine ourselves
as a compassionate helper
We can imagine ourselves
as someone who doesn’t
want to get involved.
But the story is CONTAINED in kind of an envelope.
The text around it helps us answer questions like
“What was Jesus responding to?”
“Who was He responding to?”
“What was the context of the story?”
If we read the verses before and after the story, we learn that the parable of the Good Samaritan is a response to a question. “Who is my neighbor?”
In the verses just before the story, it says that an “an expert in the law” wanted to TEST Jesus. And he asked him a question,
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
and Jesus replied back with a question,
“What is written in the Law? How do YOU read it?”
That’s a common thing for a rabbi to do.
If you ask a rabbi a question, you are likely to get a question back, because it forces you to put yourself into the situation. Once you try to answer a question for yourself, you are more likely to learn something from it and remember it.
Asking the right questions is a form of teaching
(at least it is in Jewish culture).
Jesus knows that this man is an expert in the LAW, so he asks him
“How do YOU understand the law?”
and the man answered,
‘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,
‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
And Jesus agreed.
Yes.
Do that.
You’ll have eternal life.
So the man starts squirming a bit (the text says he wanted to justify himself), and he asked,
“and who is my neighbor?”
This time, Jesus didn’t answer by asking another question.
He didn’t give an answer at all.
He SHOWED him the answer with this story.
OK, in the first sentence of the story, Jesus says,
“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers,
who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.”
One thing we should understand is that back then, the phrase “half dead” had a significant meaning. To a Jewish person, declaring someone as half dead meant that they were technically still alive, but if they didn’t get help, they were going to die.
In other words,
‘half dead’ meant
“You’re dead, but not YET”
That distinction meant something in the Jewish culture because they observed purity laws. Priests weren’t allowed to touch dead people. They were Sadducees, and Sadducees took the law literally. They believed in the letter of the law. They trust the Written Word alone. And in the Hebrew scripture, it is taught that to touch an unclean person or a dead person made YOU unclean. So if you were a priest you could only touch your mother or father, your son or daughter or your brother or sister.
And if you were a HIGH PRIEST – you couldn’t even do THAT.
(and you would NEVER want to touch a Gentile, or a pagan, or a Samaritan)
Now, there was a debate that had been raging about this, because there were OTHER people who believed that LIFE ITSELF was higher than anything else. They believed in the Written Word, too, but it was tempered by what was called “The Oral Tradition”, which allowed some interpretation of the MEANING of the scripture. And in the oral tradition, a human life is sacred; a person’s life is more important than the Sabbath, or purity laws, or kosher food, or anything else religious.
Around the time of Jesus’ life, they were really arguing about it.
Should we accept the scripture literally, or is there room for discussion about how it should apply to our lives?
So when WE hear the story of the priest passing by the victim without helping, we might be thinking to ourselves,
“Oh that poor man, no one is helping him”.
SOME of us are thinking (myself included).
“Oh, that religious hypocrite! all talk…”.
But what we have to imagine is that to the best of HIS understanding, the priest was being faithful. Back in the time Jesus was telling the story, some of his listeners might have been thinking,
“Oh, that poor Priest!
How difficult that would be for him, not being able to help that man.”
Now imagine we are Jewish, and imagine we’re hearing this story for the first time.
The first person had to pass by because he was NOT ALLOWED to help, because he interprets the scripture literally, and now the second one is coming along….
And we can already guess, right? …its going to be a Pharisee.
We’re already patting ourselves on the back because we get it – it’s gonna be a Pharisee!
Because – Pharisees put the SPIRIT of the law above the LETTER of the law.
And for a Pharisee, a human life is more important than a teaching.
For a Pharisee, it IS okay to touch a half dead body to save a life!
…and we are already starting
to queue the heroic music
to play in the background…
But the Levite passed by, too!
What???
(Hey, what kind of a story IS THIS, anyway?)
And what did Jesus say next?
“But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion ”.
A SAMARITAN?
