July 13, 2025 • 31 mins
The parable of the Good Samaritan might be the most familiar story Jesus ever told—so familiar that we risk missing its truly radical message. Stepping into the pulpit, Guest Preacher Rev. Gary Keene offers a fresh perspective by reading this well-worn tale through a transliteration of the original Greek, creating just enough distance for us to hear it anew.
Through careful textual analysis, Gary reveals two profound subversions Jesus embeds in this simple story. The first is obvious: making a despised Samaritan the hero would have shocked Jesus' original audience, challenging their deeply held stereotypes about who could be "good." The second runs deeper: by stripping the victim naked and rendering him unconscious, Jesus removes all identity markers that would tell passersby who this person was—Jew, Gentile, friend, or enemy.
This nakedness completely transforms the lawyer's original question from "Who is my neighbor?" to "Who am I when confronted with human suffering?" The parable isn't about determining who deserves our compassion; it's about becoming people who show compassion without qualification. As Gary eloquently puts it, "This is the naked gospel—God's love stripped bare and offered to everyone."
Drawing connections to contemporary divisions—whether political, racial, or socioeconomic—Gary reminds us that we all create mental categories that determine who receives our care. Yet Jesus calls us to see past these artificial boundaries to the naked humanity beneath. We will all find ourselves "in the ditch" at some point, and what matters then isn't who we are, but whether someone will show us mercy.
What would happen if we treated everyone with the same unqualified care we show an infant at baptism, "for as long as we both shall live"? Neighbor, Jesus teaches us, is not a geographic concept but a moral one. When we embrace this truth, we don't just secure eternal life—we experience abundant life now, through relationships of genuine mercy and compassion.
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Rev. Gary Keene (00:00):
Good morning.
My name is Gary.
I'm privileged to be with youhere this Sunday.
I appreciate the opportunity tostep back into the pulpit.
I last served as senior pastorover in Camarillo but spent much
of my ministry career workingin the regional and national
level.
So it's always good to kind ofjust be back home and doing this
thing.
I was particularly engaged whenDarren invited me to see that
(00:23):
the assigned lesson for today isthe very familiar parable of
the Good Samaritan.
I thought, oh, that's going tobe easy, and you know it's such
a rich and dense story.
I realized part of the story isto unpack it and find out
what's really there and to tryand get past our familiarity
with it.
To try and get past ourfamiliarity with it.
(00:46):
So the way I want to offer toyou the scripture lesson and the
reading of the story thismorning is by we're going to
show it in the common Englishtranslation in the text I
believe you have we'll come upon just a moment but I'm going
to read it in a transliterationof the Greek, to take literally
each of the words from Greekinto English.
I didn't do this.
You can get it all online, butit's a fun way to create kind of
(01:08):
a gap in what we hear and whatwe see and what we think we know
, so that we might hear itafresh.
There are some tricks to it.
It sounds like the pirate fromthe Lego movie or Yoda in Star
Wars, reading from the KingJames version.
There's a stiltedness to thegrammar.
That's what kind of unsettlesit.
(01:31):
I would also flag thatthroughout.
One of the motifs that we'llpick up later talking about it
is everywhere it says a certainman you know went down to
Jericho and a certain Levite anda certain priest the Greek, for
that is really any.
So it's really anyone, anyperson going down to Jericho,
(01:53):
any Levite, any Pharisee.
It's an interesting thread thatcomes through the story.
The last one is that thekeyword neighbor is rendered
from the Greek, as in OldEnglish we would think of
someone who is nigh, someone whois near, and the bor part
neighbor.
(02:13):
Bor refers to dwelling place,so a neighbor is someone who
lives nearby.
So when we hear that, you'llkind of plug that in.
So I think you don't usuallystand for the gospel reading, am
I correct?
Right?
Okay, good, stay seated so thatwe can hear and try and see and
(02:35):
get this story.
It is the parable.
You know it functions on itsown.
You can take just the parableJesus tells and it works fine.
But the way it's been given tous through Scripture is it's a
story within a story.
So there's the setup of acertain lawyer comes to taunt
and tempt Jesus what shall I doto inherit eternal life?
(02:57):
And Jesus says since he's alawyer, that is a legal scholar
of the Torah.
He says how do you read the law?
And he gives the very cannedbut correct answer, the Shema,
what every faithful Jewish kidlearns in their bar mitzvah Love
(03:18):
the Lord, your God, with allyour heart, soul, strength and
mind, and thy neighbor asthyself.
And Jesus says Thou hastanswered correctly this do and
thou shalt live.
But he, the lawyer, willing tojustify himself, said unto Jesus
, and who is my neighbor?
(03:41):
And the Jesus said A certainhuman downstepped from Jerusalem
into Jericho and it ishappening, robbers he falls
among, who outstrip him andblows placing on him, came away,
leaving him half dead.
By coincidence, a certain priestdescended on the road and,
(04:02):
perceiving him beside, cameinstead on the other side.
Likewise, yet also a Levite,coming according to the place
and perceiving him insteadbeside, came on the other side.
Yet a certain Samaritan, beingon his way, came according to
(04:25):
him and, perceiving him, he iscompassioned and coming toward
him, he downbinds the wounds ofhim on pouring olive oil and
wine, mounting yet him, on thebeast of him, leads him to the
con, every place receiving andwas uncared of him.
(04:49):
And on the morrow outcoming, heis extracting two denarii he
gives to the conkeeper and saidto him be you caring for him and
which any ever you should betoward spending, I, in the
coming back, shall be giving toyou.
Any of these three is seemingto you to have become the near
(05:16):
one of the one falling into therobbers and the one yet said the
one doing mercy with him.
And the one yet said the onedoing mercy with him said then
to him the Jesus, be you goingand be you doing likewise.
Word of God for the people ofGod.
(05:37):
Thanks be to God, amen.
Well, we know this parable andthis teaching, perhaps a little
bit too well.
It leads to the possibility.
I mean it's in the commonvernacular.
People beyond theJudeo-Christian tradition know
this story of the Good Samaritan.
As William Sloane Coffin, thechaplain at Yale, said it it is
(06:02):
well-worn because it wears well.
