This paradigmatic text is like an onion. The more you peel, the more layers revealed. There are at least four major layers for American Christians to consider. My assumption here is that this text is a prophetic text intended for Christians in our “view” of Islam.[1]

Do good. In this layer, the most popular interpretation of the ancient parable, the meaning o f the parable is straight forward: it is always to do right by people. It is always right to choose to help someone over one’s schedule, plans, and daily customs. Therefore, if you have a chance to help a Muslim (or Buddhist, Baha’i, or even atheist) you are furthering humanity by aiding, loving, caring, and serving that other person because our differences pale in comparison to our commonalities. President George W. Bush eluded referenced the parable in his first inaugural address: “I can pledge our nation to a goal: When we see that wounded traveler on the road to Jericho, we will not pass to the other side.”[2]

Purity and love. The second layer highlights the alleged tension between the obligation of the two religious leaders and the plight of the disposed Jewish man left for dead. Levitical code does not allow for the two holy men to tend to the man. Were they to care for the man as the Samaritan did, they would become ritually unclean, defiling themselves and their role in the priestly system.[3] Thus, Jesus is breaking down the old system of religion and replacing it with a new movement based on love, sacrifice and reconciliation. Jesus is, after all, the great Jewish Reformer, in this epistemological approach. Jesus teaches his disciples to choose people over precepts, love over law, responsibility over ritual, and compassion over purity.

Justice.  Recent times have produced this third layer of interpretation, what I’m calling the “justice layer.” That is, justice is simply love made public. In this interpretive move, the man in the ditch becomes the immigrant profiled by local authorities, the gay couple Christians love to hate; the Muslim Americans are quick to stereo-type as a terrorist, the homeless man urban business owners treat poorly. Luke 10 becomes a rallying cry which echoes the prophets’ charge to God’s people to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God,” (Mic. 6:8). The most significant textual evidence for this third approach is found in Lev. 19:34—a reiteration of 19:18 with a twist: Israel is to love the other, the “resident alien” among them. It’s a powerful appeal, but it might not quite be what Jesus is doing in the story.[4]

Get in the ditch. The last layer, which is the explosive layer in interpreting the now domesticated parable, deals with order of succession of the characters mentioned. Priests and Levites are significant in Jewish culture, “not because they trained or were chosen to be priests but because they were born into priestly families. They participated and were legitimated by the world of the temple, with its circumspect boundaries between clean and unclean, including clean and unclean people.”[5] Essentially, the hearers of Jesus’ parable heard a predictable formula unfolding. The Jerusalem temple was staffed by three classes of men: priests, Levites, and laymen. Instead of including another Jewish “character” into the parable—which, if you are counting, would make the fourth character in the story Jewish—Jesus surprises his listeners by making the third observer of the man in the ditch, a Samaritan. Jesus, had he been interested in conventional preaching, should have told a story about a Good Jew who helps a lowly Samaritan (interpretive option #1). Instead, he places a volatile character in the middle of this most important exchange. While there is much scholarly debate regarding the manner in which a first-century Jew “saw” a Samaritan, there can be no doubt that a long, bloody history, positioned Jews and Samaritans as bitter ethnic and religious rivals.[6]

To understand this parable in theological terms, we need to see the image of God in everyone, not just members of our own group. To hear this parable in contemporary terms, we should think of ourselves as the person in the ditch and then ask, “Is there anyone from any group, about whom we’d rather die than acknowledge, She offered help or He showed compassion?” More, is there any group whose members might rather die than help us? If so, then we find the modern equivalent for the Samaritan. To recognize the shock and the possibility of the parable in practical, political, and pastoral terms, we might translate its first-century geographical and religious concerns into our modern idiom. The ancient kingdom of Samaria is, today, the West Bank. Thus, translated across the centuries, the parable retains the same meaning. The man in the ditch is an Israeli Jew; a rabbi and a Jewish member of the Israeli Knesset fail to help the wounded man, but a member of Hamas shows him compassion.[7]

In America, the parable might sound something like this. The ancient kingdom becomes Nashville—one of the hubs of evangelical Christianity. The man in the ditch is a white-Christian; a high-ranking bishop and a prominent Christian leader walk by without compassion or action. A Muslim, with ties to al Qaeda, passes by and is moved to action at the sight of a hurting human. He rescues the suffering man. And both are forever changed.

