By Mother Rebecca

This weekend, we'll hear again the beloved parable of the Good Samaritan. Over the past week, we have heard many news stories about folks who dropped everything and headed to the Texas Hill Country to assist in searching for the lost and cleaning up after the floods. These Good Samaritans, as we call them, are not necessarily Christian. Nevertheless, they are putting their beliefs, their values, their gifts into action, just as Christians are called to do. Somehow, it feels right that we read this important parable again this weekend.

In Godly Play, the parable stories come in beautiful, gold boxes. Before opening a parable box to begin sharing a story, our teachers say:

Parables are presents. They were given to you before you were born. They are yours, even if you don't know what they are. … Sometimes parables seem closed to us, even if we are ready to enter them. You need to keep coming back to them, and one day they will open.[1]

Over time, our children learn that parables are, indeed, presents – not the kind we receive for birthdays or on Christmas. But gifts to which we can return over and over through the years, learning something new each time. There's also a sense in which parables are prophetic: they are often told to afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted. Jesus' listeners would have understood this truth. Amy Jill Levine, a Jewish New Testament scholar (yes, you read that correctly), says that Jesus' listeners understood in ways we sometimes do not that "parables were designed to provoke or to indict."[2] So, she cautions, if we hear a parable and find ourselves thinking "isn't that beautiful", we might need to return to that parable more frequently so that it opens more deeply to us.

In my own life, when I open the parable of the Good Samaritan, I usually identify with the Samaritan (though at times I've seen myself as the priest or Levite and felt convicted by my sinfulness). As Christians, we're inclined to hear the parable teaching us that Jesus expects us to be the sort of neighbors who show mercy and help those in need. Here at the Fig, through the leadership of our Outreach Committee, we pride ourselves on doing just that. So when we open this parable, we might feel encouraged to "keep up the good work" (or, on our not-so-good-days, to be better servants to those around us). This is a valid reading of the parable. It's the sort of reading that motivated countless people to jump in their trucks with their chainsaws and recovery dogs and head to the Hill Country this week. I have prayed many prayers of gratitude for and protection over these "good Samaritans" in recent days.

Fr. Michael Merriman, a retired priest in our congregation, has taught me another way people have opened this parable through the years. He notes that some in the ancient church referred to it as the "Parable of the Innkeeper." In this reading, we're invited to understand ourselves (the Church) as the innkeeper in the story. Jesus (the Samaritan) brings to us those who are beaten and bruised, who've been lost and left to die, and gives us everything we need to nurse them back to health. Opening the parable this way challenges us to welcome everyone who might come through our doors including those we might be inclined to turn away: homeless people, immigrants, and others who make us uncomfortable.

This week, I heard Amy Jill Levine offer still another opening of the story. She observes that Jesus' tale operates on the ancient rule of three – the idea that once we hear the first two pieces of a three-part list, we know what's coming next and our minds fill in the rest of the story ahead of the speaker. For example, if I were to say: "red, white, and …" most Americans would say "blue." Jews in Jesus' day were, according to Levine, divided into three groups: a few were priests, certain others were Levites, and everyone else – the vast majority of Jews – were known simply as Israelites. So when Jesus' parable begins with a priest who passes by, and continues with a Levite who does the same, his listeners are expecting that the third person in the parable will be an Israelite who – they anticipate – will stop and help and thus serve as the object lesson for the story.

But Jesus breaks the rule of three! It is not an Israelite who stops to care for our beaten traveler, but a Samaritan. (You can boo and hiss here; Jesus' audience very well might have.) Because Samaritans were not just a different denomination from Jews: they were the enemy. Just last week, we read the story of Jesus and his disciples traveling through a Samaritan town on their way to Jerusalem and being denied hospitality. Why? Because Samaritans and Jews were bitter enemies. No Samaritan wanted to host a Jew in their home, any more than a Jew would have wanted to spend the night there. Levine says that for Jesus to move from priest to Levite to Samaritan would have been like moving from "Father to Son to Satan. It was unthinkable!"

Levine goes on to describe that some ancient Christians called this story the "Parable of the Man who Fell Among the Robbers." When we think of the parable this way, we are invited to identify, not with the Samaritan or with the innkeeper, but with the person left for dead lying in a ditch. Once we're there, in the ditch, she suggested we imagine watching a priest, and then … I don't know, someone like Rabbi Paley down the street … walk by without helping. What would it be like for us to look up from the ditch to see a third person – someone we consider our mortal enemy, someone we most fear in the world – and watch as they stop, gently pull us out of the ditch, clean and bandage our wounds, then carry us to the nearest hospital. I don't know who that third person might be for you, but I know each of us could name someone (or some group) we'd least expect to help us and from whom we're least inclined to accept help.

When we unwrap the parable this way, Jesus shows us that mercy can come, not only from those we love and trust, but from the most unexpected people. If we're not the Samaritan, if we're not the innkeeper, but the person in the ditch left to die, then Jesus' parable asks us to recognize the image of God, from whom all mercy flows, in everyone we meet, every day of our life, regardless of what we think about them.

See you this weekend, when we'll learn about the prophet Amos.

Rebecca+

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[1] Godly Play stories were written by Jerome Berryman and are delightful. If you're interested in learning more, talk with Allison Blalock next time you see her!

[2] Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, "Who Is My Enemy? The One Who May Save Me" accessed online on July 9, 2025 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn_GpV5dbFc.