That said, its familiarity canlead us to not taking it
seriously enough to reallyunderstand how radically it can
challenge us always, butparticularly today.
So what I want to offer todayis invite us into a very close
Bible study of this text and seeif we can find things we didn't
(06:26):
know before.
With that in mind, would youpray with me?
Gracious God, may the words ofmy mouth and the meditations of
these our hearts be acceptable.
O thou who art our rock andredeemer, amen.
First premise Good Samaritan.
(06:48):
Bad interpretations.
One of my early churches washelping to clean out the closet
at the church and we foundsomething that I found
fascinating.
This was an old church inPasadena and it was a collection
of black and white photosmounted on hardboard and it was
obviously a teaching tool forSunday school and youth groups,
(07:11):
that sort of thing of thisparable.
There was a woman in thecongregation who had been a
photographer for the newspaperand instead of a flannel graph,
somebody can tell the youngfolks what a flannel graph was
instead of a flannel graph orthe chalkboard.
They went high-tech and usedher talent and they staged the
scenes of this parable and shetook the photos and then you can
(07:36):
imagine her.
You know a teacher or youthleader like this, sitting with
young people and going throughthe images of the story, almost
like a graphic novel, beautifulblack and white photos.
Now, mind you, this was done inthe 50s and it was interesting
to me to see how they had triedto tell this very familiar story
(07:59):
.
So in this version of the story, where they had obviously
engaged I mean it was abrilliant idea they engaged the
youth, the young people, thekids, everybody was involved in
taking these photos and creatingthis story.
So they were living the story,if you will.
So in this story, the one goingdown to Jericho, he's the
newspaper delivery boy.
He's maybe eight years old,he's practically got a beanie
(08:20):
cap on is the way I remember itbut he's riding his bike down
the street with his newspapers.
Now, all of the photo cards arenot there, there's some gaps,
but we are instantly able to seewho's the bad guy, who's the
robber.
So the kid is riding down thestreet with his papers and here,
on the other side of someshrubbery, it's this guy with
(08:41):
black slicked-back hair and he'swearing a leather jacket with
the collar turned up and he'ssmoking a cigarette.
You know he's the bad guy.
It's perfectly obvious.
The next available panel showsthe kid crashed out on the
sidewalk, newspapers all overthe place and the slick haired
(09:02):
guy is walking away kind ofsmirking over his shoulder,
probably took his newspapermoney, something like that.
And then, sure enough, comes theGood Samaritan, and in this
instance it's this tall blondeguy with a square jaw.
It looks like Clark Kent.
I found out later it was thechoir director's son.
So he's the good guy and hepicks the boy up and he takes
(09:27):
him, puts him in his car a 38Hudson, I noticed, I just
happened to know that and driveshim to what apparently is Aunt
Bea's house.
She comes out, she takes thekid and there's the whole story.
It was a brilliant idea,beautiful presentation.
I thought it was fantastic,except for it's dead wrong.
(09:50):
You know why it's dead wrong,don't you?
Because the story that Jesustells is a choir director boy
driving the car sideswipes thekid on the bicycle and the
slick-haired guy rolls up on hisHarley, puts his cigarette out,
(10:10):
loads the kid onto hismotorcycle and takes him to the
emergency room.
That's the parable of the GoodSamaritan, not this one they put
together on the cards.
Because you see the point ofthe Good Samar.
It's not what to do, it's thewho.
That's the question the lawyerasks.
I know what to do.
Love the Lord, your God, withall your heart, soul, mind,
(10:32):
neighbor as yourself.
But who's my neighbor?
So, heads up, jesus is notgoing to take this question as
it is.
He's not even going to answerthe question.
He's going to raise questions.
He subverts the whole scenario,which that's the nature of his
(10:52):
ministry.
It's the nature of almost allof the parables to turn things
upside down, to turn ourexpectations upside down.
So he takes the lawyer'squestion, tells this story and
starts asking questions thatthen the lawyer and we as the
audience must answer.
So there are two subversions,two flippings, if you will, in
(11:17):
this parable.
The first one is right on thesurface.
It's about stereotypes and it'sthe one we most know and we
just talked about.
Jesus uses a very classic,typical three-phase setup.
Most know and we just talkedabout.
Jesus uses a very classic,typical three-phase setup.
You know this from children'sstories.
There's three pigs, there'sthree bears, there's three bowls
of porridge.
We tell it in jokes A priestand a rabbi and a pastor walk
(11:37):
into a bar.
The function of the three is toset up a pattern so that the
third one surprises you, tellsyou something.
So he does that.
The priest and Levite.
People absolutely know whothose are A priest, a Levite and
a Samaritan.
Now we do not live in the MiddleEast at that time to understand
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the gut punch how that landedfor those listening.
Samaria at that time, if youwant to go back into history,
was after the Kingdom of Israelhad divided.
There was a difference betweenthe two.
It was kind of like the CivilWar Confederacy, north and South
.
The real issue was thatparticularly the Samaritans in
(12:24):
that area of Samaria they had,whereas some of the Israelites
in the north had kept tothemselves, the Samaritans had
intermarried with non-Jews andGentiles and they worshipped on
a different mountain.
They were hardcore aboutfollowing the Torah.
They saw themselves as Jews,but the Israelites in the north
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did not see them as such anddidn't want to have anything to
do with them, considered themdangerous and practically
heathen.
So the notion that a Samaritanwould do the good thing was
quite shocking to them.
He tells this story andeverybody knows well, of course
you're going to help the guy inthe ditch, right?
Of course you would do that.
But a Samaritan Wait what?
(13:06):
What?
A good Samaritan is an oxymoron, so Jesus has flipped that
stereotype as a part of furthercracking open what they think
they already know.
So that's the first subversionfor his audience.
And what's our equivalent?
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I've preached this story overthe years many times and every
time I'm kind of looking forwhat's the story that would help
us hear it.
And it's in the news right now.
Right now it's in the Texasflooding.
Now.
A big part of my ministry was incamping ministry so I've been
paying close attention becausemany of those impacted were kids
at camps and I can't tell youthe grief that is flowing
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through the camping community.
All of my newsletters and feedsabout that are just, you know,
this is the worst thingimaginable.
You know you send your kids tocamp.
