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Psalm 82:1-8; Luke 10:25-37
I’ve been thinking about the word “proof” lately, and the many different ways we use that word in the English language. When we talk about proof, we are often talking about evidence that helps us solve a case or answer a question. A detective gathers facts and information as proof of whodunnit. In mathematics, a proof is a series of steps to prove that a statement is true or false. Even in explaining what a proof is, I had to use the verb prove. When we don’t know if something is true, or when we are missing information, we work to find proof. We try to prove it. When we are baking bread, and we’ve allowed it to rise the first time, we deflate the dough and shape it, and then we “proof” or “prove” the dough by allowing the yeast to inflate the dough once again to prove it is working, because even commercially-produced yeast fails from time to time.
I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “the proof is in the pudding.” This expression is actually a shortened version of the longer saying: “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.” For those of us who view pudding as a creamy, chilled dessert, we might find this expression confusing. I did for a long time. But that’s not what the expression was originally referring to. Centuries ago, a pudding was more like a sausage. It was made from minced meat, cereals or grains, spices, and other bits we would probably find undesirable–or “yucky” – today. In a time when food preservation was a lot more challenging than it is for us today, such a concoction could be risky to eat. You could get very sick from eating it. Or, it could be delicious. The proof of the pudding was in the eating. You never knew until you ate it. You had to test it out to know for sure.
Today, our passage from the Gospel of Luke is the well-known story of the Good Samaritan. An expert in the law, or “a religion scholar” as the Message paraphrase calls him, asks Jesus a question in order to test him. The word translated as “test” can also mean “to tempt” or “to try.” The expert did not ask this question without an agenda. He was hoping to prove something about Jesus–to show that Jesus did not really understand God’s law or to prove that he was a false teacher. He asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The word “inherit” here is the word that is often used to talk about the inheritance that relatives would get upon a person’s death. This would be the gift, or the inheritance, they would receive simply for being the children or relative of the person who had passed away.
Instead of answering the question, Jesus asks the man one of his own: “”What is written in the law? What do you read there?”
The expert’s response: “”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.”
The expert gave what I would call a “Sunday School answer.” When I was a kid, my youth group friends and I used to joke that the answer to almost any question our youth group leaders asked us was either God, Jesus, or the Bible. For a Jewish man in the first century, you couldn’t go wrong answering almost any question with The Shema–Deuteronomy 6–the words Moses taught the people right before they crossed into the Promised Land. Moses had told the people to recite these words often so that they would never forget that their first priority should always be to love God with their whole selves–heart, soul, strength, and mind. As an adult, Jewish male, this expert would have recited this passage twice a day every day. What is written in the law about being part of the kingdom of God? The man gave the right and expected answer.
He added to his answer that we should love our neighbors as ourselves. This part of his answer comes from the book of Leviticus, and is found among laws about holiness and purity and laws about caring for the poor. This was also a foundational teaching for the people of Israel because, as Moses reminded them, they had been poor, foreigners in Egypt. They were never to forget that they once suffered and relied on the kindness of others, and the way they were to remember this was by loving their neighbors as themselves.
After the expert gave his answer, Jesus did something I can’t remember him doing very often. He told the man he got the right answer. “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” This is where the conversation takes a turn. At the beginning, the religious expert was trying to test Jesus, trying to prove Jesus wasn’t righteous or wasn’t who he claimed to be. But now, after seemingly receiving the right answer, the expert decides to stop trying to prove something about Jesus, and instead decides to try and prove something about himself. Luke tells it this way: “But wanting to vindicate himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” The word for “vindicate” is related to the word for “righteousness.” The expert wasn’t satisfied with Jesus saying his Sunday School answer was correct. He wanted Jesus to say he was a righteous man, that he was certain to inherit eternal life. He thought he could get Jesus to say, “Your neighbors are your fellow Israelites,” and then the expert would say, “I’m doing a good job of loving them already,” and then Jesus would say, “Well done. You’re doing it all correctly!”
This expert in the law reminds me a little bit of Amy on the TV show Brooklyn 99 when her boss tells her he is giving her an A on his grading scale. Rather than being happy about a job well done, she replies, “In your scale, is A the highest, or does it go to A plus?” The expert in the law wanted a gold star, a pat on the back, and he wanted to walk away from the conversation assured he had already done everything he needed to do to be right with God.
