Why did the chicken cross the road?

There was a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan. . .who walked into a bar.

One is a common riddle joke we learn as kids, the other is a common placeholder of three characters, usually religious figures (a priest, a Presbyterian pastor, a rabbi. . . choose your tradition) who are up to no good, with the third one usually as the foil of the other two, the third with a redeeming quality, or the final character who is both the punchline and who somehow bests the other two.

These are common conversation starters, we chuckle at hearing them, whether as little kids or grown-ups. We add to that the common stories of Christmas and Easter. We can tell the stories in our sleep and we know how they go forward and back, backward and forward.

The overuse of these stories has become so commonplace that our English Bibles even nickname today’s passage as “The Good Samaritan.” It’s like Luke 15:11 and the so-called Prodigal Son. If someone didn’t know any better, one who would think that the nicknames in the section headings made by the translation editors might have been in the Greek manuscripts. So when we say “Good Samaritan” we as preachers and teachers know exactly how the story unfolds. And probably the communities in which you will preach this word will likewise feel an internal yawn about the Good Samaritan as they can expect what the ending will be, and how the sermon will end. It may go something like this: don’t be like the priest who should have known better or like the Levite who minded their own business, but be a good neighbor like the Samaritan. The TV commercial for a famous insurance company comes to mind, with their common jingle, “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.”

I wonder if we’ve been lulled into the commonplace and anesthetized to the profundity of what this passage shows us on many levels. What prompts this story is actually what Jesus shares with his disciples. There he instructs them about what prophets and kings of old “desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.” (Luke 10:23-24) The lawyer who comes right after seems to follow along that train of thought. The lawyer seems to regard the teachings of old as so common, nothing new under the sun, obvious truths. What else you got, Jesus? Is it the law? Check, got that. Is it about neighbor? Don’t worry, check. Got that, too.  Or do you?

Jesus knows the heart of the lawyer, as he knows our hearts, as he knows the hearts of the prophets and kings. Remember last week’s note about the close interconnection of God’s people with Christ himself? That they are not identical but that there is a unity-in-distinction. They are not to be confused and mixed. We are not Christ. But to regard God’s people is to regard Christ, because of the close connection, the intercommunion. To splice and dice the law of love into a section about God and another batch for neighbor is to treat the commandments as sets of vertical (God-ward) and horizontal (human to human) planes, rather than as interrelated sets of the whole. It’s so common place to focus notions of “God” to Sunday mornings, and human/worldly things to Monday through Saturday, rather than regarding God as constant and ubiquitous Sunday through Saturday. Or to put it in the Gospel story, we can’t splice and dice loving neighbor from loving God, because to confess one is to confess the other; to do one, necessarily follows with the other.

We love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength . . .and we demonstrate that by loving our neighbor. By loving neighbor, I am loving God. The obverse is true too. If we claim to love God, but yet not love neighbor, then are we loving God? There is nothing commonplace about people because each person – neighbor and stranger alike – are bearers of the beautiful image of God. Each human being carries the mystery and beauty of God, with their own stories, their own unique experiences and perspectives. When the fascination with fellow human beings becomes lackluster common to the point of blah and dull, is that a signal that our regard with the awesome majesty and holiness of God and the joy of God has also fallen by the wayside.

Who is God to you? The question to the lawyer is an invitation to encounter the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan, all and each of whom are windows into the messiness and beauty of our shared humanity. And in there, is a bit of what it means to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.