The Good Israeli Settler is based on Luke 10:30-36
Two Messages?
The parable of the Good Samaritan is frequently retold, mainly because only one of its two messages is popular today. Certainly, the UK pop culture understanding of the word ‘Samaritan’ is that it means ‘someone who helps people in need.’
It’s not a bad understanding to have – that The Good Samaritan tells us, ‘everyone in need is my neighbour.’ But it does skip over the Samaritan being from a hated group of people; that the Samaritan was the person your culture insists you’re supposed to hate.
The Priest, the Levite and the … hey, what?
From a religious point of view, Jewish society in the time of Jesus was divided into three hereditary classes. Priests, then Levites and then ordinary Jews. So, when Jesus told a story starting with a Priest, followed by a Levite, the audience expectation was that the next character to come along would be an ordinary Jew.
Instead, Jesus breaks the expected sequence. The next character in the parable is a Samaritan. A schismatic. One of ‘that lot’. “Those people … who hate us and whom we hate back (Wright).”
Samaritans
Samaritans are an ancient Jewish sect, still in existence today (rather like Christianity). In Jesus’ time, relations between Jews and Samaritans were, to put it mildly, not good. Both sides had attacked the other’s Temple – the Samaritan Temple was destroyed, the Jerusalem Temple defiled. Fights were common. As well as evidence from other sources, there are incidents in the New Testament where Samaritans and disciples nearly get into a fight, or where a Samaritan woman is shocked that Jesus even talks to her.
Ritual Impurity
We don’t know why the priest and Levite in the story didn’t stop and help the wounded man. Traditionally, one explanation given for the priest was that he might be worried about ritual impurity. This would make him unable to preside over services until he went through a period of purification.
It’s true that, even today, some orthodox Jewish hospitals will put up warning signs if there are any dead bodies in the area. Ritual impurity can still be a concern for Jews with priestly descent. But does Judaism see becoming ritually impure as a reason to not save a life? No. Does Judaism see becoming ritually impure as a reason to not bury a dead body? No.
If the priest put his ritual purity over saving a life, or as a reason to not give the corpse a decent burial, the crowd around Jesus would have known that what he was doing was wrong.
Fear
Another, more familiar reason might be that both the priest and the Levite were frightened of bandit attacks. The Jericho road was notorious, the body obvious – were bandits still around? Were they waiting for anyone who stopped to help?
As justifications go, this is more of an argument for the Levite (probably walking) than the priest (probably riding). The priest could have put the man on his riding animal and got out of there as soon as possible. The Levite could only have given first aid – but then he’d have needed to stay by a man who couldn’t walk. Needed to stay, in fact, until someone else came to help – or the bandits came back.
But again, the crowd would have known these weren’t really good reasons not to stop.
“Who is My Neighbour?”
Most human societies have historically placed restrictions on ‘neighbour’. The lawyer who asked Jesus that question was probably expecting a list, a selection of groups of people he was supposed to love as himself. He certainly wasn’t expecting ‘anyone in need’ and he definitely wasn’t expecting ‘a Samaritan might be a better neighbour than a priest.’
Bailey, commenting on this parable in ‘Through Peasant Eyes,’ noted that Jesus skillfully created a situation where we have no idea who the wounded man is. No clues are left for the audience or the characters to know whether the man is Jewish, Samaritan, Roman, Greek. He has no clothes, he’s unconscious. He’s been reduced to the most basic state: a human being who will die if he doesn’t get some help.
So who is my neighbour?
The Samaritan
The ‘neighbour’, of course, is the Samaritan – who deserves a medal. Why? Because he’s travelling on a road notorious for its bandit attacks and still stops to help. Then, after giving first aid, he goes to what was then a very Jewish city, with a badly wounded man – who might be Jewish.
He could have been attacked by bandits. He could have been attacked by an angry mob for being a Samaritan in a Jewish town. But despite all this, he still rescues the wounded man, cares for him, covers his debts.
Retelling
My normal practice to date has been to retell a parable in my urban, British setting. Essentially, I’ve been trying to imagine how Jesus would have told these parables if he’d been preaching in my area at the moment. For this one, I chose to keep the original setting as far as possible.
Given that I’ve been on the Jerusalem-Jericho road precisely once, why did I do that? Why not reset the parable on the A13 in London, or the A6 from Buxton?
Who are our Samaritans?
The reason is related to my urban British setting, and it comes down to a question of ‘Who are our Samaritans?’ Racism exists in the UK (as it does in most societies), but it’s also strongly disapproved of.
In Jesus’ time, the Samaritans were a bunch of ‘schismatic defilers who every decent Jew should despise’. The Samaritans were the people everyone ‘knew’ were not their neighbours (though they lived between Judea and Galilee). They were the people it was okay to hate – especially if you considered yourself a good, righteous person who loved God with all your heart.
So in the parable, Jesus was telling people that his definition of ‘neighbour’ included the group of people his audience (and his disciples!) most despised. That this ‘most despised’ group included people who’d go above and beyond to help another human who was in need. In the Gospels, outside the parables, this ’most despised’ group included people who were willing get Jesus a drink of water, have a chat. Not only was it not okay to hate them – you should love them as yourself.
Take the group of people you most despise and love them as you love yourself. That’s an almost impossible standard.
Jews and Samaritans – Christians and Jews?
The Samaritans were seen as a bunch of schismatic defilers who every decent Jew should despise. So, one of the questions Christianity as an institution has to ask is – are the Jews our Samaritans? After all, the relationship between Judaism and Christianity is also a relationship between two groups who share some of the same sacred scriptures. It’s also a relationship between two groups who disagree (sometimes violently) about certain things. In the case of the Jews and the Samaritans, it was the location of the Temple. In the case of the Christians and the Jews, it was whether Jesus was the Messiah.
Bunch of schismatic defilers who every decent Christian should despise? For nearly two thousand years, it was taken for granted that every good Christian should pray for the conversion of the Jews. That only stopped after the murder of millions of Jewish people – simply for being Jewish.
Israel
One of the questions I think it’s important for a Christian to ask is: ‘Is my attitude to Israel like the attitude of the disciples to the Samaritans?’ In Luke 9: 51-55 we see the disciples wanting to call down fire from heaven because a Samaritan village wouldn’t let them come in. Jesus rebukes them; while Luke didn’t record what he says, we can guess. The only time the disciples want a village destroyed by fire, and it ‘just happens’ to be a Samaritan village. A chapter later and we get a very pointed parable about ‘who is my neighbour?’
Do we ‘just happen’ to be particularly angry about actions taken by Israel, where the majority of citizens ’just happen’ to be Jewish? Do we want ‘fire from heaven’ when it’s Israel, but ‘wipe the dust off our feet’ when the same action is taken by some other country? And what would Jesus think? Would he rebuke us too?
I was looking for a group of people who it’s considered okay to despise. A group of people like the Samaritans of Jesus’ time, where it’s the good and decent people who think they should despise them.
Resetting
So instead of resetting the parable to the modern UK, I reset it to modern Israel. The Samaritan became an Israeli who lives over the Green Line, a settler serving in the Israeli Defence Forces. If the Good Samaritan says that you should love the people you most despise, an Israeli settler in the IDF often hits that modern ‘most despised’ jackpot. Who is my neighbour? Definitely not the Israeli settler living in the Palestinian Territories; they need to move. Somewhere.
“But he turned and rebuked them.” (Luke 9:55)
Previous Parable: The Shrewd Lettings Agent (Luke 16: 1-9)
Next Parable: The Friend at Midnight (Luke 11:5-8)
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