When my nephew was in high school - he’ll be 36 in August - he embarked on his own sociological study in downtown T.O, at the corner of Bay & Bloor. On day one, he was a homeless vagrant. He didn’t shower or shave for many days before the research began, soiled some old ill-fitting clothes, then stood at that busy intersection asking folks to borrow a quarter. Then he went home, showered and shaved, and went back to the same corner, at the same time of day, in his best suit and tie, also asking for a quarter to make a phone call. By the way, all proceeds collected went to charity.
The findings were no surprise → humans make judgments based on appearance, and more than that, it would seem that we are generous and kindly responsive baked on our assessment of the worth and validity of the needy cause or person. As the vagrant, he was told many times to ‘get a job’ as people hurried past without offering anything. But no one asked the poor young man if he needed a place to stay, or a job at their company, or a meal or cold drink. The ‘suited’ version of this young man had several offers for rides & meals, and expressions of compassion because he didn’t deserve his circumstances.
The story of the Good Samaritan is full of judgments, made by the priest, the Levite, the Samaritan, and the listener.
Let’s first back up a bit → Jesus tells this story in response to the question, “Who is my neighbour?”. When we study this passage, the focus is often Christ’s call to us to be kind and to give to those in need or peril. The phrase, ‘Good Samaritan’ has become synonymous with good deeds and kindness to strangers. Regardless of one’s faith, or lack thereof, or knowledge of the Bible, pretty well anyone can define what we mean when we refer to someone with this phrase. In some American States, legislation has been enacted that requires its citizens to come to the aid of anyone in distress or danger, if they may safely intervene. The legislation is called The Good Samaritan Act.
Jesus’ parable begins with a crime – a man is ambushed, robbed, beaten and left for dead. A priest comes along, sees the victim, makes a judgment, and keeps walking. A Levite comes along and does the same. Then those right there listening to Jesus that day, as well as the Gospel reader in 2023, might make a judgment: ‘Those selfish jerks, didn’t even stop to help, how cruel are they!’
The priest and the Levite are doing as they have been taught to do; they are merely following the rules of their religion and their Temple → do NOT touch a bleeding person, under any circumstances, or be cast out as ‘unclean’, without status in their community or place of worship until they can be made ritually clean again and acceptable to God.
This is a fictional story, a parable, so we don’t hear their story after they pass by the victim on the road. Perhaps in a real-life situation, a priest & a Levite would feel compassion and spend the remainder of their journey sobbing because their rules demand, ‘don’t touch! Don’t stop!’ They judge the situation as unclean, therefore unsafe for them. We judge them as cruel and unfeeling, when it is the system - the only system they know - that is callous and mean.
Certainly this parable is about personal commitment to Christ’s values and our responsibility to show love to our neighbour, even when that neighbour is a stranger. But on a grander scale, Jesus’ story holds up a mirror to the dominant institution of His day, which had gotten off-track. The Hebrew faith began to value acts of righteous judgment over deeds of loving justice.
Two thousand years later, it’s still a good mirror. We would do well to return here over and over again when weighing judgments that impact others: is this action true to my love for God, and God’s love for all?; will this express our love for our neighbours?; am I doing what is right by God’s values, or am I blithely following institutional or societal rules and norms?; am I mindlessly adhering to the status quo, the established dynamic, just choosing whatever is easiest so I can pass by on the other side, or do I have the jam to challenge the bully, to question the unethical, to address the accepted practices that have always made me morally queasy?
God asks us to show outwardly what we inwardly hold to be true = that God loves all of us, equally; consequently - and here’s the tough part - we must endeavour to regard all others as equally lovable.
One last judgment that is a lesson for us from this story. The crowd listening to Jesus that day could have gone into shock that it was the Samaritan who was kind to the stranger on the road. For a Hebrew, anyone from Samaria was dirt, lowest of the low, to be strictly avoided. It may have taken some considerable pondering before they realized what more Jesus was saying: that anyone, regardless of our low opinion of them, may be capable of goodness and selfless generosity.
It’s easy to judge and to make assumptions about the outside: apparent age, gender, size, colour, dress, language, observable tax bracket, status and ability. But if we could turn ourselves inside out, we’d see the really good stuff that really matters first: character, devotion, faith, integrity, creativity, compassion, grace, honesty, courage & hope. The good Samaritan exemplifies kindness to neighbours, with no thought of reimbursement. However, he also models love without conditions, given freely and fearlessly because he saw past the battered bleeding outside that scared the other two, to see and to value the lovable person inside.
For Canada Day weekend, I thought this was an important passage to read. We think we know this story but I encourage us to go back and have another look. Because this has been Canada for so many years – the people who get passed over and rejected by other nations have found a home here. We are a fascinating, if contentious mix – the indigenous nations already here watching wave after wave of immigrants land on all shores for 100’s of years. We may want to romanticize our history and say Canadian arms flew open to welcome everyone, but it wasn’t that easy - we did regard some as ‘unclean’ so to speak, and therefore unsafe and systematically avoided or shunned.
To be clear, I love our nation. I’ve traveled Canada from Tofino to St. John’s, and I’ve traveled to enough other countries to know how great we have it. I love it because we see ourselves as a work in progress; we’re a young country, and we’ve made grave mistakes growing up. Sometimes it takes us a while, but we are able to name our issues, shine a light on them and try out solutions together.
And I hope that we’ll live up to the prayer in the words of our anthem: God, keep our land glorious and free. We will truly live to the glory of God when our land is free from the judgments and ignorance that create prejudice and discrimination; free from the greed that causes gross disparities; free from the fear and self-obsession that inhibits the human impulse to reach out and to gather in; free to help and to serve one another without suspicion it’s a scam; free to do good for anyone, anywhere, without threat of litigation; free to take responsibility and to own the values that have and always will keep Canada strong - love & community, justice & respect, remembrance of our past and hope for our future.
Canadians are known to be polite, but that’s not enough; we need to be a good deal more than polite. I’d rather we be known as a nation of ‘good Samaritans’, people who don’t categorize just to judge the differences, but people who truly care and look out for one another because we are all simply people. May we read and reread this story and then follow Jesus’ advice: “Go and do likewise”. Amen.