We hate Samaritans!
Samaritans are lower than pagans!
and there’s certainly no such thing
as a “good Samaritan”, is there???
Yep!
…and you want to know what the ultimate slap in the face was?
Samaritans are LEGALISTS!
Samaritans ALSO believe in the letter of the law.
They’re not allowed to touch a half dead person, either!
But he did.
He stopped and took care of him. He took care of him, bandaged his wounds, put him on his own donkey, took him to an inn, and paid the innkeeper.
How could Jesus use the people we hate the most as the shining example?
It would have been shocking.
And then He just flat-out asks the “expert in the law” the final question,
“Which of these three
Luke 10:36
do you think was a neighbor
to the man who fell into
the hands of robbers?”
The expert in the law replied,
“The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him,
“Go and do likewise.”
So in THIS story, Jesus labels the Samaritan as the neighbor. Not the injured man. He asked “which of these three was the neighbor?” The Samaritan.
Love your neighbor.
So Jesus has just used a parable to illuminate the command to “love your neighbor”, and the neighbor turns out to be a Samaritan.
The people would have been astonished.
So, that’s the parable of The Good Samaritan.
And it’s perfectly clear, that WE are supposed to LOVE.
Love
God.
Love
each other
(even enemies),
(even our neighbors).
Love
Ourselves
Love has been the spiritual law all along,
and THAT’s His commandment to us.
-=< O >=-
So, for the second way of looking at this story, I want to start off by telling you about one day a couple of years ago, I was listening to a sermon by a preacher from Europe, but my mind had wandered off, and then he suddenly he caught my attention when I heard him say,
“… and we all know what the story of the Good Samaritan REALLY means…!”
Hey!
I know that story…
I was surprised by his implication that it could mean something other than the “Love your neighbor as yourself” story that I learned, so I was curious to find out what he was talking about.
Here it is:
Could this little story
also represent the entire
Gospel of Jesus Christ
???
To some people, the story of the Good Samaritan reflects the essential core of the Good News. The lawyer had summarized all the law, condensed into “Love God, Love Your Neighbor as yourself” before asking Jesus for an interpretation. Jesus’ illustration answered his question about which neighbors we should be loving, but could it also have contained a summary of the entire plan for our salvation?
The pastor I was listening to went on to explain his belief
that this story illustrates our own condition (and salvation):
A man came down from Jerusalem
Jerusalem is a symbol of man living in communion with God. It was the highest point around, (from the earliest times people had associated mountains with Holy Places, because it was closer to God, closer to heaven) and right on top of Jerusalem was the site of the temple, and the temple was as close to God as you could get, according to the Jews.
(or maybe I should say as close as God could get to US, in our unclean state) And the bible teaches that God WANTS to be with us.
He is making a way for us, but we have fallen, and in a fallen state WE are beaten and half dead.
We are going to die.
Doesn’t that compare beautifully with the Christian belief that man in his natural state lives in (at least a partial) darkness, is beaten down, and that “the wages of sin is death”?
So, the man has fallen from a higher place and is half dead
So a priest happens by, but
RELIGION won’t save you!
and a Levite passes by, but
THE LAW can’t save you!
but the Samaritan has
COMPASSION.
washing the wounds and beginning the healing process, just as Jesus washes our sins away and leads us back to the light (or brings light INTO our lives).
The Samaritan is the picture of Jesus Christ.
He places the wounded man into the care of an innkeeper, which for us would be The Holy Spirit – who abides with us and teaches us, comforts us and helps us grow stronger.
Not only that, the Samaritan offers coins to the innkeeper in advance, and promises to pay whatever the cost for the needs of the man. Don’t Christians believe that Jesus paid the price for our salvation? And finally, the Samaritan promises to come back, just as the bible teaches about the second coming of Christ to bring in the New World.
