Have You Ever Been Robbed of Something?

stained glass from Melton Mowbray's parish church

Like all good teachers, Jesus used vivid stories to illustrate his points, and like all good stories, they were meant for a specific audience, in a specific time, at a specific place, and with specific culture references and techniques. The preferred story of Jesus’ time for his audience was something called a parable.

Parables are unique in that they are clearly meant to explain a specific lesson and provide guidance for how to live. In Jesus’ day, these stories were meant to be told to an audience, and so they followed a strict formula. The audience knew who to pay attention to and how to apply the story to their own lives because of how the story was told. It was also easier for a storyteller to pass along a remembered story because the formula was important. Get the formula correct and the story tells itself.

So, what does this mean for us today? In some cases, it means that we’ve misinterpreted stories and their original meaning is all but lost to a contemporary audience. Let’s look at the story of the Good Samaritan, as excerpted from the Contemporary English Version:

An expert in the Law of Moses stood up and asked Jesus a question to see what he would say. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to have eternal life?”

Jesus answered, “What is written in the Scriptures? How do you understand them?”

The man replied, “The Scriptures say, `Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.’ They also say, `Love your neighbors as much as you love yourself.’ “

Jesus said, “You have given the right answer. If you do this, you will have eternal life.”

But the man wanted to show that he knew what he was talking about. So he asked Jesus, “Who are my neighbors?”

Jesus replied:

As a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, robbers attacked him and grabbed everything he had. They beat him up and ran off, leaving him half dead.

A priest happened to be going down the same road. But when he saw the man, he walked by on the other side. Later, a temple helper came to the same place. But when he saw the man who had been beaten up, he also went by on the other side. A man from Samaria then came traveling along that road. When he saw the man, he felt sorry for him and went over to him. He treated his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put him on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. The next morning he gave the innkeeper two silver coins and said, “Please take care of the man. If you spend more than this on him, I will pay you when I return.” Then Jesus asked, “Which one of these three people was a real neighbor to the man who was beaten up by robbers?”

The teacher answered, “The one who showed pity.”

Jesus said, “Go and do the same!”

It seems to be a pretty straight-forward answer to the question, but when we put this story back into the original context and formula, we get a startlingly different interpretation that Jesus’ audience would have picked up on right away. For them, this story was shocking and unexpected. Why?

It seems simple. We should take care of those who are less fortunate then ourselves. We should be moved with pity and act.

However, there’s much more to it than that. You see, Jesus’ audience would have recognized that the very first character mentioned is the most important, and therefore the one they should identify with. Yes, the audience would have wanted the priest or the temple helper to stop and offer assistance to the dying man, but they would have also recognized that the Law of Moses would have prevented them from doing so (as would the “expert in the Law”). However, they would have wished beyond everything else that the man from Samaria would not stop and help him.

People from Samaria were very much disliked by the community that Jesus was talking to. They were so disliked, in fact, that not only would someone not want to help a Samaritan, they also would not want to be helped by one. What did it mean for someone who was left on the side of the road half-dead to be helped by someone? It meant that you literally owed your life to them, and you had to repay the debt.

What would it mean if you were saved by someone and you only had a vague idea of who that person was? How do you repay the debt you owe to them? After all, the man who was left on the side road could not know exactly who the person who helped him was. To whom did he owe his life? All he would know from the innkeeper was that a “Samaritan man” brought him and left enough money to take care of him. And so, he would owe his life to every Samaritan man that he met in the hopes that he would be able to repay the debt eventually. To do otherwise would be wrong.

His audience understood this. The debt of a life saved is a serious debt indeed. They would also very much never want to owe their lives to a Samaritan, let alone to every Samaritan. Yet, in this story they were being challenged beyond what the law required. They were being asked to treat every Samaritan not only as a friend, but as someone to whom they owed the debt of their very own life.

The man asking the question would also not like this answer, because it challenged him beyond the letter of the Law. It challenged him to think of the law as something bigger than anything a human being could design. He was forced to think of a Samaritan, someone who he would normally think of with disgust, as someone not only of great worth, but of more worth in the eyes of the Law—and therefore God—than someone who was following the Law.

All of this is significant to us today. Why? What does it matter that Jesus told a little story about being good to people who are suffering? It matters because when we apply the context to our lives in today’s world, we make a startling realization: those people who we don’t like, who we do not value in our lives—those are the people to whom we owe the greatest debt of all.

How different would the world be if we embraced this as a way of life? If we treated every stranger as someone to whom we owed our very lives? Would we live in fear? How would we treat the people we meet by chance throughout the day? What choices would we make in these situations? How would we be transformed?

Imagine what a world that would be. That is the kingdom of God that Jesus talked about, and that is significant to us in more ways than we can count.

Try it for one day. Treat everyone you meet as though you owed your life to them. See how they treat you in return. At the end of the day, look back on those moments and you will see the face of God.

If you can’t try it for a day, then try it for an hour. If you can’t try it for an hour, then try it with just one person.