The parable under consideration states that we need to see the potential to be neighbor (and thus, the imago Dei) in the face of the neo-Nazi, the Klan Grand Dragon, and depending upon preference, Democrats or Republicans.

Ultimately, this paradigmatic text isn’t about belief or action. It’s primarily and inherently about sight and vision. How do you see? You look but do you see. After all, right before this text, Jesus says, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it . . .” The word for “compassion” (splagchnizomai) is the same word that appears in the parable of the two sons in Luke 15 in which the father sees his son running towards him off in the distance and is filled with compassion. Literally, the word means to be moved in one’s bowels. It’s the strongest word for compassion in the Greek language. Paul offers a similar teaching in his letter to urban Christians trying to overcome racial and religious differences in light of Jesus’ resurrection: “So from now on, we regard no one from a worldly point of view . . . the old has gone, the new is here,” (2 Cor. 5:16-17).

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[1] Amy-Jill Levine, professor of New Testament at Vanderbilt Divinity School, has been my chief rabbi on this text. See her incredible work, The Misunderstood Jew. Ken Bailey’s work has also been highly influential: Poet and Peasant, 2006.

[2] www.whitehouse.gov/inaugural-address.html

[3] Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew, 145ff– rightfully categorically rejects this interpretation. She deconstructs the two primary texts used from Torah (Lev. 21:3; Numbers 19:11). The primary issue with applying these texts is that the man lying in the road isn’t dead. Something else is going on. “The appeal to purity laws for understanding the parable—an appeal the parable never mentions and Luke’s Gospel never addresses—actually masks the narrative’s surprising implications. All commentators agree that the Samaritan’s compassion is a surprise. But they fail to find the behavior of the priest and the Levite surprising as well. It is just as likely that Jesus’ Jewish listeners would have expected the priest and the Levite to behave compassionately toward the man in the ditch. Insiders who are expected to provide aid do not; outsiders who are not expected to show compassion do,” 146.

[4] Again, Dr. Levine is insightful. “But as appealing at the message is, it is not quite what the parable conveys, for there is no reason for the majority (or privileged) group to think that the gay man or the homeless woman or the illegal immigrant would harbor hatred against them. To recover the punch of the parable, readers need to see the Samaritans and the Jews as mutually antagonistic,” 148. Mutual antagonism that rivals the mutual suspicion that exists between Christians and Jews, Americans and Middle Easterners.

[5] Joel B. Green, Luke, 431.

[6] The Tanakh/Old Testament has three critical stories per Israel and Samaria’s hatred and animosity: Gen. 34 (The rape of Dinah); Judges 8 (Abimelech); and 2 Chronicles 28:8-15 (war and violence). It is also important to note that Jesus sends the disciples, in the beginning of Acts, to Judea and Samaria, not Judea or Samaria. Because if you’ve been in one  region you don’t go to the other. Judeans and Samaritans genuinely disdained each other. It’s possible that Judean converts were traveling with the apostles to Samaria.

[7] Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew, 148-149.  The recent film Crash (2004) captured the hearts and minds of many in the western world. The ending, which I will not delve into at this point, is probably the perfect embodiment of this fourth interpretive option.

Jesus’ primary form of teaching comes in the form of the parable. The parable was an ancient form of story-telling, considered a sub-set of a mashal (riddle). The parable was intended to bring a stinging, sneaky, subversive message in the guise of everyday ordinary events and people. Like God showing up in the form of a taxi-cab driver, Jesus’ parables remind us that God comes to us, as he did in a borrowed manger, in unexpected ways.

Jesus did not invent parables.[1] Rather, Jesus uses parables for his own purposes in describing the essence of the kingdom of God. This is what he does and how he does it.

Luke 10:25-37 is perhaps the most important parable Jesus ever uttered. Luke writes that an expert in the law desires to test Jesus. Middle Eastern scholars like Ken Bailey note that the expert is standing. In “honor and shame” cultures like the one at hand, a student sits at the feet of a rabbi (c.f. Lk. 10: 38-42; Acts 22:3) as a sign of respect and honor. Even though this would-be student comes to Jesus with an honest question, he does not have the purest of motives. His “standing” is a direct physical expression of his desire to “test” Jesus.[2] Sitting at the feet of your superior is akin to holding the door for a woman; it’s a sign of respect.

