Fifth Sunday after Pentecost; 10 July 2022; Proper 10C (RCL); Amos 7:7-17; Psalm 82; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37.
In Track 1 in the RCL, we read through the major events in Old Testament history, and in Year C, Ordinary Time, we’re reading through the end of the two kingdoms. Amos is the first prophet of whom we have any record of his sayings. He is beginning to predict the collapse of the Northern Kingdom. As would become the standard trope of the deuteronomistic historians, Amos lays the blame for the impending collapse squarely in the kingdom itself, and particularly its king. Never mind the geopolitical forces that would bring disaster to both Israel and Judah, it is their faithlessness, according to the prophets, that brings about their end.
It’s a convenient device, and of course, there is some truth in it. Any kingdom (or any nation for that matter) can be faulted for its failure to protect the weak and for the concentration of wealth among the elite. But perhaps the prophets were on to something — when the situation becomes extreme, the nation collapses from within, making it susceptible to external forces.
At any event, this passage from Amos can help explain the antipathy between Jews and Samaritans in Jesus’ time. The southern kingdom looked on the northern kingdom first as apostates, and then after the Assyrian conquest and resettlement of peoples, as half-breeds. This background is important to understanding the parable in Luke’s Gospel.
This parable has always seemed a bit backward to me, and I’ve come to the conclusion that this is Luke’s intention. The lawyer asks, “Who is my neighbor?” and Jesus tells the parable in response. One key to understanding stories like this is that we are to put ourselves in the place of the main character, the character who appears in all the little scenes in the story. This story has five little “scenes”: The man among thieves; the man and the priest; the man and the Levite; the man and the Samaritan; the man, the Samaritan, and the innkeeper.
We are to identify with the man who fell among the thieves (so is the lawyer). So when Jesus asks, “Who was neighbor to the man who fell among the thieves?” the answer will answer the lawyer’s question, “Who is my neighbor?” The answer, of course, is the Samaritan. So, the answer to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” is “the despised other who offers me mercy.”
So, when Jesus says, “Go and do likewise,” we tend to think he is telling us to be like the Samaritan and offer mercy to those by the side of the road, but really, Jesus is telling us to accept mercy from the despised other. That’s much harder than helping others. For starters, we don’t like to admit that we need help. It implies shame. And then to accept help from the despised other only deepens the shame.
To Love God and to love neighbor is to recognize our absolute interdependence, which is the only way community works. So, to inherit eternal life is to live in that kind of interdependence. This is very different from how we usually think of eternal life. That’s why I think Luke intends for the story to read a bit backward — to force us to rethink eternal life.