Luke 10:25-37
July 14, 2013
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
In life, we are taught that when threatened, human beings have two basic responses: fight or flight. We can take up arms against the evil that assaults us, or we can flee the evil that comes our way—fight or flight.
In recent days, we have witnessed some heroic examples of people who faced such choices of fight or flight when they have chosen to confront the threatening situations. When the pressured cooker bombs were set off in Boston, some went toward the explosions to become first responders to care for the injured and rescue the trapped. Nineteen hotshot elite firefighters went into the Yarnell, Arizona wildfires and gave their lives because they were trained and committed to fight the fire rather than to flee. And just last weekend, first responders trained to act quickly rushed to the scene of the Asiana jet plane to rescue passengers when it crashed in SFO.
But for most of us, we may have chosen the other choice and that is to take flight from a possible threat to our lives and limbs. Human evolution has provided our species with two deeply instinctual responses to violence and threats: fight or flight. But Jesus offers us a third way: a nonviolent direct action for our neighbors’ sake.
Good Samaritan
In our perhaps too-familiar parable, we have the story of the Good Samaritan, a man journeying down the Jericho road that day and seeing a man who was wounded by thieves and lying in a ditch. He had a couple of choices. He could flee the scene, just as the busy priest and the pious layperson had done before him, “passing by on the other side.” Or he could double-check his ability to fight assuming that the thieves who had robbed and beaten the poor man in the ditch could just as well be hiding and waiting to pounce on him too.
The Samaritan did neither. He chose a third way. He stopped and bandaged up the wounds of the stricken victim, put him on his beast, took him to an inn, and provided for the long term care of the wounded man.
The story of the Good Samaritan, with its demonstration of an alternative way, reminds me of Jesus’ comments in the Sermon on the Mount:
You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your coat as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (Matt.5: 38-44)
When Jesus said, “You have heard it said,” it’s like saying, “Everybody knows that…” Everybody knows it’s only natural that when wrong is done to you, you attempt to defend yourself and return evil for evil. When you come across injustice, as the Good Samaritan did that day on his way down to the Jericho road, you either pick up your pace and get on out of there or else you clinch your fist, cock your weapon and attempt to get the evildoers before they have a chance to get you.
But Jesus says there is the possibility of a third way. The Samaritan did not respond in either of these two common ways. He responded with risky, engaged compassion. And Jesus says, “Go; you do the same.”
In a Fight
Have you ever been in a fistfight before? One summer when I was in junior high, I took two summer school courses. My African American friend and I from Roxbury, a predominant Black neighborhood had to go to a white neighborhood school to do so. I don’t remember if we ever had a discussion to walk to this school together since it was outside of our own neighborhood. But somehow intuitively or defensively, we waited for each other every day to walk to school and back home from school.
The sidewalks in our neighborhoods were narrow and when you’re walking and talking, you might just keep on walking sometimes with little awareness of who may be walking toward you. It’s like how oblivious mobile phone users are while talking and walking on the sidewalk. One morning, my friend and I were walking to school and we stayed on the sidewalk causing these three white boys to get around us by making them walk on the street. When we passed them, they sneered back at us. We knew we have done something wrong.
After our two morning classes were over, we started to walk home on the same sidewalk that we were on going to school. That was not a good idea. And as we feared, the three white kids were waiting for us. It was three against two. And we were on their sidewalk in their neighborhood. Do we try to fight them or flee from them? Or was there possibly a third way? I don’t think these boys knew anything about a third way.
In the Code of Hammurabi that dates all the way back to the 18th century BCE called Lex talionis literally means “law of retaliation,” an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth is one of the oldest laws on the books. The intent was to limit the retaliation a person could inflict on the one who perpetrated a violent act. If someone puts out your eye, you can’t kill that person; all you can do to retaliate is to put out their eye.
Building on the Code of Hammurabi, the Mosaic Law says, “Anyone who maims another shall suffer the same injury in return: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; the injury inflicted is the injury to be suffered” (Lev. 24:19-20). And, “Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot” (Deut. 19:21).
You will notice that in our criminal justice system, the U.S. operates largely on this code of retribution. Victims are not urged just to flee, to walk away; they are urged to get even, to seek legal retribution. Make the punishment fit the crime. In extreme cases, if you take someone’s life you are given the death penalty, a life for a life.
At the ABC Mission Summit in Kansas last month, we heard from Michelle Alexander, a lawyer who wrote a book about mass incarceration particularly in the Black community called, The New Jim Crow. Alexander’s study reveals that America’s prison system has turned into a big business with the need to keep large populations of inmates imprisoned to maintain this profitable business. And tragically, the large majority of the people in prison are African Americans being punished because we still have this Code of Hammurabi in our system.
