Power Play
Luke 10: 25-37
Eighth Sunday After Pentecost
Rev. Dr. Amy Butler
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Lawyers! It’s always the lawyers, isn’t it? Today we read a passage from the gospel of Luke and we find that it’s a lawyer who’s stirring up controversy for Jesus. Again.
Try to imagine the scene. Jesus, at this point in the story a popular, dynamic young rabbi, is teaching the Torah, religious law, to the rapt attention of increasingly large crowds of people. A lawyer in the crowd asked Jesus to offer a rabbinical opinion about Torah, to help him distill religious law in the detailed and intricate way that lawyers like to have things explained.
Truth be told, this was a normal social interplay in the society of Jesus and the lawyer. This is how the powerful, elite, professional, educated folks interacted with each other, a sort of unwritten societal standard not unlike any DC gathering when, upon meeting someone for the first time you immediately know to ask: “What do you do?”
The lawyer was certainly interested in Jesus; Jesus had been generating a lot of buzz all over the countryside. Some of the things he was saying and doing were edgy, different; he was clearly an up and comer. The lawyer wanted to engage him in a sort of intellectual swordplay, where they’d spar with each other over questions of merit and importance. It was an exercise in finding your place in the grand order of things; trying to figure out who this Jesus guy was, whether he was really rising in the ranks of Jerusalem power brokers like many suspected and, if so, to make sure they knew each other. Right? It was what you do.
This kind of thing isn’t unfamiliar to any of us. I tweeted two weeks ago after I arrived at the convention center in Greensboro, North Carolina for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly meeting: “I’d know I was at a Baptist meeting even if I didn’t know I was at a Baptist meeting.”
For one thing, all the men were wearing pleated khaki pants and polo shirts, the unofficial Baptist male uniform. The lobby of the hotel was full of fresh-faced, earnest looking people wearing nametags and clutching tote bags—sure signs that something Baptist is going on.
As I sat in the lobby waiting for a friend, I watched. People would greet each other by name (after glancing quickly at nametags to spark memory). They’d ask each other questions like, “How are things going down at Whatever Baptist Church?,” to which there would be cheery answers about new programming and increased worship attendance. People traded business cards and made connections and caught up on all the news.
You know, it’s what we DO at Baptist meetings, and we all know how to do it.
That’s the framework into which our story comes to us this morning: a lawyer and a rabbi just doing what they did. But that lawyer had a surprise in store for him, because Jesus was not your average rabbi. We’ve been talking these past weeks about how Jesus regularly and consistently took generally accepted assumptions about power and influence and turned them upside down, leaving all the folks who thought they understood puzzled, scratching their heads in confusion.
This exercise in upending our assumptions comes from Luke chapter 10, perhaps the most familiar chapter in Luke’s gospel, where Jesus tells the most famous parable of all, the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
Here’s a quick review of the set up: a lawyer challenges Jesus, asking for exact instructions about how he might attain eternal life. True to form, Jesus answers the lawyer’s question with a question of his own. The dance continues because, of course, the lawyer knew the answer before he even asked the question (isn’t that one of the first things they teach you in trial law class?). So he replied: the rule, the way to attain eternal life is to follow the two most important commandments: love God and love your neighbor, of course.
Okay then. Next?
But, you know lawyers. This one follows up with another question. He wants to spar some more with Jesus, to test him and see if he’s really got the chops to make it in upwardly mobile Jerusalem society: “And who exactly is my neighbor?”
In answer, Jesus tells a story.
There was a man traveling from down from Jerusalem to Jericho. He fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away leaving him half dead.
Along the road came a priest, who was traveling the same way. When he saw the hurt man lying on the side of the road he crossed over to the other side and continued on his way. So likewise a Levite came to the same place, saw the man, and passed by on the other side.
Then came a Samaritan along the road. The Samaritan stopped and helped the wounded man; bandaged him and took him to safety; provided for him until he was fully healed.
And Jesus concludes the story with his own question, a different one: “Which of these three was being a neighbor to the man who was hurt?”
Well, this right here was a bit of a Perry Mason moment. The lawyer had just asked for a straight answer, you know a little bit of clarification about his previous question, perhaps a list. You know he had his pencil and legal pad ready, for a list that he could check off one by one and meet the legal requirements for heaven.
But Jesus’ story threw a wrench into the whole business. Let’s look again, because we always have to be careful with very familiar passages of scripture, careful that we don’t mistake familiarity for understanding. This is how I’ve always heard it:
There was a man traveling from down Jerusalem to Jericho. He fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. Got it. It happened all the time on what was a particularly treacherous stretch of road populated by dangerous bands of robbers.
Along comes a priest, who passes by, a Levite who passes by, and a Samaritan who stops.
Got it.
