On the Road to Jericho: The Scandalous Love of God’s Kingdom

On March 29, 2003, three American missionaries were being driven along the highway from Baghdad to Jordan. They had been in Iraq hoping to help avert war. This of course was not to be; nine days earlier war had been initiated by the massive Shock and Awe bombardment of the American Air Force and Navy. On the 28th, the three were among a group of foreign peacemakers detained in Baghdad. Within a few hours it was determined that they were not spies or enemy combatants. They were released, but told to leave the country immediately. Now they found themselves less than 90 minutes, 75 miles from Jordan.
And then there was an explosion. Most likely the taxi hit a piece of unexploded ordinance. It careened off the lonely desert highway, flipped and landed in a nine-foot-deep irrigation ditch. All three were injured, two pretty severely. Their prospects looked bleak, and not only because of the injuries. They were in a very pro-Saddam region of the country, deep in Al Anbar province. The closest town, Rutba, was reputed to be a hard-core Ba’athist stronghold. To make matters worse, the town had been hit by an American airstrike just 3 days before. The fire from a warehouse spread quickly and engulfed the local hospital, the only one within 195 miles. Two civilians, a man and his young son died. In this place and at this time, three light skinned men carrying American passports would surely be viewed as the enemy and they could expect to be treated accordingly.
    Soon, the sound of tires announced a vehicle approaching. It stopped and three Arab men got out, pulled the injured men from the taxi, put them in their pickup truck and drove off. Two miles or so later, the Americans were transferred to a station wagon. They were then taken into Rutba…to the health clinic that was serving as a makeshift hospital.  The least injured of the three Americans soon found himself confronted by the director of the destroyed hospital: “Why? Why? WHY? Is your government bombing us?” (39) But quickly, his anger and frustration spent, Dr. Farouq Al-Dulaimi’s tone changed. “You are safe in Rutba,” he said. “You are our brothers and we will take care of you. We take care of everyone—Christian, Muslim, Iraqi, American. It doesn’t matter. We are all human beings. We are all sisters and brothers.” (50)
And take care of the men they did, treating their wounds, nursing them until they were well enough to leave the country. These Iraqi Muslims saved the men’s lives and then refused any payment for their service. It was a remarkable event. Help came from the most unexpected of people, from people who had every right to view the Americans as the Other and the Enemy. [this story is taken from The Gospel of Rutba: War, Peace, and the Good Samaritan Story in Iraq, by Greg Barrett; Orbis, 2012] 
That’s precisely what happens in the familiar story of the Good Samaritan. Jesus is confronted by a lawyer, an expert on Scripture and the Jewish Law. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds with his own question, “What is written in the Law?”  The man replies by referring to Deuteronomy 6.5 and Leviticus 19.18: “Love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” And Jesus affirms the lawyers answer: “Yes, you are right. This is the heart and soul of God’s will. Do this, live in loving relationship with God and your neighbors, and you will dwell in the kingdom of God.” 
Perhaps this should have been the end of the exchange, but the lawyer tries one more time to trip up Jesus and prove himself smarter: “Okay, so who exactly is my neighbor?” What he is asking, in essence, is who do I have to love and who can I ignore. What are the boundaries of love? Who counts as a neighbor and who can I wash my hands of?
Jesus replies with a story. A man was traveling the dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho. Notice we are told nothing about this man. This is shrewd, because Jesus surely knew that his audience would automatically assume the man was like them, a fellow Jew.  He continues with the story in an almost formulaic way. The man was mugged and left for dead. A priest came by, but offered no help. A Levite soon passes, and he too leaves without helping. At this point the audience knows what to expect next. It’s as if someone were telling us a joke: “Three men go into a bar, a priest, a minister and ____.” I bet most of us know what comes next: a rabbi.  Or, to borrow an example from Amy-Jill Levine, if I say “Larry, Moe and…” most of you would automatically say “Curly.” In the same way, Jesus’ audience knows what to expect: a priest, a Levite, and…an Israelite, a good, salt of the earth, everyday Jewish layperson. He’ll do the right thing and expose those high and mighty religious leaders as hypocrites.
But that’s not who happens along. Jesus tells them that a Samaritan comes along and he rescues the man. A Samaritan is the hero of the story. Someone who most of his audience viewed as a heretic and a half-breed is the moral exemplar who fulfills God’s will. Jesus’ audience must have been shocked. I dare say many of them went away deeply offended. When Jesus asks the lawyer who had acted as a neighbor to the unfortunate victim of robbers, the lawyer can’t even bring himself to identify the hero as a Samaritan. Instead, he answers grudgingly, but correctly, “The one who showed him mercy.”
