Pentecost 5C
July 10, 2022
Good Shepherd, Wells, MN
Luke 10.25-37
In an episode from the original “Star Trek” series, Captain Kirk and his Enterprise crew encounter two aliens whom they discover are bitter enemies. One has been chasing the other and fighting for 50,000 earth years. As the story unfolds, it is discovered that the long-standing enmity has to do with their otherwise identical appearance: one is jet black on the left side of his face and snow white on the other side. The second alien’s face is just the opposite. That’s the only difference. Kirk decides to take them back to their home planet and when they arrive there, they discover they are the only two survivors of this war. Everyone else has been wiped out. Even so, that doesn’t stop them from continuing to fight each other.
It was obvious to me in the late 60s this was a morality play commenting on race relations. But I thought of it as I worked with today’s Gospel reading that we know all too well: “The Good Samaritan.” We certainly know there are times when we find reasons, good, legitimate reasons, not to help someone in need like the priest and Levite do, falling short of what God hopes for us. Yet, if all we did today was to encourage one another to “do likewise” by loving our neighbor as much as we love God, to fulfill our love for God and his love for us, it would be enough.
Still, as I played with the idea of the Samaritan as the hero in this story, I discovered something else that I hadn’t seen before. We know that Samaritans and Jews were bitter rivals, enemies even, who not only hated each other but would have nothing to do with each other. The enmity went back centuries. When the Jews were defeated by the Babylonians in 598 BCE, the exile of Jews began, the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, and the only ones left in Judah are the “less desirable.” Those folk move to the Samarian region where they do the forbidden, intermarry with non-Jews, probably out of necessity. But they continue to worship Yahweh.
When the Babylonians are defeated by the Persians 60 years later, Jews are allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. This is what begins the blood feud with the Samaritans. The Jews consider the Samaritans to be impure, not true Jews, and the Samaritans believe they are the true worshipers of Yahweh because they never left. They also believe that they worship Yahweh in the right spot. The upshot of all this is that the first hearers of this story would have been appalled and scandalized by the notion of a Samaritan as “Good.” We can see this in the lawyer’s inability to name him as he can refer to him only as “the one who showed him mercy.”
I know there is more going on with Jews and Samaritans that we don’t understand or know about them. But what strikes me is that the two groups have far more in common than they don’t. They both worship the same God, they have a common ancestry, and both are trying to be faithful to God’s calling on them. But what also strikes me is that in the moment of one’s great need and the other’s compassion, those differences disappear and become irrelevant, the distinctions are no longer important.
The story is pushing us to realize that whole-hearted love erases the lines we draw and invites us to see one another as beautiful, fallible, broken, beloved children of God who are all in need of healing. Part of that healing comes in not only providing care for those we might despise, but also accepting help from those whom we are least likely to want it. This is hard, but necessary work. I don’t know what this will mean for you, but I invite you to think about how this might be a part of God’s mission and ministry through Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. Amen
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