Modern-day Good Samaritan
Ever wondered how the famous story may have sounded to first-century listeners?
Leave it to lawyers to draw excruciatingly fine distinctions between common words. "Love your neighbour as you love yourself," Jesus told the lawyer who specialised in church law. Sounds straightforward enough, right? But no, not to a lawyer.
"Ah, but what do you mean by neighbour?" asked the lawyer. And it was that question that triggered possibly the best known of all of Jesus' stories:
***
There was an accident on the freeway, she had heard on the living room TV from the bathroom, where she was staring at herself applying eye shadow. So, the marketing director took the back way into the city that morning. She was tooling along in her '02 Camry when BAM, three things happened simultaneously: She heard a shrieking metallic sound, her dash lit up like a Christmas tree, and the car lost power. As it coasted to a stop, she steered it off onto the gravel shoulder. She sighed, then reached for her cell phone to cancel her morning appointments and call AAA for some help, a tow, whatever. She hit speed dial then noticed the reception icon on the phone: blank. No reception. Jeez, she thought, this really is the back way to town. Back way as in outback, wilderness, uncivilised, a cell-less society.
So she turned on her hazard lights, raised her hood, and waited for someone to drive by.
That particular country road didn't get a lot of traffic during morning hours, but three other vehicles were on that road that morning. The first one was a local church pastor on his day off, headed in his pickup for the mill five miles down the road to buy feed for his chickens. He saw the car, obviously in need of help. It was equally obvious to him that the car wasn't from around there - someone from the city, most likely. He slowed enough to get a look, but not slow enough to give the impression he was stopping. A woman sat in the driver's seat short, coloured hair, dangly earrings, and makeup - as he passed she looked at him hopefully, then despairingly as the pickup cruised past the Camry and kept going.
City folk, he thought. The pastor glanced in his rearview mirror at the gaping hood of the Camry on the shoulder of the country road. No telling what kind of woman she was. he read the newspapers enough to know how loose the city's morals were, what they permitted, how they let their liquor stores stay open on the Lord's day, of all things. He could just see the mousse-haired woman now, sitting at a bar, cradling a drink in one hand, a cigarrette in another, her little red Camry parked outside. On a Sunday, when all good people were in the Lord's house...
By the time he got to the feed store, he had all but forgotten about her.
Meanwhile, back on the gravel shoulder, it was another ten minutes before she saw a car approaching from the opposite direction. The stranded marketing director had no way of knowing that this driver was a church youth director, on her way to a meeting of the Youth Ministry Prayer Network. This youth worker felt so isolated working in her small country church, she really looked forward to these monthly meetings of other youth workers. She saw the Camry's situation as she approached and - unlike the pastor who preceded her on this road - was sincerely pained by her inability to stop and help. Someone else with time to help this stranded motorist would certainly be by soon... She really, really needed the encouragement of her meeting. So on she drove.
It was fifteen minutes before the marketing director heard another car. This one slowed and pulled off the road just ahead of her. She didn't recognise an '82 Volvo when she saw one, but she did notice the bumper stickers when the vehicle sqeuaked to a stop on the gravel and the dust settled. THE RIGHT TO LIVE, THE RIGHT TO DIE, THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE... HELP A KID, BE A MENTOR... METROPOLITAN AIDS COUNCIL. The MAC, huh? thought the marketing director. She recognised the organisation's name from her firm's client list.
A thirty-something man got out of the ancient Volvo. "Need some help?" he asked as he walked towards the Camry.
"Do I ever!" she replied. "And thanks for stopping." He was on the thin side, she noticed... and then she remembered the METROPOLITAN AIDS COUNCIL bumper sticker. You don't suppose... she thought, but his question interrupted her musings.
"So what's the problem?"
After a couple of attempts at turning over the engine (only more grinding and shrieking) and five minutes under the hood, he pronounced her engine in need of some serious repairs. Unlike hers, his cell service worked well out here, and a tow truck was soon on its way. He also called a local mechanic who, he said, took only cash from out-of-towners. She wilted: With a credit card in her purse, these days she carried almost no cash.
