The parable of the Good Samaritan is such a familiar story it hardly needs to be revisited. It has a secure place in any anthology of religious wisdom. It's beautifully told and for those of us who went to Sunday school its main details are well enough remembered. Terri's telling of the story to the children gives us a launching pad for further reflection.
It's the story of a Samaritan businessman traveling on the Damascus road. Along the way, he finds a man wounded and left bleeding by robbers. Without hesitation, he tends to the victim's wounds, takes him to a nearby inn, and pays the inn- keeper in advance for his food and board. He tells the inn- keeper to take care of the Samaritan, and if he needs more money, he, the Samaritan, will repay him on his return trip.
Well! The poor victim was lucky the Samaritan businessman was passing by, but the Samaritan wasn't the first to have the opportunity to help the man who was bloodied in the incident. Two other people had observed the scene of the crime, but simply passed by on the other side of the road. First a priest, then a Levite, both members of the Jewish hierarchy, did nothing to help! They looked the other way. The point of Jesus' parable becomes obvious! It was not devout believers who came to the victim's aid, but a despised Samaritan - despised because he was a Samaritan, a member of a group hated by Orthodox Jews as heretical. Jesus implies an obvious moral; that it was the "non-religious" person, the heretic who did the decent and compassionate thing. No doubt where our own sympathies lie.
Not that the Jewish clergy who ignored the victim were bad people, but their religious ritual forbade them to have any contact with blood. I don't want to anticipate, but this parable of Jesus along with many others show the severe tension that grew between Jesus and the Jewish authorities on the issue of the law versus the Good News as Jesus preached it. The teaching of the Gospel became a contradiction of the law and wisdom of Scribes and Pharisees. The spirit of the Samaritan is a rebuke to all empty orthodoxy and legalism and an appeal to what we might call common decency and compassion.
The central question, whether in Biblical times or now, is "who is my neighbor?" This question the young lawyer had asked Jesus, and Jesus summed up the essence of the Law by saying, "Love the Lord thy God, and thy neighbor as thyself!" The lawyer asks as we all might, "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus does not answer directly. Rather, he tells the story we know as "The Good Samaritan."
The question for us remains the question the decent young lawyer asked, "But who is my neighbor?" This is painful and disturbing for UU's who are part of a religious community and movement with Purposes and Principles that precisely honor basic human ideals and decencies and, where we can, try to realize them in action. This congregation gives away half of its Sunday offering for causes we deem good. I'm surprised the Good Samaritan wasn't a Unitarian! In his time, he was a Unitarian in spirit, or at least, a St. Francis! I'm not being facetious! We know that social compassion and justice must lie at the very heart of what we call religion, but when all is said and done, we still feel uneasy that we have not done enough - not as a guilt trip, but because we have learned or are learning to care again. As the poet Eliot wrote, "We only are undefeated because we have gone on trying."
We're still in semi-shock trauma after the floods of biblical proportion in South-East Asia and the terrible earthquakes of the high Himalayas. Nature itself sometimes exceeds the malice of humanity and leaves us in our impotence asking, "Who is my neighbor, in all this? The settled question rarely has a settled answer, but how can I possibly help?" It is from the depth of this question that we can begin to take heart again, either out of the gutsiest part of ourselves or out of the inspiration of people like Coretta Scott King, Martin's wife, who passed away recently. She didn't curl up and die after Martin's death, but kept his legacy alive in so many ways, in support of so many causes beyond racism - the goal of equality, not just for blacks, but for women, gays and lesbians, and impoverished immigrants. Mrs. King realized that we all need to continue to be freed from all our prejudices, conscious and unconscious and this should be a central care of our own religious mission. In the meantime, we try to obey the age-old ethical injunctions to feed the hungry, visit the prisoner, give to the poor, and give hospitality to the stranger. I don't intend all this as a ritual laundry list of old grievances and liberal causes. They are all causes that belong as bee stings in the national and religious conscience.
So the increasing relevance of this parable is that we should, at least, be responsive to the more obvious sufferings and needs of our neighbors. After all, we are or try to be Good Samaritans whenever and wherever we can. Thus far, we've tried to honor the parable in its own compassionate terms and see, of course that its message speaks to the very heart of our own very apocalyptic time, which is not the best of times. A theologian spoke of trying to be moral men and women in an immoral world; this expresses the dilemma and the challenge. To be a Good Samaritan in this time, as in every time, is to have our eyes open and our hearts responsive to the occasions that offer hope of furthering the causes of justice and compassion. There's something so intimate about ministering to our neighbor and yet something so cosmic in its promise. A small gesture of love and kindness can redeem much unnecessary suffering and sorrow.
To the extent that we are or try to be Good Samaritans, most of our "Samaritan Witness" may not be on an international or cosmic scale. How easy and appropriate it is to extrapolate the action of one isolated Good Samaritan into the wider concern for national and international issues! I believe that the underlying moral impulse is admirable. We must do what we can beyond our own immediate family, friends and community, but we should also remember that, after all our exertions, it is to the most intimate sphere of family, friends, and community that we return. Who is my neighbor? Anyone who stands in need of my attention, understanding, affection, love, and forgiveness, however effortlessly or unstintingly we extend such kindness. To those truly in need, they will be thankful for it. In spite of wars and rumors of wars and all the catastrophes, it is in the intimate sphere of family, friends, and community that we establish, affirm, and re-affirm the values of compassionate concern. We all stand in need of each others kindness. We can be devastated without such kindness though we may try to keep a stiff upper lip. The great Jewish thinker, Martin Buber observed that the great weakness of the human race is our inability to confirm and be confirmed by one another. Being a life-giving person, the Samaritan begins and ends in our acknowledgement of that very deepest need of mutual acceptance - to be truly good neighbors to one another; not just good, but consciously compassionate. In extending such compassion to others, we realize that we stand in need of our own compassion towards ourselves. Yes, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves aware also of the need of our own love and forgiveness towards ourselves. All else stems from this.
Man wishes to be confirmed is his being by man, and wishes to have a presence in the Being of the other. The human person needs a confirmation, because man as man needs it....secretly and bashfully he watches for a Yes which allows him to be and which can come to him only from one person to another. It is from one man to another that the heavenly bread of self-being is passed.