“But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 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. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.' "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise." (Luke 10:29-37)
I heard “Bob’s” testimony of salvation and redemption this past Monday night. Bob is not my “neighbor” as the World defines it, not because his skin color is different than mine, but because the bandwith of his life expereince placed him in a different tribe. There were other men in the room listening as I was who shared Bob’s skin color, but not his tribal affiliation—for Bob came from a tribe where the safety margin between a life of comfort and complete disaster was wafer thin. We the listeners were of the tribe with a much thicker margin of Worldy security. You could tell from our straight teeth and easy social grace that we had been raised by people with the time and resources to pay for braces and summer camps. Our people would have seen those kinds of things as a given. For Bob’s people, I gathered from his story, these would have been luxuries beyond the reach of their circumstances.
Bob’s story was similar to others I have heard from people who shared his perch at the edge of disaster. A distrust of doctors led him to procrastinate treatment of an affliction that ultimately cost him his job. Unemployment took him quickly to the street. The street tumbled him down a stairway of drug abuse and ultimately loss of self. During his talk, Bob passed around a picture of his “house” at the bottom of that stairway—a bundle of rags and cardboard under a bridge. He told us he kept that picture as a reminder of a life without God. While we could sympathize with Bob, I doubt anyone in the crowd could actually empathize with him, for our first step down the stairwell of disaster would have been a different kind of fear and distrust, followed by a different kind of self-medication. The picture we would carry around to remind us of our bundle of rags at the bottom would have looked different from Bob’s picture, but the effect would have been the same—seperation from God and despair of ever finding a path back.
Bob described his redemption as a series of unlikely interventions by people who were not from his tribe—samaritans who bandaged his wounds rather than walking by his broken body on the road. One of those men was with him, and he spoke briefly, not about how good it felt to have helped Bob or why he was motivated to do so. He didn’t even describe what he actually did to help bandage Bob’s wounds. He just talked about his relationship with the healed Bob, how they were now brothers in Christ despite the different tribes from which they had come.
In Luke, Christ does not really explain the samaritan’s motivation to give aid to the beaten man. He simply says “Go and do likewise.” If I am a faithful follower of Him whose name I have taken, will I need more motivation than that when confronted with beaten man from Tribe Unknown?
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