As counselors and deans, wetake our kids into camp and we
have them for our own for thatweek, and to have that happen is
(14:11):
just the most horrible thing inthe world.
So it has happened and thestories that are coming out
about the response and thequestions about that, blah, blah
, blah, blah, blah.
One of the stories that gottagged was a US Coast Guard
rescue swimmer saved 165 kids.
So I checked on that, becausethat's quite the story, isn't it
?
Of course you would expect a USCoast Guard person as well asa,
(14:33):
trained swimmer to be a part ofthat saving.
I would notice just to beaccurate in the details, he was
never in the water.
That's not his involvement.
He was basically theon-the-ground coordinator and
triage coordinator for thechoppers that were coming in and
lifting kids out.
So that's one of the stories ofthis tragedy and you kind of
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want to wave the flag.
Great, he saved 165 kids.
That's the person you wouldexpect to do the saving right.
The story not told that's racingthrough the camping network,
two camp counselors, two younggals college-age gals at another
camp not the Camp Mystic, butanother camp saved 20 of their
girls by doing exactly what campcounselors are trained to do.
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They identified that they tookseriously the problem that was
coming.
They gathered their kids aheadof time.
They took some coloring booksand games with them and their
song books.
They got them to high ground.
They managed to be just abovethe water.
They stayed calm, kept the kidscalm, kept them a little
distracted with the games.
They did all of this and savedthose 20 girls until they could
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be choppered out the part that'snot made it into the news.
Yet who were they?
Two young Latinas who cameacross the Mexican border to
work in that camp, which wasmultilingual.
This is common in the campingcommunity.
We send counselors back andforth across state lines and
conference lines, church lines,in order to kind of refresh and
(16:00):
get new ideas, give them theopportunity of like an
internship.
Nobody's telling the story oftwo young Mexican girls who
saved 20 children.
Why is that?
You just kind of have to askthe question, the same way
Jesus' audience was asking howis it that a Samaritan would do
the right thing?
Jesus isn't done.
(16:23):
The second subversion is deeperand very remote from us.
For a while I worked in Montana,wyoming and Colorado, and one
of the first things I was toldwhen I moved to Billings,
montana, was don't miss theSaturday farmer's market.
And you want to be there earlybecause that's when you can get
the Hutterites fresh bread.
(16:43):
And I said what?
So?
The Hutterites, you may know,are kind of like Mennonites.
They're kind of like the Amish,kind of like Mennonites.
They're kind of like the Amish.
They live in colonies.
It's a very old school kind ofcommunity.
They're excellent farmers,really excellent farmers, and
man can they make bread.
They make the best, freshestbread I've ever ever had, and
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that's what they.
They would come into thefarmer's market to sell their
bread and if you got on theinside and you were polite and
didn't help I mean it did helpto speak just a little bit of
German you might get invited tocome around to the back of the
truck and you could get theirsausage.
That was the good stuff.
So that's how I firstencountered the Hutterites and
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then one day, as a part of anecumenical thing, you know, a
couple of us were invited toactually go to one of the
colonies, which is usuallyclosed to outsiders, and see how
they're living, what they'redoing, etc.
And it was interesting.
It was not totally unexpected.
Where I grew up in Michigan,the Amish were nearby and you'd
see the horse-drawn wagons andwhatnot.
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The Hutterites are not quite soanti technology, but still very
limited.
The dining hall where theywould eat is separated.
The women eat on this side, themen eat on that side and they
wear a relatively distinctivedress hats, dark clothes and the
women wear a headscarf, usuallywith polka dots, and they might
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vary a little bit by color, butbasically it's a polka dot
scarf, and so it was all veryinteresting and I got a kick out
of the fact that, as they wereshowing us through the egg
sorting room right, it's a farmegg sorting room it was a very
small room and so we had to kindof get in and then close the
door and I saw behind the doorsome had to be a kid in chalk
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had written Deaf Leopard Rules,so somebody had a radio, anyway.
But this was not the onlyinstance of a little pushback.
In talking with the communityleaders and hearing about what
was going on, one of the thingsthat they shared was there had
just been a split in the colonyand a whole subgroup of the
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people, of the families of thecommunity, had been shunned out
and had to go establish a newcolony of their own.
The cause of the shunning wasthat some of the women mostly
younger but not all had decidedto tie their headscarves not
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under their chin properly, butbehind their ears, at the back
of the neck.
This was not proper, so theywere excluded from that
community.
The next time I went to thefarmer's market I was looking
for how did they tie theirscarves?
I want to know where they endedup.
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That's how the folks knew whowas who, who belonged to who.
Which belonged to which colony?
Right, how do you know wheresomeone is from, maybe what they
do?
Dude rolls up in a Harley witha ZZ top, beard spit and tobacco
juice you got ideas, right.
(20:02):
The gal rolls up in a RangeRover wearing Lulaman yammering
to her broker Same thing, yougot some clues, you got some
ideas.
Her broker same thing, you'vegot some clues, you've got some
ideas.
We see and we hear, and we dothis subconsciously and
consciously all the time, allthe time.
I am acutely aware that in thismoment, my mother is spinning
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in her grave because I ampreaching wearing jeans.
I tell you my car's in the shop.
I had to use the motorcycle andI'm not wearing my suit, pants
on the motorcycle on the 101,right?
So I needed to wear my jeans.
Sorry, mom, and God forbid.
Darren suggested ahead of time.
Hey, it's summer, it's casual,I'm wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
If I wore a Hawaiian shirt, mymother's head would explode,
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whether or not I was in thepulpit.
No, we have pigeonholes foreveryone and we have a science
for it, called demographics.
But what does Jesus say?
A certain man was going downfrom Jerusalem to Jericho and
fell into the hands of robberswho stripped him, beat him and
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took off, leaving him half dead.
In other words, this guy in theditch is naked, probably
comatose and unable to speak.
He's got no ID, nothing toindicate who he is or where he
is from or what he does.
Zip, zero, nada.
And for that Middle Easternaudience not unlike the
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Hooterites, a highly stratifiedand dependent upon visual cues,
including clothing and headgearand beards and hair shells, just
like us today that means wedon't know who he is.
Is he one of us?