Instead, Jesus tells a story. A certain man–we know nothing about him, he could have been anyone–took the dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho. This road would have been 13-18 miles long, and it was very steep, with an elevation change of over 3,000 feet. Because of the rugged terrain, robbers would sometimes hide and wait for people to walk by. The robbers would beat the person, take their belongings, and leave them for dead. This was not an uncommon occurrence, and that is exactly what happened to the man in Jesus’ story. An ordinary man met a common fate along a dangerous, but well-traveled road. Jesus’s audience would have been tracking with his story.
But, then things take a twist. A priest was walking down the road. This person had promised to love God and love his neighbor. He had dedicated his life to those things! Yet, when he saw the beaten man, he passed by on the other side. Likewise, a Levite–a person from the priestly tribe of Israel–saw the beaten man, and he also passed by on the other side. Jesus’s audience was probably shocked. The righteous people did nothing. Yet, I feel some sympathy for them. If the beaten man was dead and they touched him, they would have been made unclean for a number of days, which would have prevented them from doing their work. I also know a little bit about the bystander effect, a psychological phenomenon in which people who see someone in trouble do nothing. This is especially likely to happen if lots of other people are passing by. We may think someone else will take action, and so we do nothing.
Michael Rogness, professor emeritus of homiletics, noticed something about this part of the story that I had missed before. The religious expert had asked, “And who is my neighbor?” He had probably assumed his neighbors were people like the priest and the Levite. They were fellow theologians, people who had dedicated their lives to their faith. Surely, these were the people he was called to love. And yet, in Jesus’s story, it was these religious elites who did not show mercy to the wounded man. [1]
After the priest and the Levite passed by the wounded man, a Samaritan entered the picture. Michael Rogness writes this about the relationship between Samaritans and Jews: “There was much hostility between the Jews of Judah and Galilee against the Samaritans, who considered themselves Jewish, but whose center of worship was on Mount Gerizim rather than Jerusalem. The orthodox Jews considered Samaritans not only heretical but also as ceremonially unclean. In contrast, the priest and Levite were at the heart of temple worship.” Put yourself in the shoes of the people listening to Jesus. If the best of the best when it comes to righteousness did not help the wounded man, what might they expect the Samaritan man to do? Probably nothing to help, just like the others. Or maybe they thought the Samaritan man would stand over the wounded man and rob him of anything he had left. They certainly wouldn’t have expected him to do what he did. Jesus said the Samaritan man was “moved with compassion.” He couldn’t just walk by because in the injured person, he saw himself. In the injured person, he saw a human being created in the image of God. The man everyone expected to be the villain was the one who was closer to the heart of God.
I like the way one Bible I saw titled this story: “The parable of the merciful Samaritan” because that’s really what it’s all about. When a person was in need, the Samaritan man was moved with compassion and did what he could to ease the wounded man’s suffering.
Jesus asked the expert of the law, “Who, of these three, was a neighbor to the man?” I imagine the expert struggled to get out an answer to the question. I notice he couldn’t even bring himself to say the word “Samaritan,” but he finally managed to say, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.”
Let’s return to that idea of proof. If you remember, the expert of the law started off his encounter with Jesus by trying to prove something about Jesus–trying to test him. When the conversation seemed to be going his way, the expert then tried to prove something about himself–that he was righteous and would inherit the kingdom of God. In the end, Jesus challenged the expert to look for a different kind of proof. Michael Rogness says Jesus answered the question “Who is my neighbor?” with “Who proved to be a neighbor?” Who lived like a neighbor. Whose actions were those of a neighbor? It’s not about figuring out who gets to be our neighbor, about figuring out who we have to love and who we don’t have to love. It’s about being a neighbor ourselves.
And why are we called to be a neighbor? Because every single person is created in the image of God and is deserving of love and compassion. Jesus never tells us anything about the man who was beaten because it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he was in need.
Are you a neighbor?
This week, I had the opportunity to listen to a teaching about the Hebrew midwives. During the teaching, the teacher – Rev. Dr. Denise Victoria Kingdom – said we often think we have to quit our jobs, or change our lives, or get more resources in order to make a difference But, the Hebrew midwives were already midwives. This was their job. The way they loved God was by doing the jobs they already had with the fear of the Lord as their guiding principle. She challenged us to look at what we already have. She asked, “What is in your hand?” and what we already have in our hands is what we’re called to use to be a neighbor to others.
This is the challenge I was to leave with you this week. Let’s strip away all of the categories and labels we use to keep people in or out of our lives. Let’s ask God to give us eyes to see each person as a beloved child of God–a person who will show us a little bit more of who God is. And then let us use whatever is in our hands to be a neighbor to others. Because the proof… the proof of being a neighbor… is in the sharing of compassion.
[1] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-15-3/commentary-on-luke-1025-37-3