Our devotion for July 29th comes from the Rev. Andrew Pearson.
…“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…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.” (Luke 10:25-37, ESV)
“The Good Samaritan”—who hasn’t heard some reference to this story? In church, preachers will profile each of the characters in the parable: The Priest, The Levite, The Samaritan. “Which one are you?” Of course, the right answer is the Samaritan. And maybe that’s true sometimes—maybe we have, at some time or another, found ourselves walking in the sandals in each of the three. However, upon closer inspection, what seems more fundamentally accurate is that we are none of them, but the man in the ditch.
We are the dying man in the ditch who waits for rescue. The Priest passes us by. The religious man, the one who preaches to sinners, walks on by. The Levite, the lawman, the do-gooder, walks on by. But it is the Samaritan, who stands as the opposite, an outcast and a nobody, who shows compassion and mercy to a Jew who ought to have nothing to do with him.
The first two may have had good excuses as to why they didn’t stop. The Priest, if he touched us, might be made unclean and then couldn’t do his priestly duties. The Levite may have been too busy, may have been worried it was a trap. But the scoundrel stopped and helped.
This is the story of the Christian. We find ourselves in the ditch in need of rescue, but the world and its moral fixtures will not save us. Only the unmerited compassion of one “scorned and rejected” will accomplish that. Jesus condescends and we receive his rescue.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSd4evT8Nw8&w=550]
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3 responses to “Hopelessly Devoted: Luke Chapter Ten Verses Twenty Five through Thirty Seven”
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Another neat angle to the Good Samaritan parable — and one often forgotten — is that Christ — His prohibition about love of money notwithstanding — spoke approvingly of the ability of someone with money to help others — thus also expressing approval of accumulation of wealth depending upon use, e.g., the Good Samaritan’s ability to help the poor fellow in the ditch by paying the innkeeper, etc. That is, He didn’t also say in the parable that the Good Samaritan should have tended to the fellow himself, or should have devoted his next few days to doing so.
Eisegesis
I simply am not the man in the ditch, the innocent victim of bad people…robbers and hypocritical legalists, rescued from them by a Christ-figure. If I am forced to identify with anyone in this parable, it would be the robbers, who are out of the picture, happily spending their loot on booze and hookers. Nor does this seem to be what it is most often preached as…a moralizing tale that shows us how it is possible to be good, socially conscious Methodists. It is, at least as far as I can tell, a highly ironic attack by Jesus on those who would “justify themselves” before the law’s crushing demand of “love your neighbor as yourself” by circumscribing the definition of neighbor. The cutting irony of the parable is found in the fact that the “unclean” Samaritan, who would not fit within the Jews’ narrow definition of neighbor, shows himself to be both neighbor and a doer of the law, in contrast to those Jews who “have” the law, yet have denuded it with casuistry, blinding themselves to their need for mercy in the face of its just condemnation. It is Jesus’ own “Go and do likewise” from which I am in need of rescue. But thanks be to God, my judge is also my redeemer.