The inquirer poses this question to Jesus (v. 25): “Teacher . . . what must I do to inherit eternal life?” To the modern western mind, the question is about heaven and life after death. However, this is precisely the opposite of what the expert is asking. “Eternal life” is another way of asking about the critical component of Jesus’ teaching ministry that the kingdom of God is both present and “on its way”; that is, the kingdom is already and not yet. Jews viewed time in terms of ages (from the Greek, aeons) this age and the age to come. Essentially the expert is asking something along these lines: I want to be a part of the world on its way. “I want to be a part of God’s future in the present. What does that look like?” Even so, the way Jesus handles the experts question is both prophetic for our American assumption that the expert wants to know about how to “earn his way to heaven” and the first-century fascination with the age to come.

Because Jesus is a Jew—Jesus isn’t a Christian—he responds by referring to the pillar of Judaism, love of Torah.[3] He implores the man to remember the heart of his own faith. Because the expert is a Jew—he isn’t a Christian either—he responds by quoting Jesus’ own teaching, what some have called Jesus’ “creed” or the “Jesus Creed”: the essence of Judaism is this: love God with all you have (Deut. 6:5) and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself (Lev. 19:18).

Jesus replies, “Great answer. This is what it really means to be alive.” It’s important to note that Jesus does not say, “Do this and you will have eternal life.” He simply says, “Do you this and you will live.”

The student, when tested, gives the right answer for it’s the teacher’s teaching. The story should end here. Everyone should go home feeling like a winner. But it doesn’t. Luke writes “But he (the expert) wanted to justify himself,” so he poses another question to Jesus. Sometimes the questions we ask say more about us than the person we’re asking or the answer we receive.

The expert isn’t quite certain about how to interpret Lev. 19:18—after all, there aren’t many rabbis like Jesus walking around saying that loving people is as important as loving God. The expert wants to know “who is my neighbor” which code for asking “who isn’t my neighbor?” Once you know you have to love then you also know who you don’t have to love. Jesus sees this coming a mile away.

And, again, because Jesus is a Jew he does a very Jewish thing. He offers a story. Theological argument and legal debate is not ultimately helping, so he reverts to the most subversive form of persuasion in the known world:  the art of a sneaky story.[4]

A Jew is traveling south from Jerusalem, the site of the temple, to his home in Jericho. The traveling Jewish man is traveling down: Jerusalem is 2,500 feet above sea level, while Jericho is merely 800 feet above sea level. While traveling the treacherous road, he gets mugged. Beat up, beat down, left to die on the side of a road like an animal. Lying there half-naked, he does not have the energy to help himself.

A priest travels on this road and looks at the man. Upon looking at the man, he passes by on the other side of the road. So too, a Levite comes to the exact same spot as the priest and does the exact same thing: he looked at the man and passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled down the same road as the two religious respected leaders, he looked at the man, saw his plight, was moved in his spirit, and had much compassion. The Samaritan didn’t simply look at the man, he looked and he saw him. The compassionate traveler took care of his wounds with the resources he had available. He placed the Jew on his own animal, risking the appearance of being a Samaritan who had beaten up a Jew, and took the half-dead stranger to a hotel where he paid for all of the man’s expenses. Ken Bailey provocatively suggests that parable might be best understood retold in this way: “. . . Suppose a Native American found a cowboy on his horse and rode into Dodge City. After checking into a room over the saloon, the man spent the night taking care of the cowboy. How would the people of Dodge City react to the Native American the following morning when he emerged from the saloon? Most Americans know that they would probably kill him even though he had helped a cowboy.”[5]

Jesus is now asking the questions. His sneaky story mesmerizes the audience, not to mention the former expert. “Which of the three men in the story acted as a neighbor to the Jew who got beat up?” Jesus’ inquisitor, knowing the answer would require the word “Samaritan” to come from his lips, could only muster a rather lackluster response, “The one who had mercy on him.” He can’t even allow himself to insinuate that a Samaritan is the hero—a vital clue for our interpretive endeavor.