Is he a good guy who deservesour help, whom we would be
obligated to help because he'sone of our tribe?
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Or could he be a Samaritan, aforeigner, a traitor, an enemy?
We don't know.
And because we don't know, anenemy, we don't know.
And because we don't know,cross over on the other side,
because there's literallynothing to see here.
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This is how Jesus totallysubverts the premise of the
lawyer's question.
The lawyer knows the law saysto love thy neighbor.
So he wants to get into thedetails, wants to know who is my
neighbor, who is my nigh one,the one near to me.
And can we just pause and notethere, hear the conditionality
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of that who is my neighbor?
That's how he circumscribes thecompassion he might expend.
That's how he circumscribes thecompassion he might expend.
But Jesus takes all of that awayby putting a naked man in the
spotlight.
A naked, wounded man, a purelyanonymous, any man, a human
being who is half dead anddesperately in need of a good
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neighbor.
With this man's nakedness,jesus flips the lawyer's
question from who is my neighborto who am I?
Am I a good neighbor on thisroad of life?
Not, who are they not?
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Do they qualify?
Do they wear the rightheadscarf, the right way, wear
the right clothes, live in myzip code, my county, my country?
Do they have the right skincolor?
Do they speak the rightlanguage?
Do they give to the rightcauses and vote for the right
candidates?
Do they believe in the same Godor maybe not at all?
All of those criteria,descriptions, stereotypes,
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qualifications, in this storyare erased.
This is just a guy in the ditchhurting.
Now, who are you?
What are you going to do?
This is the naked gospel.
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This is the naked gospel, god'slove, stripped bare and offered
to any and everyone, calling usalso to be stripped bare, to be
vulnerable with one another, tobe stripped down to the core of
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who we are.
The drag queen RuPaul said itthis way beautifully we are all
born naked.
All the rest is drag and overthere it's all the rest of the
stuff that we put on ourselvesand that we put on each other.
You can make your own listSamaritan, illegal, patriot,
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libtard, All the names, all thecostumes, all the bumper
stickers that distort how we seeone another and treat one
another.
But God sees us naked, nakedFrom day one, right?
God invites us to look withthose same divine neutral eyes.
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No, not neutral eyes, becausewhat does it say?
The Samaritan looked and wascompassioned.
He looked with eyes of empathy.
First, he didn't need to seewhether or not the guy was
wearing the right clothes.
You know, here in the UnitedMethodist Church we celebrate
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just two sacraments communionand baptism.
And although we celebrate adultbaptisms, it's more fun and
it's easier to understand whenwe baptize an infant Little,
naked, moist, squealing babies.
We join together to see thisinfant as a child of God and we
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dedicate in the ritual I'm sureyou've done it.
In that ritual we promiseourselves to care for that child
as a child of God.
And perhaps we should add wepromise to do that for as long
as we both shall live.
Wouldn't that be something ifwe treated one another, if we
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treated everyone with the samecare, affection and respect that
we feel for a child when it'sall innocent feel for a child
when it's all innocent doesn'thave anything on it for us to
get confused or distracted by.
What would it be like if we didthat for as long as they lived,
from when they are little,through those teen years and all
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the way to when they grow up?
How subversive would that beand how life-changing for all of
us.
Because on the road to Jerichoor Oxnard or Phoenix or
Washington or wherever you aregoing on this road of life,
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we're all going to be in theditch at some point.
It might not mean going to theER, but it might include a
diagnosis.
It might mean an unwelcomeprescription with nasty side
effects.
It might mean foreclosure, adivorce, an estrangement.
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It could mean downsizing,unemployment, therapy.
There are a lot of ways to bein the ditch and every Sunday
you all pray about that.
There are a lot of ways to be inthe ditch and every one of them
needs a good neighbor, which isthe genius of Jesus'.
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Answer to the lawyer thelawyer's question of who.
He wipes that out.
He says not only does it notmatter who's in the ditch, it
also doesn't matter who showsthe mercy.
It's their compassion thatidentifies and defines them, not
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anything else.
It's only the one who showsmercy when you think about it.
If that's true, if the one whocan be your good neighbor could
be anyone, it might be aSamaritan.
I'd be ready for that.
There's so much in this story, Itell you.
I've been chopping away at thisfor a week, trying to get it
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down to where it'll fit.
We can get out of here on time.
But let me just a few quickmore before we go, and I'll let
you go.
When the Samaritan takes thewounded man to the inn, the word
is kereven sarai, whichtranslation means every
receiving place.
In other words, they'll takeanybody.
It's like a truck stop motel,which it was.
It was a place for.
It was designed, built and runfor caravans, people with pack
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animals carrying trade goodsthrough the country.
That was the inn where he tookthe wounded man, and you can
hear it coming, can't you?
It's the inn that was so bookedup that Mary had to give birth
to the naked baby Jesus up inthe stable.
That alone is their clue tocross over and start talking
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about Jesus' incarnation, hisbabiness, his nakedness, his
fleshliness, his mortality as apart of us.
That's another sermon ontheology.
I'll leave that for Darren totake up another day.
A quick Methodist perspective onthis.
Very briefly, it's a verytimely meme going around that
says this Neighbor is a moralconcept, not a geographic one.
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Neighbor is a moral concept,not a geographical one.
That's the whole parable in anutshell.
For Jesus' audience.
Their neighborhood was theirworld.
It was small, it was defined bythe limits of their capacity to
travel.
Not so for us.
Today.
We know instantly what ishappening everywhere and we have
the knowledge and the tools tobe able to respond.
(30:16):
Happening everywhere, and wehave the knowledge and the tools
to be able to respond.
But do we have the moralconcept of unequivocal empathy,
of being a neighbor acrosscultural distances of race,
nationality, gender, all thatwhole long list?
What we do have for sure isJohn Wesley saying the world is
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my parish, no boundaries.
Very big neighborhood, a bigworld that requires a big, naked
heart ready to be compassionate.
The apotheosis of all this whatdoes Jesus say way back at the
beginning, right when the lawyerfirst gives the right answer to
the love God neighbor himself.
He says do this and you shalllive.
(31:00):
But he doesn't say.
He doesn't say you're going tolive forever.