"No sweat," the man said. "I'll cover you, and you can mail me a cheque when you get home." He smiled. "I do accept cheques from out-of-towners." He retrieved a scrap of paper from his pocket, wrote his address on it, and handed it to the woman. "Need a lift anywhere?"
Within thirty minutes the tow truck had arrived and soon she was riding in the Volvo into town, where he in fact had been heading. They bumped along for a little while - the Volvo's springs and shocks were apparently as old as the body - until she finally felt comfortable asking (casually, she hoped), "So what's your connection to the Metropolitan AIDS Council?"
"I'm a MAC volunteer - home visits, some lightweight counselling, fix meals, hold babies - whatever I can do for anyone with AIDS."
"How'd you get involved?"
"It was after I was diagnosed HIV-positive. I got pretty depressed, figured I was gonna die soon and painfully, so why try anymore? Then a friend of mine heard about MAC, and they sent a guy who worked with me, educated me with some facts that were new to me, got me on meds that can keep my resistance up and AIDS at arm's length. So far, so good." He turned to her and smiled. "Day at a time. Just like you."
"Yeah, she said, turning to watch the roadside fence posts whir by, "just like me."
***
"Now which of these three," asked Jesus, "was a neighbour to the stranded marketing director - the pastor, the church youth director, or the HIV-positive activist and AIDS volunteer?"
The lawyer who specialised in church law coundn't even bring himself to say HIV-positive activist and AIDS volunteer, for he was known in town for speaking and writing against public funding for AIDS relief and research; he had also publicly doubted the morality of those with HIV and AIDS.
"The one who showed mercy," he said, vaguely, because reporters were present.
"Bingo!" Jesus said. "Now let him be your example. Do what he did."
-Excerpt from Fed Up - 30 Hour Famine With Tim McLaughlin
For the original story, read Luke 10:25-37. When put into a modern-day context, makes it so much easier to understand huh?
Leave it to lawyers to draw excruciatingly fine distinctions between common words. "Love your neighbour as you love yourself," Jesus told the lawyer who specialised in church law. Sounds straightforward enough, right? But no, not to a lawyer.
"Ah, but what do you mean by neighbour?" asked the lawyer. And it was that question that triggered possibly the best known of all of Jesus' stories:
***
There was an accident on the freeway, she had heard on the living room TV from the bathroom, where she was staring at herself applying eye shadow. So, the marketing director took the back way into the city that morning. She was tooling along in her '02 Camry when BAM, three things happened simultaneously: She heard a shrieking metallic sound, her dash lit up like a Christmas tree, and the car lost power. As it coasted to a stop, she steered it off onto the gravel shoulder. She sighed, then reached for her cell phone to cancel her morning appointments and call AAA for some help, a tow, whatever. She hit speed dial then noticed the reception icon on the phone: blank. No reception. Jeez, she thought, this really is the back way to town. Back way as in outback, wilderness, uncivilised, a cell-less society.
So she turned on her hazard lights, raised her hood, and waited for someone to drive by.
That particular country road didn't get a lot of traffic during morning hours, but three other vehicles were on that road that morning. The first one was a local church pastor on his day off, headed in his pickup for the mill five miles down the road to buy feed for his chickens. He saw the car, obviously in need of help. It was equally obvious to him that the car wasn't from around there - someone from the city, most likely. He slowed enough to get a look, but not slow enough to give the impression he was stopping. A woman sat in the driver's seat short, coloured hair, dangly earrings, and makeup - as he passed she looked at him hopefully, then despairingly as the pickup cruised past the Camry and kept going.
City folk, he thought. The pastor glanced in his rearview mirror at the gaping hood of the Camry on the shoulder of the country road. No telling what kind of woman she was. he read the newspapers enough to know how loose the city's morals were, what they permitted, how they let their liquor stores stay open on the Lord's day, of all things. He could just see the mousse-haired woman now, sitting at a bar, cradling a drink in one hand, a cigarrette in another, her little red Camry parked outside. On a Sunday, when all good people were in the Lord's house...