Jesus ends this exchange by offering a simple exhortation to the lawyer: “Go and be like the Samaritan I just described.” Because, for Jesus, the man’s question “Who’s my neighbor?” is a bad question built on a faulty premise. The answer to the bad question, in the form of a sneaky story is this: there’s no one who’s not your neighbor. Everyone’s a neighbor. You belong to everyone and everyone belongs to you. We are all caught up in an inescapable mutuality.

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[1] See Nathan’s parable to King David in 2 Sam. 12.

[2] Ken Bailey, Poet and Peasant, 34-35. See his entire chapter on this parable: 33-56.

[3] “Law” is a troubling translation as it gets misconstrued with American legal systems. “Law” is better transalted “instruction” or “way”.

[4] This is a paraphrase based upon much study and reflection of this text in English and Greek. It’s important to note that, according to Ken Bailey, Poet and Peasant, 289, Ibn al-Tayyib, suggests that the parable in Lk. 10 might actually be based on a historical event. Ibn alTayyib encounters a similar story to Jesus’s set in the 11^th century in Southern Iraq in the aftermath of 2 Kings 17:24-38.

[5] Ken Bailey, Poet and Peasant, 295-296

“So we take it and we taste,” Rob Bell and Don Golden write. “We take part in this two-thousand-year-old ritual . . . We ‘do this’ in all sorts of ways and in all sorts of places with all sorts of diversity. Some of us ‘do this’ with chants, and some of us in silence. In some settings people serve each other, and in other gatherings people serve themselves . . . . It changes us. It humbles us. It brings us together.”

It reminds us that we are not alone.
Which is why we were ever afraid in the first place.
Because Jesus understood that we are who we eat with.

Which is why he allowed a sorted cast of characters to eat with him.
A national sell-out.
Two brothers bent on violence.
A hypocrite.
A few cowards.
A back-stabber.

“Come, you are welcome at this table,” Jesus says. Welcome to see the world with new eyes.

I first met Anne outside a building near Cass Park called “The Dog Pound.” The building, housing some fifty family units, got its endearing name for two reasons. First, I’m told, the man who owns the building keeps dogs in the basement, so dogs bark and howl at all hours of the night. Second, the residents who live in this low-income building say they feel as if they live in a kennel.

The first time I met Anne was in February—the dead of a Michigan winter. I noticed Anne right away because she wore a summer dress with no shoes. In the middle of winter. Twenty degrees outside. She has no shoes, I thought to myself.
A few of us paid attention to Anne over the next several months—nothing spectacular, just little works of love to let her know she was valued. But then, from my experience, transformation usually happens “one phone call, twenty dollar check, home cooked casserole” at a time.

On a perfect day in October, while hosting a love feast in Cass Park, my cell phone rang. It was Anne.
“You gonna come get me?”
“What do you mean? Who is this?”
“This is Anne. You got to come get me. I’m in my new house.”

I couldn’t believe it. Anne was no longer living in The Dog Pound. She’d gotten back on her feet, rented a house in a better part of the city, and regained custody of her kids. “I want you to come get me and bring me back to Cass Park so I can tell everyone about my new place. I want to have a party.”

When I picked Anne up some thirty minutes later, she was as proud as a young child hosting her first lemonade stand, as proud as a college graduate. Her smile exceeded her physical face.

“See my house,” she said.
“I see your house, Anne. I’m proud of you.”

So we planned to have a party at Anne’s house. But before we had an opportunity to party in Anne’s new digs, she left us tragically, dying from complications with diabetes. I’ve taken solace in the notion that Anne was likely going to die, whether or not our lives intersected her life. But for a few moments in time, we were able to help Anne see herself as God sees her: beautiful, beloved, cherished, and welcomed. Our friendship produced life, joy, and, most importantly, hope in the midst of great struggle. This is why I’m so attracted to the Jesus Way. In Jesus’ economy, everyone has a place at the table. Everyone’s invited; we don’t get to check over the guest list for approval.