He doesn't say eternal life,the way the lawyer and the tech
billionaires want.
He says do this and you willlive now, today, with your
neighbors, in real life, thelife that Jesus came into.
So what does he say?
So that you might have life andhave it abundantly.
(31:22):
That's the promise.
And it all hangs on thelawyer's final.
Don't you think it was a lightbulb moment after Jesus has told
this parable, messed witheverything, turned it all upside
down.
Finally, the lawyer recognizesthis.
Oh, the near one is the one whoshowed mercy.
(31:43):
So be ye going and be ye doingthe mercy to the naked ones.
Amen, amen.
Good morning.
My name is Gary.
I'm privileged to be with youhere this Sunday.
I appreciate the opportunity tostep back into the pulpit.
I last served as senior pastorover in Camarillo but spent much
of my ministry career workingin the regional and national
level.
So it's always good to kind ofjust be back home and doing this
thing.
I was particularly engaged whenDarren invited me to see that
(00:23):
the assigned lesson for today isthe very familiar parable of
the Good Samaritan.
I thought, oh, that's going tobe easy, and you know it's such
a rich and dense story.
I realized part of the story isto unpack it and find out
what's really there and to tryand get past our familiarity
with it.
To try and get past ourfamiliarity with it.
(00:46):
So the way I want to offer toyou the scripture lesson and the
reading of the story thismorning is by we're going to
show it in the common Englishtranslation in the text I
believe you have we'll come upon just a moment but I'm going
to read it in a transliterationof the Greek, to take literally
each of the words from Greekinto English.
I didn't do this.
You can get it all online, butit's a fun way to create kind of
(01:08):
a gap in what we hear and whatwe see and what we think we know
, so that we might hear itafresh.
There are some tricks to it.
It sounds like the pirate fromthe Lego movie or Yoda in Star
Wars, reading from the KingJames version.
There's a stiltedness to thegrammar.
That's what kind of unsettlesit.
(01:31):
I would also flag thatthroughout.
One of the motifs that we'llpick up later talking about it
is everywhere it says a certainman you know went down to
Jericho and a certain Levite anda certain priest the Greek, for
that is really any.
So it's really anyone, anyperson going down to Jericho,
(01:53):
any Levite, any Pharisee.
It's an interesting thread thatcomes through the story.
The last one is that thekeyword neighbor is rendered
from the Greek, as in OldEnglish we would think of
someone who is nigh, someone whois near, and the bor part
neighbor.
(02:13):
Bor refers to dwelling place,so a neighbor is someone who
lives nearby.
So when we hear that, you'llkind of plug that in.
So I think you don't usuallystand for the gospel reading, am
I correct?
Right?
Okay, good, stay seated so thatwe can hear and try and see and
(02:35):
get this story.
It is the parable.
You know it functions on itsown.
You can take just the parableJesus tells and it works fine.
But the way it's been given tous through Scripture is it's a
story within a story.
So there's the setup of acertain lawyer comes to taunt
and tempt Jesus what shall I doto inherit eternal life?
(02:57):
And Jesus says since he's alawyer, that is a legal scholar
of the Torah.
He says how do you read the law?
And he gives the very cannedbut correct answer, the Shema,
what every faithful Jewish kidlearns in their bar mitzvah Love
(03:18):
the Lord, your God, with allyour heart, soul, strength and
mind, and thy neighbor asthyself.
And Jesus says Thou hastanswered correctly this do and
thou shalt live.
But he, the lawyer, willing tojustify himself, said unto Jesus
, and who is my neighbor?
(03:41):
And the Jesus said A certainhuman downstepped from Jerusalem
into Jericho and it ishappening, robbers he falls
among, who outstrip him andblows placing on him, came away,
leaving him half dead.
By coincidence, a certain priestdescended on the road and,
(04:02):
perceiving him beside, cameinstead on the other side.
Likewise, yet also a Levite,coming according to the place
and perceiving him insteadbeside, came on the other side.
Yet a certain Samaritan, beingon his way, came according to
(04:25):
him and, perceiving him, he iscompassioned and coming toward
him, he downbinds the wounds ofhim on pouring olive oil and
wine, mounting yet him, on thebeast of him, leads him to the
con, every place receiving andwas uncared of him.
(04:49):
And on the morrow outcoming, heis extracting two denarii he
gives to the conkeeper and saidto him be you caring for him and
which any ever you should betoward spending, I, in the
coming back, shall be giving toyou.
Any of these three is seemingto you to have become the near
(05:16):
one of the one falling into therobbers and the one yet said the
one doing mercy with him.
And the one yet said the onedoing mercy with him said then
to him the Jesus, be you goingand be you doing likewise.
Word of God for the people ofGod.
(05:37):
Thanks be to God, amen.
Well, we know this parable andthis teaching, perhaps a little
bit too well.
It leads to the possibility.
I mean it's in the commonvernacular.
People beyond theJudeo-Christian tradition know
this story of the Good Samaritan.
As William Sloane Coffin, thechaplain at Yale, said it it is
(06:02):
well-worn because it wears well.
That said, its familiarity canlead us to not taking it
seriously enough to reallyunderstand how radically it can
challenge us always, butparticularly today.
So what I want to offer todayis invite us into a very close
Bible study of this text and seeif we can find things we didn't
(06:26):
know before.
With that in mind, would youpray with me?
Gracious God, may the words ofmy mouth and the meditations of
these our hearts be acceptable.
O thou who art our rock andredeemer, amen.
First premise Good Samaritan.
(06:48):
Bad interpretations.
One of my early churches washelping to clean out the closet
at the church and we foundsomething that I found
fascinating.
This was an old church inPasadena and it was a collection
of black and white photosmounted on hardboard and it was
obviously a teaching tool forSunday school and youth groups,
(07:11):
that sort of thing of thisparable.
There was a woman in thecongregation who had been a
photographer for the newspaperand instead of a flannel graph,
somebody can tell the youngfolks what a flannel graph was
instead of a flannel graph orthe chalkboard.
They went high-tech and usedher talent and they staged the
scenes of this parable and shetook the photos and then you can
(07:36):
imagine her.
You know a teacher or youthleader like this, sitting with
young people and going throughthe images of the story, almost
like a graphic novel, beautifulblack and white photos.
