The Good Samaritan Draws Near: Compassion as Action (Week 38, May 14)
Reading
Luke 10:25–37
Silent Reflection
Remarks
But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.
Luke 10:33 (NIV)
The Good Samaritan is probably the most famous parable Jesus ever told, and volumes have been written about these six verses. Really I just want to ask one question that was pointed out to me by the very brilliant work of Kenneth Bailey: besides the obvious fact that the Samaritan helped and the others didn’t, what did this Samaritan do differently from the priest and the Levite? It’s there, in the Text. Take a look.
“A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.”
Do you see it? Where did their paths take them?
The priest, going down the road, saw him and immediately “passed by on the other side.” He was not even in the ballpark of the wounded man before crossing the road.
The Levite, however, made it “to the place and saw him” before passing by. He was at least in the general vicinity.
But the Samaritan—where did he go? He went not just “to the place,” but all the way to “where the man was.” Literally, the phrase says that he came upon him.
He got all the way up and encountered that person, lying there in all their suffering, barely breathing. He came all the way up to him (risking uncleanness!), to look him in his swollen eyes, to lean and put his ear to his bloody mouth listening for breath, to intimately share the space with his suffering. Jew, Gentile, dead, alive—it didn’t matter. This was a human being and he deserved care for that fact and that fact alone.
I wonder how many hurting, lonely, marginalized individuals we remain unable to have compassion for because we act like the priest and fly over them at 30,000 feet. I think about certain groups of people in our midst—those who tend to get identified mainly by certain political and social issues—who feel outcast and alone, cut off, in need of love and compassion from the church body, some of them beaten half to death by our own, and how in the face of that, still so many of us only get as close as the priest, seeing them as an issue rather than as a real human. This may give us ammo for social media or murmuring nods from our supporters, but it leaves us nowhere near a place where we can actually love and have compassion for anyone.
Some of us get as close as the Levite. We come “to the place,” researching and studying and watching YouTube videos. We read books from all sides of the argument, coming up with a pretty good opinion of what is right and wrong, as well as a pretty decent (though completely theoretical) idea as to what we can do to help anything. But we still aren’t in a position to love and have compassion in a truly redemptive way because we never see how any of that nuance and complexity takes on flesh in the real people around us.
It is only when we take the time and effort and risk to get all the way up to the breathing individual lives among us that we are able to truly see them, not as points on one side of a problem or another, but as real, raw, sometimes beaten and bloodied humans. It is only once we’re all the way there, with them where they are—upon them, so to speak—that we find ourselves in a place to imitate and experience the Christlike compassion that the Samaritan embodies.
“When he saw him, he had compassion on him.” That word is a fun one. Splagchnizomai. Quite literally, to yearn with your bowels. It’s an ache for the wellbeing of another. We read it a number of times in the Gospels. When we read it in the course of actual events, it is always Jesus doing it. And when we read it in the parables Jesus told, it is always the God figure doing it. And no matter if we’re talking about Jesus in the Galilee or the characters in his stories, whenever someone is moved with splagchnizomai, they always, always, always immediately act to save the person they’re feeling it for.
In the Gospels, it seems to be impossible to feel compassion and just walk away.
Splagchnizomai. I think it’s possible for us if we don’t do the priest or Levite thing—if we don’t care about whether we’re solving an issue or coming down on the right side of whatever opinion. It’s possible, when we get close enough to see individuals for who they really are: humans in need.
In the life of the resurrection, Jesus wants to break us out of our isolated cells. He wants to keep us on the same side of the road as the ones who are hurting. He wants us to take our fear and selfishness and transform them into compassion.
Silent Reflection
Response
Are there certain people who, when you see them, you cross to the other side of the road?
What makes it hard to get close to them?
What do you think you might see if you got up close to them?