It’s not our party.
The grace of God is this.
You might not have ever been.
But you are.
Because the party wouldn’t be the same without you. (Buechner)

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

HERE IS A LINK to the best reflection on the Penn State scandal I’ve read. Below is a sample.

Bad and mediocre people are tempted to sin by their own habitual weaknesses. The earlier lies or thefts or adulteries make the next one that much easier to contemplate. Having already cut so many corners, the thinking goes, what’s one more here or there? Why even aspire to virtues that you probably won’t achieve, when it’s easier to remain the sinner that you already know yourself to be?

But good people, heroic people, are led into temptation by their very goodness — by the illusion, common to those who have done important deeds, that they have higher responsibilities than the ordinary run of humankind. It’s precisely in the service to these supposed higher responsibilities that they often let more basic ones slip away.

I believe that Joe Paterno is a good man. I believe Joe Posnanski of Sports Illustrated, the brilliant sportswriter who is working on a Paterno biography, when he writes that Paterno has “lived a profoundly decent life” and “improved the lives of countless people” with his efforts and example.

I also believe that most of the clerics who covered up abuse in my own Catholic Church were in many ways good men. Of course there were wicked ones as well — bishops in love with their own prerogatives, priests for whom the ministry was about self-aggrandizement rather than service. But there were more who had given their lives to their fellow believers, sacrificing the possibility of family and fortune in order to say Mass and hear confessions, to steward hospitals and charities, to visit the sick and comfort the dying.

They believed in their church. They believed in their mission. And out of the temptation that comes only to the virtuous, they somehow persuaded themselves that protecting their institution’s various good works mattered more than justice for the children they were supposed to shepherd and protect.

UPDATED NOTE: By “church” I mean an intentional community that worships, studies, and lives the person of Jesus. This “church” might meet weekly in a basement, Starbucks, or even . . . a building. Gasp.

A respected friend recently pointed out Ian Cron’s blog post per 40 and 50 somethings and their disillusionment with the church. I also just noticed that my friend Mike posted Ian’s thoughts to his blog as well. Both Ian and Mike are friends of mine. I greatly respect them. I’ve learned a great deal from both and I think they raise an important conversation that has to take place in church, outside church, on twitter, Facebook, blogs–anywhere people talk about things that matter this thing that matters needs to be discussed. Mostly–they raise the point that questions are often more important than answers. Especially for those who are truly wrestling with God.

I’m especially interested in Ian’s blog because so many of friends “my age” (25-39) are leaving church in droves. I want Otter Creek to be a place where those with big questions can follow Jesus too.

You can read Ian’s complete post HERE. An excerpt from a conversation Ian had with a friend who’d left the church:

“One Sunday I walked out of church and never went back,” he said. “I want spiritual community, I just don’t think the church as it is right now is where I’m going to find it.”

Most of the people I meet who are leaving church aren’t young. They’re in their forties and fifties. After years of reading off the same theological script they began yearning for deeper, more open conversations about faith that included considering diverse perspectives and conversations that widened rather than narrowed their souls. Their churches were either threatened by these folks or unprepared for their emergence.

First, here’s what I like about Ian’s post. Here’s what challenged me as a Christian leader and thinker.

1. If church is a social club in which the real passions of my heart can’t be discussed, it’s only a matter of time before apathy and cynicism set in. If church is primarily about keeping up appearance, appeasing family systems and values, then people might be gathering on a Sunday, but it’s not necessarily church (only God can determine that). From large assemblies, to smaller groups doing “life together” (as the life group I’m in likes to say)–authenticity must be the cultural norm not the exception. For instance, confession and lament need to become a regular part of our liturgy, preaching, and equipping strategy. Rachel Held Evans: “Most of the people I’ve encountered are looking not for a religion to answer all their questions but for a community of faith in which they can feel safe asking them.”

I encourage friends to ask the big questions (race, Islam, violence, sexuality) because God is big enough. I try to model this in my preaching and writing solely because I want to see others do the same in their own journey.

2. Church and community are very difficult. Church is a great idea until people get involved. Bonhoeffer consistently warns us in his various writings that we destroy community when we try and create it. Meaning–community, in and of itself, cannot be the goal. Rather, community is the space in which we communally seek to experience the resurrected Jesus. That being said, anyone who’s been a part of a church community knows that relationships will suffer, endure disappointment because this is true in any community (just ask Penn State students and employees).

