Good Samaritan Laws

I've stopped to offer assistance as a clergyperson. And done so with no expectation of reward, as our state's Good Samaritan law says. The last time was at the end of May. Does that make me a good Samaritan? (Dislike of this nickname on the face of it aside.)

It's so reflexive when we hear the familiar parable to place ourselves in the role of the man who, more than the priest or the Levite, helps someone in need because the person needs help. How does the man left for dead feel about all of this stuff?

It's striking to me -- preparing a sermon on that very parable -- that the laws are colloquially referred to as Good Samaritan laws. That's how woven into our sociocultural fabric is this parable. Parable, from para-, a Greek prefix meaning "alongside," and -balo, tossing a ball, from ballein, meaning "to toss." A parable is a throwing alongside. "Is it true?" thus becomes really difficult to determine.

"What is truth?" Pontius Pilate would challenge Jesus. It is possible that Pilate did not comprehend the question he asked of Emmanuel, God-with-us.

It seems that it is less important whether this parable is something that happened, although - as Dr. Mark Allan Powell would say: "Not everything in the Bible happened, but everything in the Bible is true."* What the throwing-alongside has been showing me of late is both my dislike for the common Scriptural heading, "The Good Samaritan," and Jesus' plea to the lawyer wanting to test him. Do this and live. What does and live mean? Does it not mean to live in the kin-dom, not Kingdom (with its worldly structures and patriarchal connotations), of God right here and right now?**

That might mean that heaven is a completion of the kin-dom of God, rather than a geographic destination. Which brings us back to the unfortunate section heading. These section headings, such as, "The Parable of the Good Samaritan," are something that compilers and editors placed long after the decision-makers chose and ordered the canon of the Bible (the Protestant Bible, with or without the Apocrypha; the Roman Catholic Bible; et cetera). And they long have shaped how we understand and interpret the texts that follow.

Samaritans still worship on Mount Gerazim. They are descended from Assyrians who invaded and conquered Israel, around 586 years before the birth of Jesus. When Jesus answers a question with a question (in the encounter that begins, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "Why do you call me good?"),*** as he does throughout his conversation with the lawyer that leads to the parable of the man left to die in a ditch, how often do we who craft sermons focus on the offense of the subheading? Maybe the man in the ditch wanted nothing to do with the Samaritan.

Tensions between Samaritans and between people who observe Judaism were high in the time of Jesus, and tensions remain. Not only, "Why do you call me good," perhaps, but also, "Why do you call me a good Samaritan?"

With gratitude to my local clergy colleagues the Revs. John Weinbach, Bernie Hess, and Chris Johnson, particularly Pastor Weinbach, for his insights about section headings.

*Dr. Mark Allan Powell, "How Lutherans Interpret the Bible," a DVD series of six episodes.
**I am unclear where I first heard the term. Most of what I have learned about its provenance is from colleagues who remember where they first heard it.
***Luke 18:18-19, also in the gospels of Mark and Matthew.