LET'S SAY YOU'RE IN A DITCH

I'm teaching today on Luke 10:25ff--one of the most popular stories in all of Scripture: The Good Samaritan.

Some who study this story say that the priest and the Levite are in a bind. They are men of God, but the law of God binds them from helping lest they become “unclean” by touching a dead body. Corpses, in this interpretive framework, are as welcomed as a preacher going to Vegas on Christmas—they just don’t go together. Out of this understanding, some believe that Jesus is challenging their love of keeping the law versus love of people.

Others who study this story say that the Samaritan in this story represents the minority person/group in a given culture. The Priest becomes the “conservative Christian” and the Samaritan becomes the “gay man some love to hate.” Or the Levite represents the “rich” and the Samaritan is the “homeless woman in Cass Park.” Or, the Religious represent “angry citizens” and the Samaritan is the “illegal citizen among us.” While all of those are challenging social constructs to consider, I don’t think they finally get at what is going on in the story.

Something deeper is going on in this story. One Jewish thinker has opened up this parable in drastic ways for me. She writes, “To understand this parable in theological terms, we need to see the image of God in everyone, not just members of our own group. To hear this parable in contemporary terms, we should think of ourselves as the person in the ditch and then ask, ‘Is there anyone from any group, about whom we’d rather die than acknowledge, She offered help or He showed compassion?’ More, is there any group whose members might rather die than help us? If so, then we find the modern equivalent for the Samaritan,” Amy Jill-Levine in The Misunderstood Jew (149).