How could I have not recognized the similarity between that story and the gospel? I’ve known this story since I was very young. Have I ears but not heard? The story really does seem to fit my personal belief about what Christianity is all about. We fall from grace, the Savior heals, the Spirit cares, and we will see Jesus again before it’s all said and done. I believe that.
My point is not to say that the simple Good Samaritan story is any less valid than it was before, Jesus gave a true and complete answer to the question, “Who Is My Neighbor?”
but the additional interpretation makes sense to me.
The small story of a neighbor, and also The Big Picture.
Can it be both?
And if so, was it INTENTIONAL?
-=< O >=-
And now for the other side of the coin…
This is the THIRD part of the story.
I finished listening to the European pastor’s message about this, and later that SAME DAY, I was reading a book called “How to Read the Bible For All Its Worth” by Gordon Fee, and the very chapter I was reading used the exact same story as an example of how NOT to interpret scripture!
I was stunned.
(It still seems like an incredible coincidence to me)
Anyway, the book advises against any interpretation that couldn’t have been understood by the original audience. They wouldn’t have heard it that way. It would be quite a stretch of the imagination to think that the hearers of Jesus’ story would have understood it to be a summary about Jesus’ ultimate mission here on planet earth. They wouldn’t have heard it that way, and we shouldn’t READ INTO the text.
A scholar would say that we shouldn’t add meaning to a story that wouldn’t have been understood that way, from the beginning.
Maybe I didn’t understand it completely, but I just felt squirmy and goose-bumpy about the whole thing. Two different sources using the exact same example within hours, but coming to opposite conclusions?
What is
The Holy Spirit
trying to teach me
about this situation?
Well, whether it’s right or wrong to interpret it that way, my PERCEPTION of this story has changed forever. I’ll never be able to think of the Good Samaritan in the same way I did when I was a child.
But now, I’m worried.
I don’t want to place my faith
on anything that isn’t true!
So,
How do I resolve it?
Well, one thing I should learn is to be careful who I listen to.
As I said before, the meaning of the story has changed for me because of what someone said about it. I won’t ever be able to go back to the understanding I had when I was a child. In fact, I may have just done the same thing to you! But in this case, I didn’t hesitate to share it because the suggested meaning is still completely faithful to the Christian message. It doesn’t present any new information that needs to be tested for scriptural support.
But we have to be careful about who we listen to. There are a lot of conflicting ideas being spread around the world, so we need to be OPEN to hearing different expressions of the truth, but CAUTIOUS about what we accept.
Listen critically.
One thing I’m confident in saying is that scripture is for everyone. It has something to say to the most innocent child, and to the most battled-hardened warrior and to the most fearfully oppressed, and on and on to encompass everyone.
The bible is broad enough for all, but that doesn’t mean scripture will be perceived in exactly the same way by everyone. People filter it through their own circumstances and experience, so what seems emphasized to one person might not seem as important to someone else, who might be more affected by some other verse. And in my own experience, reading the same passage again (after a period of time), what seemed most important to me the first time through is often replaced by something else when I read it again. Sometimes verses I never even noticed the first time suddenly seem profoundly significant.
What I’m suggesting is that even OUR OWN interpretations will change as we grow, so we could never expect that everyone will agree on exactly what everything means.
The bible is wider and deeper than that.
But I believe that,
although our interpretations
change, as people see scripture
through different lenses, the
message is consistent.
Truth doesn’t change.
Thank You.
.
HEBREW SCRIPTURE READING FOR JUNE 11th, 2017 – OPEN PRAIRIE UCC
PSALM 78:1-4
My people, hear my teaching;
listen to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth with a parable;
I will utter hidden things, things from of old—
things we have heard and known,
things our ancestors have told us.
We will not hide them from their descendants;
we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD,
his power, and the wonders he has done.-=-=-=-
NEW TESTAMENT READING FOR JUNE 11th, 2017 – OPEN PRAIRIE UCC
LUKE 10:25-37
The Parable of the Good Samaritan
And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”
And 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 answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, 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, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’
Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.”
And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”
.
.
.