As I learned from my Sunday School felt board lessons on this story, the priest was way too powerful and important to stop. The felt board figure I remember turned his nose up to the man laying on the side of the road and hurried on because he didn’t want to be bothered. The Levite (who assisted the priest in the temple) did the same, because he was also busy and in a hurry, so he went on. Then a nice Samaritan came by and did what the other two should have done but they were too snobby and self-important to do. And so, you should always help people.
Right?
Well, that may be the way it was taught to you and me in Sunday School, but it wasn’t the way the lawyer and all the people listening heard it. They heard about the man robbed and beaten and they knew: that stretch of road is dangerous, yes. Happens all the time. Then the priest comes by, and a Levite comes by but neither of them stop.
The people listening would have thought—well, of course they wouldn’t stop. I mean, the man needed help, but those two were unable to help him. They weren’t necessarily shady, arrogant figures; they were bound by the laws of the temple to stay away from anything that could make them unclean; there was an involved process they would have had to undertake to make them eligible to serve in the temple again, and as they were probably headed to preside over sacrifices and serve the people there, they couldn’t risk breaking the law to stop and help. They probably passed by feeling sorry for the man, sad that they couldn’t help, and maybe even guilty for not stopping. But they had to follow the law.
Then came the Samaritan.
Just a little bit of Jewish history for background: by time Jesus and the lawyer were doing their little intellectual sparring, Jews and Samaritans had hated each other for over a thousand years. When King Solomon died the monarchy broke into two factions: the ten tribes of the North rebelled and founded a capital in the city of Samaria. The two southern tribes made their capital in Jerusalem. There was long-held ethnic hostility and political and religious rivalry between Jews and Samaritans. So when Jesus said “a Samaritan” the lawyer and the crowd knew immediately knew that, if the priest and the Levite were at the upper end of the Jewish power structure, the Samaritan barely made the cut at the bottom, if at all.
But as the story continues, it’s, shockingly, the Samaritan who stops and helps.
And at the end of the story, Jesus asks that pointed question back to the lawyer: which of these three was BEING a neighbor to the man in need?
Not: who was following the law?
But: who was being a neighbor?
The lawyer had asked “who is my neighbor?”—let me get exactly clear what I have to do. The lawyer legitimately wanted a clear answer to his question so he could get out there and make sure he was checking all the boxes he needed to check to insure eternal life.
And we want that, too. The way we’ve typically walked away from this story is with a list, just like the lawyer wanted, right?: the homeless guy on the street corner, the person with the flat tire, the checker at WalMart, the college student with nowhere to stay for Thanksgiving…a list, and a reminder to always help people who are in need, amen.
And this of course is a very nice way to interpret this parable, one that I am sure Jesus would have taught had he been the kind of teacher whose main objective was to leave us with a nice morality tale that makes us feel guilty when the guy at the stop light knocks on the car door window asking for money and we pretend like we don’t see him while willing the light to change.
But I’m just not sure that giving the lawyer—or us—a list of rules was what Jesus intended.
Remember, Jesus wouldn’t answer the question the lawyer had asked: who is my neighbor? Jesus’ story in answer challenged: who in this story is being a neighbor?
For the lawyer standing there that day having a scholarly conversation with a young, up and coming rabbi, the theoretical questions he posed were about religion and rules.
But Jesus told a story about powerful and holy people following the rules, and a societal outcast who probably broke some rules of cleanliness and social interaction to actually do the right thing. When Jesus told this story, he changed the paradigm, he rocked the foundations of that powerful lawyer in search of his next step up the social ladder and he does that to us, too: Do you think you’re powerful because you follow the rules? That’s not the point.
True power comes from a faith that animates our lives and transforms our hearts. True religion is about sacrificial love that knows outward trappings of power mean very little, and strives instead for inner transformation that results in radical actions of love that rock convention, that might even challenge the law, and that hold the potential to change the world.
Change the world.
I tried to imagine how this scene might play out in our big and powerful city. It would certainly have to happen at a DC cocktail party, don’t you think?
Maybe you’d notice Jesus, over near the bar, surrounded by people drawn into the charismatic manner in which he’s speaking. So you sidle up to the bar and order a drink, then kind of push your way through the crowd. You see a few friends and associates, pass out a couple business cards, until you get into his line of sight.
Wow, he really is compelling.
And then he starts talking to you! The conversation begins with the typical question, of course, “What do YOU do?” and it progresses from there. You can tell: this guy is really smart; he seems to have a unique take on the pressing political and social issues of our day.
Wanting to be sure you make a good impression—just in case you need him as a contact in the future—you toss out a question like: “Hey Jesus, what kind of legislation do you think we need to pass to address the racial and social injustices in society today?”
You’re listening intently; you stick your hand in your pocket and press the voice recorder on your iphone so you’re sure to remember what he says.
And Jesus pauses for a minute, swirls his drink, and replies: “On the night of February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida, a young high school student wearing a black hoodie to ward off the falling rain, walked down the street to a convenience store to buy some Skittles…”.