A Man in a Ditch

Luke 10:25-37

“A Man in a Ditch”

21 August 2016 St. Andrew’s Military Chapel Singapore

            Another familiar story. Not just to Christians. We even have laws based on this parable. Good Samaritan laws protect those who stop to help injured persons in good faith so that people are less apt to pass by a person who needs assistance. Because in most cases, some treatment is more important than no treatment so countries have developed laws to protect those who are helping as best they can even if they make mistakes in the assistance they render.

            These laws are a result of one way to read this parable. A reading in which we ask, why are we not helping all of those we encounter in a ditch by the side of the road? If others are going to leave people behind without any care, then I should be the one that comes to their aid and love my neighbor in need.

            Sounds pretty easy, right? Back in 1973, researchers conducted an experiment testing how people would react to a similar situation as the one we heard today. 40 students were gathered in one building and after completing a questionnaire about their religion, were told to head to another building to either give a talk on vocation or a talk on the Good Samaritan. As part of the assignment they were given various levels of hurry to make the talk.

            As they went to the other building to give their “talk” they encountered an individual who was in need of assistance. Care to guess how many stopped to help? On average 40% and it ranged from 63% in the low hurry category to 10% in the high hurry category. Oh, and the other important factor; this occurred at a seminary.

            Helping is much easier said than done. So before I get all self-righteous about how the priest and Levite reacted, keep in mind there’s about a 40% chance I’d stop and help depending on what occupies my mind.

Jesus uses this parable to demonstrate we are all neighbors and are called to help each other in our time of need. Those in need are more important than our next appointment, our next task, our daydreaming, our fear, whatever is holding us back from loving our neighbor. Perhaps we can all (myself included) do a better job paying less attention to Pokemon as we walk, and focus more on our surroundings and looking for ways to not just appreciate creation, but to love our neighbors along the way.

            If I turn this precious jewel of a parable to another angle, what I see is Jesus asking from whom will you accept help?

            As Jesus told this parable, the crowd most likely anticipated both the priest and Levite to help out the man. Though surprised at the lack of compassion from the first two, the listeners were waiting for the rescue. They knew this type of story. The third person would be the one who stopped, for the hero in these stories was always the third person. As Jesus told the story where the leaders of the community passed by, the crowd may have started to smile because it was going to be one of them to rescue the injured man.

            But, Jesus turned everything upside down. It was a Samaritan who stopped. Sometimes we forget just how shocking this was to Christ’s audience. It would be like us retelling the story with a paramedic and a Marine walking by but a member of ISIS helping the American lying half-dead by the road. 

            So there is a lingering question, from whom am I willing to accept help? My own kind of people either by race, gender, nationality? Would I accept mercy bestowed by my enemy, the one society teaches me to reject?

            When we read it from this angle, the question posed to us changes from “When should I help?” to “From whom am I willing to receive help?” That is an important question, especially in light of how we find and receive mercy.

            Mercy, by its nature is unexpected. Mercy is a surprise. It renews a life, restores a life, without warning without merit. Because mercy is not what karma dictates, it enters the scene from unnoticed corners of the stage. How many times have I not received mercy because it arrived in an unmarked package? Or, worse yet, have I rejected mercy because the package was unappealing?

            Let me turn this parable to one more angle, this time to the vision Martin Luther King saw in his readings. He preached on this very passage the night before he was assassinated. King saw the characters as having three outlooks on life. The robbers thought, “what’s yours is mine.” The priest and Levite thought, “what’s yours is yours and what’s mine is mine.” Sounds pretty familiar. The Samaritan’s philosophy is “what is mine is yours.” A way of life based on outrageous generosity and the way that lives out the command to love our neighbor.

            King then distills the parable down to the questions it asks of us. “The question is not, what will happen to me if I stop, but what will happen to him if I do not?” A question to move me from self-love and self-worry to true love of neighbor. What would the world look like if the church would first ask the question, “What will happen to people if I don’t stop to help?”

Who, other than the church, is truly there to combat evil in the world where we find it without regard to themselves? Who would step into dangerous places without ulterior motives? Yes, the church has it’s ugly warts and scars from its help rooted in the wrong reason, but that doesn’t take away the fact we are called to step in and care for the other.

King says “what is required of us is a kind of dangerous unselfishness.” Dangerous in that it puts us at risk for many things. Risk of bodily harm, risk of losing material wealth, risk of social ridicule, risk of all sorts of things because we decide to love our neighbor, to love everyone.

Risk is part of our lives and in Christ we are called to take larger risks of love because we have freedom in the knowledge that we are the recipients of the greatest love of all. Let us live into the many visions of this parable such that we both give and receive love from our neighbor, including our enemies, not for ourselves but because of God’s overabundance of love for us.