Now, mind you, this was done inthe 50s and it was interesting
to me to see how they had triedto tell this very familiar story
(07:59):
.
So in this version of the story, where they had obviously
engaged I mean it was abrilliant idea they engaged the
youth, the young people, thekids, everybody was involved in
taking these photos and creatingthis story.
So they were living the story,if you will.
So in this story, the one goingdown to Jericho, he's the
newspaper delivery boy.
He's maybe eight years old,he's practically got a beanie
(08:20):
cap on is the way I remember itbut he's riding his bike down
the street with his newspapers.
Now, all of the photo cards arenot there, there's some gaps,
but we are instantly able to seewho's the bad guy, who's the
robber.
So the kid is riding down thestreet with his papers and here,
on the other side of someshrubbery, it's this guy with
(08:41):
black slicked-back hair and he'swearing a leather jacket with
the collar turned up and he'ssmoking a cigarette.
You know he's the bad guy.
It's perfectly obvious.
The next available panel showsthe kid crashed out on the
sidewalk, newspapers all overthe place and the slick haired
(09:02):
guy is walking away kind ofsmirking over his shoulder,
probably took his newspapermoney, something like that.
And then, sure enough, comes theGood Samaritan, and in this
instance it's this tall blondeguy with a square jaw.
It looks like Clark Kent.
I found out later it was thechoir director's son.
So he's the good guy and hepicks the boy up and he takes
(09:27):
him, puts him in his car a 38Hudson, I noticed, I just
happened to know that and driveshim to what apparently is Aunt
Bea's house.
She comes out, she takes thekid and there's the whole story.
It was a brilliant idea,beautiful presentation.
I thought it was fantastic,except for it's dead wrong.
(09:50):
You know why it's dead wrong,don't you?
Because the story that Jesustells is a choir director boy
driving the car sideswipes thekid on the bicycle and the
slick-haired guy rolls up on hisHarley, puts his cigarette out,
(10:10):
loads the kid onto hismotorcycle and takes him to the
emergency room.
That's the parable of the GoodSamaritan, not this one they put
together on the cards.
Because you see the point ofthe Good Samar.
It's not what to do, it's thewho.
That's the question the lawyerasks.
I know what to do.
Love the Lord, your God, withall your heart, soul, mind,
(10:32):
neighbor as yourself.
But who's my neighbor?
So, heads up, jesus is notgoing to take this question as
it is.
He's not even going to answerthe question.
He's going to raise questions.
He subverts the whole scenario,which that's the nature of his
(10:52):
ministry.
It's the nature of almost allof the parables to turn things
upside down, to turn ourexpectations upside down.
So he takes the lawyer'squestion, tells this story and
starts asking questions thatthen the lawyer and we as the
audience must answer.
So there are two subversions,two flippings, if you will, in
(11:17):
this parable.
The first one is right on thesurface.
It's about stereotypes and it'sthe one we most know and we
just talked about.
Jesus uses a very classic,typical three-phase setup.
Most know and we just talkedabout.
Jesus uses a very classic,typical three-phase setup.
You know this from children'sstories.
There's three pigs, there'sthree bears, there's three bowls
of porridge.
We tell it in jokes A priestand a rabbi and a pastor walk
(11:37):
into a bar.
The function of the three is toset up a pattern so that the
third one surprises you, tellsyou something.
So he does that.
The priest and Levite.
People absolutely know whothose are A priest, a Levite and
a Samaritan.
Now we do not live in the MiddleEast at that time to understand
(12:02):
the gut punch how that landedfor those listening.
Samaria at that time, if youwant to go back into history,
was after the Kingdom of Israelhad divided.
There was a difference betweenthe two.
It was kind of like the CivilWar Confederacy, north and South
.
The real issue was thatparticularly the Samaritans in
(12:24):
that area of Samaria they had,whereas some of the Israelites
in the north had kept tothemselves, the Samaritans had
intermarried with non-Jews andGentiles and they worshipped on
a different mountain.
They were hardcore aboutfollowing the Torah.
They saw themselves as Jews,but the Israelites in the north
(12:46):
did not see them as such anddidn't want to have anything to
do with them, considered themdangerous and practically
heathen.
So the notion that a Samaritanwould do the good thing was
quite shocking to them.
He tells this story andeverybody knows well, of course
you're going to help the guy inthe ditch, right?
Of course you would do that.
But a Samaritan Wait what?
(13:06):
What?
A good Samaritan is an oxymoron, so Jesus has flipped that
stereotype as a part of furthercracking open what they think
they already know.
So that's the first subversionfor his audience.
And what's our equivalent?
(13:26):
I've preached this story overthe years many times and every
time I'm kind of looking forwhat's the story that would help
us hear it.
And it's in the news right now.
Right now it's in the Texasflooding.
Now.
A big part of my ministry was incamping ministry so I've been
paying close attention becausemany of those impacted were kids
at camps and I can't tell youthe grief that is flowing
(13:50):
through the camping community.
All of my newsletters and feedsabout that are just, you know,
this is the worst thingimaginable.
You know you send your kids tocamp.
As counselors and deans, wetake our kids into camp and we
have them for our own for thatweek, and to have that happen is
(14:11):
just the most horrible thing inthe world.
So it has happened and thestories that are coming out
about the response and thequestions about that, blah, blah
, blah, blah, blah.
One of the stories that gottagged was a US Coast Guard
rescue swimmer saved 165 kids.
So I checked on that, becausethat's quite the story, isn't it
?
Of course you would expect a USCoast Guard person as well asa,
(14:33):
trained swimmer to be a part ofthat saving.
I would notice just to beaccurate in the details, he was
never in the water.
That's not his involvement.
He was basically theon-the-ground coordinator and
triage coordinator for thechoppers that were coming in and
lifting kids out.
So that's one of the stories ofthis tragedy and you kind of
(14:55):
want to wave the flag.
Great, he saved 165 kids.
That's the person you wouldexpect to do the saving right.
The story not told that's racingthrough the camping network,
two camp counselors, two younggals college-age gals at another
camp not the Camp Mystic, butanother camp saved 20 of their
girls by doing exactly what campcounselors are trained to do.
