Last summer a good friend and I spent a day in the Mournes. From the Trassey Track to Hare’s Gap, from Slieve Bearnagh to Meelmore we covered a fair bit of ground, on foot and in conversation.
The gospel writers often describe contexts of unhurried conversation. In Luke’s Gospel a ‘Travel Narrative’ traverses ten chapters (9:51-19:44) and 70 miles as Jesus and his disciples journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, walking and talking as they made their way through the region of Samaria.
In any place, in any cultural moment, people voice questions that relate to the things of faith. Questions can be genuine and questions can be maleficent. Wisdom discerns the difference. In Luke 10:25 an ‘expert in the law’ stepped forward to ‘test’ Jesus: ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’
The Bible can be read in different ways. It can be read right and it can be read wrong. Jesus asked this expert ‘What is written in the Law … How do you read it?’
Quick with his answer Jesus’ questioner supplied a ready riposte weaving together references from Deuteronomy and Leviticus emphasising the importance of love for God and neighbour.
Jesus commended the man for the biblical authenticity of his answer, a correctly articulated answer signposting the way to ‘life’ (10:28).
The legal expert pursues Jesus with a follow up… ‘Who is my neighbour?’ At this moment, the tester becomes the tested. As he often did, then Jesus told a story… A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. While the Bible is sparing in detail, the Jewish historian Josephus fills in the gaps, describing this road as a barren and lonely wilderness path, a predictable scene of banditry and robbery. Naïve? Careless? Few would have been surprised to hear the fate of this solo traveller; suddenly attacked stripped and left half dead.
As chance would have it two religious insiders, a priest and a Levite come by in quick succession. The context of the narrative would supply them with ready justification for crossing the road and not getting involved with this abandoned traveller. Intervening could put them at risk. Their motives for helping could be misunderstood, or they may simply have had pressing demands upon their time. Was their “God-business” too important to be set aside?
I do not imagine Jesus’ hearers as being overly shocked or disturbed by the non-intervention of these passers-by! However, what no one would have expected was what actually happened next.
A Samaritan was travelling along the road. Jews and Samaritans lived as near-neighbours, but centuries of religious, cultural and political distancing ensured that in any Jewish story Samaritans could only feature and be stereotyped as the ‘other’, the bad guy.
What follows is one of Jesus’ best-known parables… an unlikely story of escalating kindness. Unimagined mercy acted out by the most unimaginable of characters, a Samaritan.
Jesus then disrupts and upends the expertise of his questioner extracting the reluctant admission that this Samaritan, ‘the one who had mercy’, was the one who was a true neighbour to the man in need.
The Bible can be read in different ways. It can be read “right” and it can be read “wrong.”
Jesus said to the expert ‘You have answered correctly; do this and you will live’. A misguided orthodoxy rests at using biblical texts as a means to generate correct answers to life’s thorny questions. This error is subtle and easily embraced. Tragically the expert featured in this story perceived himself as holding fast to God’s word while having lost connection with the very heart of God; a God whose cross-shaped love is great and who is rich in mercy (Ephesians 2:4).
However, it is equally noteworthy that Jesus does not begin this encounter by scorning the orthodoxy of his interlocutor. Jesus affirms the biblical correctness of where this man starts in his quest for life. It is his failure to follow through on the revealed truth of scripture that becomes his undoing.
Receiving this gospel text in the milieu in which we live, Samaria becomes a parable in itself; an environment to be traversed where faith is contested, where misunderstandings abound, and where complex interactions between history, politics and culture leave many people with many questions.
Jesus’ steadying words breathe balance into the hearts, minds and hands of those who would seek to follow him. In the way of Jesus biblical orthodoxy (right beliefs) and other-person-centred orthopraxy (right actions) are not opposing choices to consider, but rather they are the complimentary movements of the rhythms of grace for all who would seek to walk in the company of Jesus.
Please note that the statements and views expressed in this article of those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Contemporary Christianity.
Recent Comments