Abstract
Those preaching this Sunday face two related challenges to do with the Parable of the Good Samaritan. First, it is perhaps the most well-known of Jesus’ parables and the subject of an enormous amount of scholarship, exegesis, and preaching. Second, in most of our hearings and imaginings, the parable nonetheless remains domesticated, comfortable, and probably self-serving. This requires interruption. A third challenge arises with the lectionary pairing of this parable with Amos 7:1–17 and Psalm 82. Together, these texts undermine conventional religious authority by highlighting its tendency toward unkindness and a narrowing—not broadening—perception of who counts as my neighbor. Indeed, ‘who is my neighbor?’, asks Luke’s lawyer (a scholar of the scriptures). Discernment around this question, whether in preaching or in the hearing of the word, will be lacking if it fails to interrupt and subvert that same domesticated comfort which arcs toward unkindness. The critique of morality is primary, because of which the critique of authority must follow. The biblical authors invoke their respective examples of authority, while the contemporary reader and hearer are invited into the discomfort of pondering their own.
Amos’ vision of judgment includes the divine decision never again to turn away from the people of Israel, never again to pass them by, even as God will lay to waste the high places and sanctuaries of Israel. God intervenes for the people and on their behalf, in juxtaposition to the formal religious institutions whose irresponsibility to the people is judged and found wanting. So too, prophet and priest are juxtaposed. Amaziah the priest testifies to his own corruption by framing Amos as a conspirator whose words are alleged to break down national unity (‘the land is not able to bear all his words’). Amos’ response embodies the humility of a prophet who does not recognize or glory in his own prophetic ministry (‘I am a herdsman’), yet also the familiar, direct, and vivid judgment of God which finds that the Israel of Amaziah’s reckoning—the idol—has no future but exile, at great cost to children, Amaziah’s wife, and the land itself, all subjected to the purity violations typical in a text of terror (Phyllis Trible).
In Psalm 82 God sits in judgment against the divine council which Ancient Near East peoples understood to be responsible for carrying out governance of the universe. God’s stinging rhetorical question to them—‘How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?’—is of one voice with Israel’s eighth-century prophets, Jesus, and indeed the prophet Muhammad, who demand justice for the weak, the orphan, the lowly, the destitute, the needy, on behalf of whom the Psalmist enjoins God: ‘Rise up, O God, judge the earth; for all the nations belong to you!’ The critique of religious authority in Psalm 82 falls not on a priestly class but on a counterfeit divine court unable or unwilling to be moved toward a preferential option for the oppressed. That fault, in Psalm 82, renders the divine retinue mortal and subject to death and, like an idol, destined for the dust. Whether in Amos or in Psalm 82, the critique of religious authorities center around the sort of ignorance which consolidates power rather than speaks the truth (Amaziah) and the sort of disinterest which fails to discern, care about, or act on behalf of those weakened souls living on the underside of history, where favor and partiality are shown not to them but to their abusers.
Congregations affected by abuse scandals or plagued by painful power disparities—ubiquitous experiences around which great dishonesty prevails—will find in these texts critical resources to name their experience through a patient, even courageous, hearing of the word of God. With Psalm 82, these congregations may find themselves empowered by telling the truth about victims and aggressors (82:2). They will hear in verse 83 the imperative of the divine word—‘Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute’—and may reconsider their regard for safety and flourishing of all children near and far. Congregations may begin to appreciate the power of sin and its manifestation in the day’s principalities and powers when the Psalm judges the divine council: ‘They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk around in darkness.…’ Learning how such ignorance, indifference, and lack of care for vulnerable persons earns divine judgment, congregations may even awaken to the possibility of empathizing with those lost in ‘darkness’ and at great cost.
The imagined lawyer in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan may be one such example. In response to Jesus’ approval of the lawyer’s reciting of the double love command—‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself” (Lk 10:27)—the lawyer (a scholar of the scriptures) next inquires, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ The lawyer, man in ditch, and Samaritan are unnamed, and the lawyer is unable to utter the word ‘Samaritan’, instead referring to him, at parable’s end, as ‘the one who showed him mercy’. A comforting, domesticated reading of this parable would have us perceive a clear moral code—generous hospitality—exemplified in the stranger who cares for a suffering soul, such that we style ourselves as Good Samaritans, or at least as people free of bias because we recognize the importance of caring for the suffering and of accepting the stranger.
Instead, imagine yourself as the lawyer in the narrative. His desire—now yours—to control and manipulate the encounter to his own preconceptions; the desire to dominate and be seen by others as right or better than; the reciting and packaging of scripture for others to marvel at as a spectacle; inattentive and unskilled listening, especially when it upsets order; blindness to the embodiment of wisdom and deafness to the word of God when spoken; inability to utter the ethnic category of the one who showed mercy because of a bias you are incapable or unwilling to check. Yes, to the Samaritan’s example Jesus says ‘go and do likewise’. The Samaritan is a model for generous, boundary-crossing care, hospitality, and interpersonal intimacy. But some version of the lawyer is a common reality within our churches, our workplaces, our educational institutions, our marriages, and all manner of encounters.
I am the unnamed lawyer in the story whose knowledge does not prevent him from walking around in the darkness announced in Psalm 82, possessed of an unrecognized bias toward people who orient around religion differently or affiliate with racial or ethnic groups distinct from my own, trying to escape vulnerability with moments of domination. I am the unnamed lawyer. Are you?