(15:17):
They identified that they tookseriously the problem that was
coming.
They gathered their kids aheadof time.
They took some coloring booksand games with them and their
song books.
They got them to high ground.
They managed to be just abovethe water.
They stayed calm, kept the kidscalm, kept them a little
distracted with the games.
They did all of this and savedthose 20 girls until they could
(15:39):
be choppered out the part that'snot made it into the news.
Yet who were they?
Two young Latinas who cameacross the Mexican border to
work in that camp, which wasmultilingual.
This is common in the campingcommunity.
We send counselors back andforth across state lines and
conference lines, church lines,in order to kind of refresh and
(16:00):
get new ideas, give them theopportunity of like an
internship.
Nobody's telling the story oftwo young Mexican girls who
saved 20 children.
Why is that?
You just kind of have to askthe question, the same way
Jesus' audience was asking howis it that a Samaritan would do
the right thing?
Jesus isn't done.
(16:23):
The second subversion is deeperand very remote from us.
For a while I worked in Montana,wyoming and Colorado, and one
of the first things I was toldwhen I moved to Billings,
montana, was don't miss theSaturday farmer's market.
And you want to be there earlybecause that's when you can get
the Hutterites fresh bread.
(16:43):
And I said what?
So?
The Hutterites, you may know,are kind of like Mennonites.
They're kind of like the Amish,kind of like Mennonites.
They're kind of like the Amish.
They live in colonies.
It's a very old school kind ofcommunity.
They're excellent farmers,really excellent farmers, and
man can they make bread.
They make the best, freshestbread I've ever ever had, and
(17:05):
that's what they.
They would come into thefarmer's market to sell their
bread and if you got on theinside and you were polite and
didn't help I mean it did helpto speak just a little bit of
German you might get invited tocome around to the back of the
truck and you could get theirsausage.
That was the good stuff.
So that's how I firstencountered the Hutterites and
(17:25):
then one day, as a part of anecumenical thing, you know, a
couple of us were invited toactually go to one of the
colonies, which is usuallyclosed to outsiders, and see how
they're living, what they'redoing, etc.
And it was interesting.
It was not totally unexpected.
Where I grew up in Michigan,the Amish were nearby and you'd
see the horse-drawn wagons andwhatnot.
(17:46):
The Hutterites are not quite soanti technology, but still very
limited.
The dining hall where theywould eat is separated.
The women eat on this side, themen eat on that side and they
wear a relatively distinctivedress hats, dark clothes and the
women wear a headscarf, usuallywith polka dots, and they might
(18:07):
vary a little bit by color, butbasically it's a polka dot
scarf, and so it was all veryinteresting and I got a kick out
of the fact that, as they wereshowing us through the egg
sorting room right, it's a farmegg sorting room it was a very
small room and so we had to kindof get in and then close the
door and I saw behind the doorsome had to be a kid in chalk
(18:32):
had written Deaf Leopard Rules,so somebody had a radio, anyway.
But this was not the onlyinstance of a little pushback.
In talking with the communityleaders and hearing about what
was going on, one of the thingsthat they shared was there had
just been a split in the colonyand a whole subgroup of the
(18:56):
people, of the families of thecommunity, had been shunned out
and had to go establish a newcolony of their own.
The cause of the shunning wasthat some of the women mostly
younger but not all had decidedto tie their headscarves not
(19:19):
under their chin properly, butbehind their ears, at the back
of the neck.
This was not proper, so theywere excluded from that
community.
The next time I went to thefarmer's market I was looking
for how did they tie theirscarves?
I want to know where they endedup.
(19:41):
That's how the folks knew whowas who, who belonged to who.
Which belonged to which colony?
Right, how do you know wheresomeone is from, maybe what they
do?
Dude rolls up in a Harley witha ZZ top, beard spit and tobacco
juice you got ideas, right.
(20:02):
The gal rolls up in a RangeRover wearing Lulaman yammering
to her broker Same thing, yougot some clues, you got some
ideas.
Her broker same thing, you'vegot some clues, you've got some
ideas.
We see and we hear, and we dothis subconsciously and
consciously all the time, allthe time.
I am acutely aware that in thismoment, my mother is spinning
(20:28):
in her grave because I ampreaching wearing jeans.
I tell you my car's in the shop.
I had to use the motorcycle andI'm not wearing my suit, pants
on the motorcycle on the 101,right?
So I needed to wear my jeans.
Sorry, mom, and God forbid.
Darren suggested ahead of time.
Hey, it's summer, it's casual,I'm wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
If I wore a Hawaiian shirt, mymother's head would explode,
(20:53):
whether or not I was in thepulpit.
No, we have pigeonholes foreveryone and we have a science
for it, called demographics.
But what does Jesus say?
A certain man was going downfrom Jerusalem to Jericho and
fell into the hands of robberswho stripped him, beat him and
(21:19):
took off, leaving him half dead.
In other words, this guy in theditch is naked, probably
comatose and unable to speak.
He's got no ID, nothing toindicate who he is or where he
is from or what he does.
Zip, zero, nada.
And for that Middle Easternaudience not unlike the
(21:40):
Hooterites, a highly stratifiedand dependent upon visual cues,
including clothing and headgearand beards and hair shells, just
like us today that means wedon't know who he is.
Is he one of us?
Is he a good guy who deservesour help, whom we would be
obligated to help because he'sone of our tribe?
(22:01):
Or could he be a Samaritan, aforeigner, a traitor, an enemy?
We don't know.
And because we don't know, anenemy, we don't know.
And because we don't know,cross over on the other side,
because there's literallynothing to see here.
(22:22):
This is how Jesus totallysubverts the premise of the
lawyer's question.
The lawyer knows the law saysto love thy neighbor.
So he wants to get into thedetails, wants to know who is my
neighbor, who is my nigh one,the one near to me.
And can we just pause and notethere, hear the conditionality
(22:43):
of that who is my neighbor?
That's how he circumscribes thecompassion he might expend.
That's how he circumscribes thecompassion he might expend.
But Jesus takes all of that awayby putting a naked man in the
spotlight.
A naked, wounded man, a purelyanonymous, any man, a human
being who is half dead anddesperately in need of a good
(23:07):
neighbor.
