July 15, 2007

By Harry T. Cook

Luke 10: 25-37

It has seemed to be one of the overriding concerns of the typical American family to want to live in a good neighborhood. What is a “good neighborhood”? Mostly it means “safe” and “friendly” and “well-kept.” Those are subjective terms, of course, and may mean one thing to this family and another to that. But there is probably general consensus about what makes a neighborhood and makes it a good one. And it almost always has to do with who’s your neighbor and what kind of people they are. Are they really neighbors? – Meaning what?

The answer to that question is laid out in very interesting terms in what has become known as “The Parable of the Good Samaritan,” a heading given to the familiar story by publishers of English bibles several hundred years ago. Neither the word “good” nor the word “neighbor” is once used in the parable itself. The Greek word we translate “neighbor” is not much help. It can mean one who is “near” or one who is “close” or “close by.” Wouldn’t it be interesting if the word, as Luke originally used it, meant “close,” as in “being close” with some one? That means far more than spatial proximity. You can be “close” with a person who may be spatially at some distance.

The word “neighbor,” whatever nuance of meaning was on Luke’s mind, comes into the story in this way: In Mark, Matthew and Luke, it is said that Jesus was baited by detractors into choosing one among the 613 commandments of Torah as the greatest. The ploy was obvious: Get Jesus to say, for example, that Leviticus chapter 20, verse 13 is the greatest: If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination and shall be put to death. Rest in peace, Bishop Robinson. Or get Jesus to say, for example, that the greatest commandment is Leviticus chapter 19 verse 27, applying especially to priests on duty: Thou shalt not round the corners of your beard. It’s been nice (or not) knowing you, Harry Cook.

But, no. Jesus is depicted as saying in response to the trick question (in Luke’s case, throwing the question back at its proposer and getting him to quote the Bible): You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. Of course, that’s two, not one commandment. But in some versions, Jesus is made to say and the second is like unto it.

It was a scholar of the very body of law known as Torah who is depicted as posing the original question in Luke’s version. And I think we’re supposed to understand that he felt himself outfoxed by Jesus’ perfect answer. But the scholar cannot be bested, so back comes the follow-up question, But who is my neighbor? The answer to that, though, was the true hash-settler:

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers who stripped him, beat him and went away, leaving him as good as dead . . . And the rest we know. At the end of the story, it is Jesus’ turn to question his questioner: Who was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?

The neighbor was, of course, the Samaritan – representative of a minority reviled for no good reason, as so often is the case with minorities. But the scholar could not bring himself to say the hated word, so his shoulder-shrugging response is: The one who showed him mercy. But Luke could not let it rest there. He makes Jesus say to the scholar, Go and do likewise. Go and do. Not go and believe. Not go and make up a theological or ecclesiastical apparatus replete with canon law. Just go and, when you get there, do.

What Luke wants us to understand is that a craggy mountain pass descending precipitously 1730 feet over 15 miles among the twists and turns of which muggers and thugs lurked was turned into a neighborhood – even a good neighborhood – by the genuinely good deeds of a good man who was thought by the people who lived in that general territory to be a repulsive untouchable because of his religious and cultural heritage. What’s changed in that part of the world? What’s changed anywhere?

The untouchable turned a crime scene into a neighborhood. – And never mind the priest and the Levite. They always get a bum rap in the Sunday school redactions of this story. Either Luke didn’t understand that priests and Levites would render themselves ineligible to perform their ritual functions if they came in contact with spilt blood or, worse, the corpse of a stranger. Or Luke understood all too well, and used the story to pronounce that kind of religious scruple irrelevant under the circumstances.

It was the Samaritan – he whose kind was considered unacceptable because their ancestors had intermarried with Assyrians centuries before – that, by his acts of mercy, made the criminal-infested Jericho Road into a neighborhood – a good neighborhood into the bargain.

Those who would associate themselves in any way with the figure of Jesus or with his ethical teaching are to go and do that very thing. That’s as easy and as hard as it is.

© Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.