Are you ready to impeach the bum?

It was in the Sunday school of my childhood that I first encountered the story of a man robbed and left to die on a wilderness road – a story which is commonly called the parable of the Good Samaritan. As young children, we were taught the moral dimension of the story: it was a cautionary tale intended to shape our emerging ethical sensibilities. That interpretation sounded something like this, short and to the point: good Christian children, as well as good Christian adults, don’t ignore the needs of other people. While some people, perhaps many people, might walk by someone who is suffering, we just don’t do that.

Perhaps that was and remains an important understanding of today’s gospel reading. After all, it has served, for two thousand years, as a powerful inspiration for significant Christian responses to human suffering and the alleviation of that suffering. But I think this story, one of the most well-known in the history of our faith, is not only an exhortation to be kind to people in need – it is not only an exhortation to be kind to people in need. The more one ponders the parable, the more questions it raises. For instance, why did a priest from the Temple in Jerusalem pass by the victim? Why did a Levite, a cantor or minister of music in the Temple, refrain from helping his suffering Jewish compatriot? Why did Jesus clearly identify the ethnic and regional identity of the helper – from Samaria, just north of Jerusalem – but offer no name? What would be the reaction of the victim if and when he regained consciousness and found himself - perhaps to his utter surprise – in the bed of a strange inn, his needs cared for by a stranger who had already left the scene? And, in the end, why would we care to know the answers to these questions? What might they mean for our lives today?

While I trust that we would never want to default on responding to the suffering of others, I wonder and I ask you to wonder with me: is there another understanding of the story which we might set next to the one I learned and I think many of you learned in childhood?

Here Jesus is responding to the questions of an expert in the scriptures, what the Bible calls a lawyer, that is, an interpreter of the Law of Moses for Jews in first-century Palestine. What Jesus knows and what frames his response to the lawyer’s questions is something that we need to know as well. Is it possible, for instance, that the seemingly unconscious man on the road is actually bait for a trap? Would a priest, Levite, or any layperson for that matter, who stopped to help him place themselves at risk should a seemingly “unconscious” man jump up and rob them, beat them? Were these two religious leaders prudent rather than aloof? Or this: if the robbed man is actually dead, then priest and Levite would risk contamination by touching the decomposing body, an act – under first century Jewish law and practice – which would make them “impure” and prevent them from carrying out their work in the Temple until they had gone through a process of purification. Were these two simply making a “prudent” decision to ensure that they could work among people rather than risk that work for one person?

But then Jesus speaks of an unnamed Samaritan who actually assists this victim of a crime by touching him, giving him rudimentary medical assistance, taking him to an inn, and paying for both his lodging and any other assistance which he might need. What Jesus, his disciples, the lawyer, and his listeners knew – but we might not – is that the Jews of Palestine considered Samaritan Jews inferior, phony, pretend Jews – in much the same way that Protestants and Catholics in this country have historically viewed Mormons; that is, as sounding Christian but holding beliefs and practices which aren’t really Christian. No Palestinian Jew would ever, ever, fraternize with a Samaritan Jew, for Samaritans themselves were considered outsiders, faithless, religiously impure. You would never allow your son to marry a Samaritan. You would never invite one to your dinner table.

Who is my neighbor, asks the lawyer, as if he didn’t already know the answer to the question. For the answer would have been, your fellow Jews who worship at the Temple in Jerusalem, not those phony Jews who worship at their own temple in Samaria, some forty miles north of Jerusalem. Thus, for Jesus to suggest that one’s neighbor just might be the person with whom you would never ever associate – the one you’d steer clear of, the one perceived as delusional, a pretender, perhaps socially “dirty” or politically dangerous, the one person or group of people who would never be invited to your birthday party, wedding, retirement dinner, or funeral – to suggest that one’s rival or enemy unexpectedly and generously and willingly offers help to you or one of your own – raises the troubling question about how the lawyer, the listeners, and we view those people who will not be found on the dinner invitation list or as a “friend” on the Facebook page.

For Jesus to suggest to this educated, clever, and religiously observant man that the presence of God might just be discerned not only in himself and his own religious leaders (the priest and the Levite), but in someone perceived as irreligious and socially inferior raises, it seems to me, this challenging question for us: how wide or how narrow is our vision of those who are not, are not, like us, like “our people”? For instance, the person or group who holds a political sensibility other than if not diametrically opposed to our own? The person or group who participates in a form of religion which would depress, infuriate, or leave us simply cold? The person or group we may perceive as scary, a threat, or just plain wrong in their vision of life? It seems to me that what, at first, might be a parable about kindness to strangers actually holds a question for me and, I trust, for you:

Am I, are you, able to imagine that God could possibly be present to and working among those with whom you or I not only have little in common but hold viewpoints incompatible with our own?

And if the answer to that question is Yes, how would such an awareness challenge and expand our perception of God’s life-giving presence in their lives and our lives?

A few weeks ago I stopped by the post office in order to buy some stamps. As I walked toward the door, I saw a card table with two young people, two white people, a man and a woman, standing behind it. Hanging from the table’s edge was a large poster of Barak Obama, a head shot with him smiling that radiant smile of his. But something had been added to the poster: a small swastika on his jacket lapel and a moustache which mimicked that of Adolf Hitler. In the flash of a second, I could feel the blood rushing to my head, my hands began to twitch, and the words came to my lips as I was ready to read the riot act to these two smirking “punks.” But I said nothing, tried to calm down, walked into the post office, and was suddenly and surprisingly mindful of the first amendment and its protection of free expression.

As I walked out, the young woman said to me, “Are you ready to impeach the bum?” Excuse me? I asked. “Are you ready to impeach the bum?” she repeated.

And so I wonder: were I in need or were a member of my family in desperate need, could I receive her assistance with heartfelt gratitude, as if she herself were the very life-giving and merciful presence of God?

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