With this man's nakedness,jesus flips the lawyer's
question from who is my neighborto who am I?
Am I a good neighbor on thisroad of life?
Not, who are they not?
(23:29):
Do they qualify?
Do they wear the rightheadscarf, the right way, wear
the right clothes, live in myzip code, my county, my country?
Do they have the right skincolor?
Do they speak the rightlanguage?
Do they give to the rightcauses and vote for the right
candidates?
Do they believe in the same Godor maybe not at all?
All of those criteria,descriptions, stereotypes,
(23:51):
qualifications, in this storyare erased.
This is just a guy in the ditchhurting.
Now, who are you?
What are you going to do?
This is the naked gospel.
(24:12):
This is the naked gospel, god'slove, stripped bare and offered
to any and everyone, calling usalso to be stripped bare, to be
vulnerable with one another, tobe stripped down to the core of
(24:32):
who we are.
The drag queen RuPaul said itthis way beautifully we are all
born naked.
All the rest is drag and overthere it's all the rest of the
stuff that we put on ourselvesand that we put on each other.
You can make your own listSamaritan, illegal, patriot,
(24:58):
libtard, All the names, all thecostumes, all the bumper
stickers that distort how we seeone another and treat one
another.
But God sees us naked, nakedFrom day one, right?
God invites us to look withthose same divine neutral eyes.
(25:19):
No, not neutral eyes, becausewhat does it say?
The Samaritan looked and wascompassioned.
He looked with eyes of empathy.
First, he didn't need to seewhether or not the guy was
wearing the right clothes.
You know, here in the UnitedMethodist Church we celebrate
(25:41):
just two sacraments communionand baptism.
And although we celebrate adultbaptisms, it's more fun and
it's easier to understand whenwe baptize an infant Little,
naked, moist, squealing babies.
We join together to see thisinfant as a child of God and we
(26:05):
dedicate in the ritual I'm sureyou've done it.
In that ritual we promiseourselves to care for that child
as a child of God.
And perhaps we should add wepromise to do that for as long
as we both shall live.
Wouldn't that be something ifwe treated one another, if we
(26:27):
treated everyone with the samecare, affection and respect that
we feel for a child when it'sall innocent feel for a child
when it's all innocent doesn'thave anything on it for us to
get confused or distracted by.
What would it be like if we didthat for as long as they lived,
from when they are little,through those teen years and all
(26:52):
the way to when they grow up?
How subversive would that beand how life-changing for all of
us.
Because on the road to Jerichoor Oxnard or Phoenix or
Washington or wherever you aregoing on this road of life,
(27:15):
we're all going to be in theditch at some point.
It might not mean going to theER, but it might include a
diagnosis.
It might mean an unwelcomeprescription with nasty side
effects.
It might mean foreclosure, adivorce, an estrangement.
(27:35):
It could mean downsizing,unemployment, therapy.
There are a lot of ways to bein the ditch and every Sunday
you all pray about that.
There are a lot of ways to be inthe ditch and every one of them
needs a good neighbor, which isthe genius of Jesus'.
(28:00):
Answer to the lawyer thelawyer's question of who.
He wipes that out.
He says not only does it notmatter who's in the ditch, it
also doesn't matter who showsthe mercy.
It's their compassion thatidentifies and defines them, not
(28:22):
anything else.
It's only the one who showsmercy when you think about it.
If that's true, if the one whocan be your good neighbor could
be anyone, it might be aSamaritan.
I'd be ready for that.
There's so much in this story, Itell you.
I've been chopping away at thisfor a week, trying to get it
(28:43):
down to where it'll fit.
We can get out of here on time.
But let me just a few quickmore before we go, and I'll let
you go.
When the Samaritan takes thewounded man to the inn, the word
is kereven sarai, whichtranslation means every
receiving place.
In other words, they'll takeanybody.
It's like a truck stop motel,which it was.
It was a place for.
It was designed, built and runfor caravans, people with pack
(29:06):
animals carrying trade goodsthrough the country.
That was the inn where he tookthe wounded man, and you can
hear it coming, can't you?
It's the inn that was so bookedup that Mary had to give birth
to the naked baby Jesus up inthe stable.
That alone is their clue tocross over and start talking
(29:27):
about Jesus' incarnation, hisbabiness, his nakedness, his
fleshliness, his mortality as apart of us.
That's another sermon ontheology.
I'll leave that for Darren totake up another day.
A quick Methodist perspective onthis.
Very briefly, it's a verytimely meme going around that
says this Neighbor is a moralconcept, not a geographic one.
(29:54):
Neighbor is a moral concept,not a geographical one.
That's the whole parable in anutshell.
For Jesus' audience.
Their neighborhood was theirworld.
It was small, it was defined bythe limits of their capacity to
travel.
Not so for us.
Today.
We know instantly what ishappening everywhere and we have
the knowledge and the tools tobe able to respond.
(30:16):
Happening everywhere, and wehave the knowledge and the tools
to be able to respond.
But do we have the moralconcept of unequivocal empathy,
of being a neighbor acrosscultural distances of race,
nationality, gender, all thatwhole long list?
What we do have for sure isJohn Wesley saying the world is
(30:36):
my parish, no boundaries.
Very big neighborhood, a bigworld that requires a big, naked
heart ready to be compassionate.
The apotheosis of all this whatdoes Jesus say way back at the
beginning, right when the lawyerfirst gives the right answer to
the love God neighbor himself.
He says do this and you shalllive.
(31:00):
But he doesn't say.
He doesn't say you're going tolive forever.
He doesn't say eternal life,the way the lawyer and the tech
billionaires want.
He says do this and you willlive now, today, with your
neighbors, in real life, thelife that Jesus came into.
So what does he say?
So that you might have life andhave it abundantly.
(31:22):
That's the promise.
And it all hangs on thelawyer's final.
Don't you think it was a lightbulb moment after Jesus has told
this parable, messed witheverything, turned it all upside
down.
Finally, the lawyer recognizesthis.
Oh, the near one is the one whoshowed mercy.
(31:43):
So be ye going and be ye doingthe mercy to the naked ones.
Amen, amen.
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