But there’s another side to all of this. The following is written in humility.

1. Most Protestant churches today are led by the peers of the disillusioned. That is, when Boomers criticize church leadership and culture they are simultaneously criticizing themselves. These churches are led by women and men they’ve shared life with. So, and indictment on church leadership is also self-indictment. The problems are not “out there” among “those people”. The problem is with us, me, we. I have learned to be suspicious of them, him, and they.

2. The real issue is being skirted. I think the real cause of disillusionment with church is self-disappointment. Pain birthed anger, now solidified in cynicism and apathy (funny how those two always go together). Frustration with “the church” is first about frustration with self. We tend to, in the wisdom of Donald Miller, judge others based on actions while judging ourselves based upon our intent. We are harder on “the church” so we can be “easier” on ourselves. This is why some Christians literally demand more from their church than they do from their own family, their own personal lives (money, time, etc.).

3. A heavy dose of entitlement and self-deception is present in many of these conversations. Boomers, much to the admittance of all generations, are perhaps the first truly consumer generation in American history. Their kids (of which I’m guilty) are even starker consumers precisely because we were raised in the milieu of “gaining, acquiring, achieving, and consuming” to our heart’s content. I now look back and see the simple practices my parents instilled (hospitality, simplicity, generosity with money) to challenge these larger temptations. Honestly, it’s something I’m trying to reevaluate as we are watching our two boys grow and emerge.

Barbara Brown Taylor wrote a provocative and controversial book several years ago, Leaving Church. It created a stir because it both resonated with so many and, at the same time, served as an example of what happens when you actually do leave a church. If you have not read it, I think it embodies the tension I’m naming in this post. The tension we must live in: critiquing the church without excusing our own dysfunction.

How can you change something if you won’t stay and fight for what you believe? I know some will say, “Josh, you are 32. Talk to me when you are older and understand things a little more clearer.” Maybe that’s true. But I pray, God help me, that I will love the church enough to speak prophetically while, at the same time, realize that God’s love for me is far more gracious, risky, illogical, loyal, steadfast than any paltry and minuscule love I might offer the church.

I really believe that the local church is part of the genius of the kingdom.

My experience in Rochester (a suburb of Detroit) and Nashville resonates with Ian et al but is also different. I found that, in every congregation, there are women and men hungry to have deep friendship, conversation, and, yes, open disagreement. I’ve been able to cultivate friendships in both church contexts in which I’ve been able to bare my soul, say exactly what I think, what I don’t think, and what I’m not sure of.

And I’m a minister.

Did I make some people mad with tough questions? Do bears defecate in the woods? Did I hurt some people with direct questions? Of course. But, I also had many people say, “Me too…”–some of the most powerful words a person can speak. I have friends in Michigan, Nashville, and Texas that I can share any question, passion, concern–I don’t have to hold anything back. But those friendships have been fought for, worked through, endured over the last 12 years.

I view my relationship with the church as I do my marriage. I can fixate on Kara, how I wish she’d change, meet my needs, etc. or I can see the beauty that is Kara because of her imperfections, shortcomings, peculiar habits (Kara: if you are reading this, you are perfect). I also have to remember that Kara is making this decision too–every day of her life.

I’m not giving up on church for the same reason I’m not giving up on Kara. God has me here, on the anvil, because God knows I want to hide, take the path of least resistance.

It’s hard for me to imagine Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Jr., Bonhoeffer –or the original disciples for that matter– ever giving up and leaving the church because, turns out, church is hard work. It is it possible that privilege and affluence are partly behind our rationale to “give up on church” in the first place?

BTW–when I have shared this before, one person responded that “I couldn’t tell the difference between Church and God.” Really? This post doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ve confused my commitment to the church with my allegiance to God. I recognize there’s a difference; often a larger gulf than I care to admit.

But I’m not giving up on the church Because God’s never given up on me, humanity, or creation. What right do I have?

So, instead of giving up on church, work hard to change, reform, expand, renovate. And, at the same time, realize that in doing so, God might just be working on you too.

Thoughts and comments welcome. Be civil and thoughtful, please.