There are problems with this Code of Hammurabi alternative. For one thing, retribution never seems to give victims enough retribution. Time and time again after capital punishment, the victim’s family says they aren’t satisfied; they still don’t have closure. The perpetrator has been put to death, but that death doesn’t even the score or make up for the death of their loved one. Gandhi said, “An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”
But then Jesus comes along with a decidedly third way for the sake of our neighbors: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt. 5:44). He gives us concrete examples: turn the other cheek, give them your cloak, go the second mile. We are to take the undeserved punishment, be generous in adversity, and sacrificially go the distance.
The Samaritan didn’t even know the neighbor lying there dying. He could have done what the priest and the layman did—just pass by on the other side. That is, he could have fled—option one. Or he could have drawn his sword, taken his stand, and attempted to track down the attackers and avenge what they did to the poor man—option two. Instead the Samaritan chose the third way—option three, the way commanded by Jesus.
Neighbors’ Sake
The term, “Good Samaritan” has jumped out of the biblical text to be a term in popular usage to refer to anyone who interrupts his or her planned activity to help a person in need. There are “Good Samaritan laws” that protect from legal liability people (especially medical professionals) who stop to offer help to others.
The lawyer asked a question about eternal life and when Jesus turned the question back to him and he answered it correctly by quoting the schema which says: “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,” he should have quit while he was ahead. But he then asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
I knew my African American classmate was my neighbor but I didn’t think the three white boys when we went in their neighborhood were my neighbors. How far does my neighborhood extend? How far does your neighborhood extend—just to family and other Asian people? To the ten blocks in Chinatown? To other people not like us?
In studying this passage, we all know that Jews and Samaritans were proverbial enemies but why? I learned that the Samaritans looked at the Jews as having betrayed their heritage by going off into exile and being corrupted by foreign religious practices, while the Samaritans remained faithful to God in the Promised Land. The Jews, on the other hand, saw the Samaritans as the corrupt ones who did not go into exile as God required of them, but rather stayed at home and consorted with their foreign occupiers.
The ethnic slurs flew between the two groups, even though they were actually part of the same larger people. The same Law bound both groups. My African American friend and I were bound with the three white boys by living in the same city and growing up during that summer but like the Jews and Samaritans, we didn’t like each other.
After Jesus finished telling the parable, he asked the lawyer, “Which of these three–was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” (Luke 10:26) According to the syntax of the parable, the “neighbor” is the helper, not the one helped. The neighbor is the Samaritan. Thus, the lawyer’s question is not whom he must help, but rather from whom might he be called to accept help. In this case, could he accept a Samaritan as the one on whom his life depends?
We all too often identify with the brave and heroic acts of the Samaritan and pray that we would have the courage to do what he did when such a situation happens. But another point of this story for us when we live with relative privilege is would we be willing to accept help from someone that our culture or society defines as unacceptable? Would you receive help from a Muslim? Would you receive help from people who are not like yourself? Would you receive help from an African American? Would you receive help from a homeless person? Because in the end, Jesus is teaching us that we all need neighbors.
Have you wondered how prepared the Samaritan was enabling himself to help the wounded man? It seems like he took time to care for himself by preparing for his trip on the Jericho road. He had oil, and wine, and was ready with cloth bandages. He also had some spare change. I wonder if he had these provisions for himself since he may have been injured in some way, or even been attacked on a previous trip. We can only speculate. But it is clear that the Samaritan is attentive to what he needed to care for himself when he started on his trip.
The Samaritan helped the man onto his own beast and carried him to an inn. There he recruited the innkeeper to assist in the care. Then he left and kept going on his appointed task, promising to check back but trusting that others could be good neighbors of caring as well.
In the end, we are like the lawyer who learned that when his life depends on it, would he be willing to receive help from someone he didn’t like?
We are like the priest and the layman who are too busy with our busy lives and forget that our neighbors sometimes need us especially when we are too busy.
We are like the wounded traveler stripped and robbed during our own journeys and need the power of Christ who can stand in the road and forgive us for our sins.
We are like the Samaritan who has been chastised and persecuted but because he was ready to take good care of himself, when the time came to care for someone else, he was able to.
We are all like when I was in junior high when we saw too many things black and white and cast fear and mistrust between us that we became afraid of seeing our neighbors as true neighbors whom we need. For our neighbors’ sake, we need to not choose to fight or flight but to choose that third way commanded by Jesus to take nonviolent direct action.
The way of the world is the way of violence—fight or flight. Then Jesus taught us another way to stop the violence, reach out in compassion and restoration, risk responding not with violence or in cowardice but in daring to love.
The Samaritan dared. He refused to let the violent robbers define the situation. He didn’t just stop; he extravagantly took charge of the situation, bound up the man’s wounds, made arrangements for the man’s long-term restoration, and thus redeemed an ugly situation.
Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.”
Let us pray.
Loving Lord Jesus, help us to walk your way rather than the world’s way. Give us the faith to walk with boldness the path that you would have us trod, responding to the world’s abuse and injustice with love rather than with violent retribution or cowardice flight. Walk with us so that we might walk with you. Amen.