Dangerous Unselfishness & The Good Samaritan
Pentecost 7 - July 11, 2010
Today we read the parable of the Good Samaritan, without which Christianity would hardly seem to exist. In fact, this parable is in only one Gospel, Luke’s, and it’s hard to believe that such an important parable is only narrowly in our Bible.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is also considered one of the most trustworthy parables of the Bible by the sort of people who sit around and ask questions like Did Jesus really say this, and, if so, how true is the story to its original form? And so on. Mind you, it’s all highly subjective, but for those who ask these sorts of questions, this is considered one of the best-preserved stories that Jesus told.
The story is prompted by a conversation Jesus has with a lawyer, who approaches him and asks him what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus turns the question back on him (that’s another thing that makes scholars think this is authentic, because not directly answering questions seems to have been a favored tactic of Jesus’ – as we read not just in the Gospels but in other parts of the New Testament). So Jesus turns the question on him, and recites back to Jesus two Jewish teachings: love God and love your neighbor. But then the lawyer presses the question, asking a good questions about the scope of one’s moral responsibility: “But who, exactly, is my neighbor?”
And that’s when Jesus tells his story, averting (again) direct answers. A man is walking along the road from Jerusalem to Jericho when he’s beaten, robbed, and left to die. A priest approaches on the road, moves to the other side of the street, and passes right on by. Then a Levite – another member of the religious leadership – does the same. Finally, a Samaritan – someone from an ethnic group not highly regarded by Jews (and vice versa) – walks by and, setting aside tribal concerns and prejudices, simply helps the man.
One of the things that is often discussed with this parable is why the first two men passed right on by without helping. Was it that they were in a hurry to conduct their religious services? Were they afraid of breaking Jewish purity laws by touching an ailing or possibly dead man? Were they just plain uncompassionate people? Were they mostly good people just having a bad day? And so on.
In thinking about this question myself this past week, I came across a speech by Martin Luther King Jr (and I’m probably the last one in this room to know that he built his last speech before he was assassinated around this parable). The speech was given in Memphis on the occasion of a strike of the city’s sanitation workers, and he had already received some death threats prior to arriving in Memphis, which he mentions later on in his speech. In the part I’m going to read, King explores the different explanations about why the first two men passed by, and then he comes up with a third: that they didn’t stop because they were afraid.
So let me read this and then just make some quick closing remarks because it speaks for itself.
Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus; and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters in life. At points, he wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew, and throw him off base.
Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a priest passed by on the other side. They didn’t stop to help him. And finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. But he got down with him, administering first aid, and helped the man in need.
Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the “I” into the “thou,” and to be concerned about his brother.
Now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn’t stop. At times we say they were busy going to a church meeting - an ecclesiastical gathering - and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn’t be late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that “One who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body twenty-four hours before the ceremony.”
And every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jerusalem, or down to Jericho, rather to organize a “Jericho Road Improvement Association.” That’s a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effort. But I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible that those men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. As soon as we go on that road, I said to my wife, “I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable.” It’s a winding, meandering road. It’s really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1,200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you’re about 2,200 feet below sea level. That’s a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the “Bloody Pass.” And you know, it’s possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it’s possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for a quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
That’s the question before you tonight.
It’s such a powerful speech that one hardly wants to follow up with anything, but let me just repeat that first line I read: “Now let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness.” Dangerous unselfishness. Of course, we’re probably not facing death threats like King was, or probably like some of those sanitation workers he spoke to that night. But we still use fear as an excuse to pass by the people and situations we should be helping.
We don’t give enough to others because we’re not financially as secure as we’d like to be ourselves. We withhold emotional support because we’re afraid other people’s situations might weigh us down too much and do us harm. All too often, we think giving needs to come from a position of safety and security, whether it’s financial or emotional. But dire needs present themselves whether or not our emotional wells are full, or our bank accounts exactly – or even close to – where we want them.
Or to get back to the parable, the roads we walk on are never safe enough; at some point we just have to cultivate what King calls “dangerous unselfishness” so we stop passing others by, and start stooping down more to help.