By the time he got to the feed store, he had all but forgotten about her.
Meanwhile, back on the gravel shoulder, it was another ten minutes before she saw a car approaching from the opposite direction. The stranded marketing director had no way of knowing that this driver was a church youth director, on her way to a meeting of the Youth Ministry Prayer Network. This youth worker felt so isolated working in her small country church, she really looked forward to these monthly meetings of other youth workers. She saw the Camry's situation as she approached and - unlike the pastor who preceded her on this road - was sincerely pained by her inability to stop and help. Someone else with time to help this stranded motorist would certainly be by soon... She really, really needed the encouragement of her meeting. So on she drove.
It was fifteen minutes before the marketing director heard another car. This one slowed and pulled off the road just ahead of her. She didn't recognise an '82 Volvo when she saw one, but she did notice the bumper stickers when the vehicle sqeuaked to a stop on the gravel and the dust settled. THE RIGHT TO LIVE, THE RIGHT TO DIE, THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE... HELP A KID, BE A MENTOR... METROPOLITAN AIDS COUNCIL. The MAC, huh? thought the marketing director. She recognised the organisation's name from her firm's client list.
A thirty-something man got out of the ancient Volvo. "Need some help?" he asked as he walked towards the Camry.
"Do I ever!" she replied. "And thanks for stopping." He was on the thin side, she noticed... and then she remembered the METROPOLITAN AIDS COUNCIL bumper sticker. You don't suppose... she thought, but his question interrupted her musings.
"So what's the problem?"
After a couple of attempts at turning over the engine (only more grinding and shrieking) and five minutes under the hood, he pronounced her engine in need of some serious repairs. Unlike hers, his cell service worked well out here, and a tow truck was soon on its way. He also called a local mechanic who, he said, took only cash from out-of-towners. She wilted: With a credit card in her purse, these days she carried almost no cash.
"No sweat," the man said. "I'll cover you, and you can mail me a cheque when you get home." He smiled. "I do accept cheques from out-of-towners." He retrieved a scrap of paper from his pocket, wrote his address on it, and handed it to the woman. "Need a lift anywhere?"
Within thirty minutes the tow truck had arrived and soon she was riding in the Volvo into town, where he in fact had been heading. They bumped along for a little while - the Volvo's springs and shocks were apparently as old as the body - until she finally felt comfortable asking (casually, she hoped), "So what's your connection to the Metropolitan AIDS Council?"
"I'm a MAC volunteer - home visits, some lightweight counselling, fix meals, hold babies - whatever I can do for anyone with AIDS."
"How'd you get involved?"
"It was after I was diagnosed HIV-positive. I got pretty depressed, figured I was gonna die soon and painfully, so why try anymore? Then a friend of mine heard about MAC, and they sent a guy who worked with me, educated me with some facts that were new to me, got me on meds that can keep my resistance up and AIDS at arm's length. So far, so good." He turned to her and smiled. "Day at a time. Just like you."
"Yeah, she said, turning to watch the roadside fence posts whir by, "just like me."
***
"Now which of these three," asked Jesus, "was a neighbour to the stranded marketing director - the pastor, the church youth director, or the HIV-positive activist and AIDS volunteer?"
The lawyer who specialised in church law coundn't even bring himself to say HIV-positive activist and AIDS volunteer, for he was known in town for speaking and writing against public funding for AIDS relief and research; he had also publicly doubted the morality of those with HIV and AIDS.
"The one who showed mercy," he said, vaguely, because reporters were present.
"Bingo!" Jesus said. "Now let him be your example. Do what he did."
-Excerpt from Fed Up - 30 Hour Famine With Tim McLaughlin
For the original story, read Luke 10:25-37. When put into a modern-day context, makes it so much easier to understand huh?
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