As Amy-Jill Levine puts it, it’s as if Jesus, by inserting a Samaritan in place of an Israelite, went “from Larry and Moe to Osama bin Laden.”   To understand how radical and offensive this story is, let’s put it in modern terms. A good upstanding resident of Seven Hills was traveling to downtown Cleveland. As he passed through a rough neighborhood, he was mugged, beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. A minister soon happened by, but he kept his distance and did not stop. Soon, an off-duty police captain came by, but he too pretended that he did not see the man. Then a young man of Middle Eastern descent happened by on his way to a pro-Palestinian protest. Seeing the man, he came near, bound up his wounds as best he could. He took the man to a hospital, gave the nurse everything in his wallet to pay for the man’s care. Two days later he came back with his credit card and paid for all the man’s bills. 
If the pro-Palestinian activist doesn’t seem unsettling to you, substitute someone else for the Samaritan: an outspoken pro-Israel co-worker, a Muslim, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, a liberal Democrat, a MAGA Republican, a conservative evangelical Christian, a transgender person—whoever you’re most uncomfortable with, whoever you think of as the Other or the enemy. Make them the hero, then you’ll start to get the point a little more clearly.  This is not a sweet, inspiring story. It is an offensive, challenging story about undeserved and unexpected grace that crosses over social boundaries—a story which illustrates what Jesus does so frequently in his life and ministry.     
You see, Jesus is expanding the definition of the neighbor. Neighbor isn’t simply the people you have ties to, the people who share your values and beliefs, or look like you, or for whom you feel some affection. Jesus is redefining and broadening the category, making it universal. He is saying that the neighbor is anyone you meet, even your worst enemy. As St. Augustine observed, the neighbor is whoever happens to be closest to you at the moment, regardless of who it happens to be. 
William Barclay expands on Augustine’s point. He suggests that Jesus’ story expands the definition of neighbor in three ways that challenge our common assumptions. Barclay suggests that the unfortunate traveler was at least partly to blame for his predicament—he assumes the man was traveling the very dangerous Jericho road alone while obviously carrying some sort of “goods or valuables” thus setting himself up to be attacked.  Nonetheless, says Barclay, like the Samaritan, “we must help a person even when he has brought his troubles on himself.” Secondly, Jesus’ story teaches us that, “Any of any nation who is in need is our neighbor. Our help must be as wide as the love of God.” Thirdly, we see that, “The help must be practical and not consist in merely feeling sorry. No doubt the priest and the Levite felt a pang of pity for the wounded man, but they did nothing. Compassion, to be real, must issue in deeds.”      
I want to underscore that last point. The difference between the religious leaders and the Samaritan is that he acted. Why? Why does the Samaritan stop? Why does he, who is despised and rejected by so many Jews, and who himself had likely been raised with nothing but disdain for them, stop to help his enemy? Why does he act like a neighbor by showing mercy?
    Perhaps, it’s because he is able to empathize with the man lying by the side of the road. Perhaps he too had suffered in some way and his moral imagination allowed him to connect with this half-dead stranger. 
I’ve told the story of Keisha Thomas a couple of times before. Almost 30 years ago  the Ku Klux Klan held a rally in the liberal college town of Ann Arbor, Michigan. A large crowd of counter protestors came out to oppose the bigotry of the Klan. The police were out in full force to keep the two sides separated. Barriers were erected and officers lined the route of the march.
    In the midst of this tense situation, a man wearing a leather jacket emblazoned with a Confederate battle flag and an SS tattoo on his arm was spotted among the crowd. It’s not clear if the man was with the Klan, but his appearance suggested he was at least a supporter. Someone with a megaphone called attention to him. He began to walk away. Part of the crowd followed; they wanted to chase him away. He began to run. He didn’t get far. Some of those who had come out to protest the hatred and fear spread by the Klan, now gave in to a mob mentality: they ran the man down, knocked him to the ground and began to beat and kick him. 
     Suddenly, out of the crowd emerged Keisha Thomas, an 18 year old, African-American high school student. She threw herself on top of the man in the Confederate jacket. Shielding him with her own body, she yelled, “This isn’t right! This isn’t right!” Something about the sight of a black woman protecting a racist white man, something about the intensity in her voice and the look on her face made the crowd stop. Others began to restrain their neighbors and the violent episode fizzled out. The man got up and walked away.
                I retell this story because of the reason Keisha Thomas gave for her act of mercy. In an interview given years later, she described her actions as the result of a sorrow, a sympathy for the suffering of the Klan supporter: "I knew what it was like to be hurt," she says. "The many times that that happened, I wish someone would have stood up for me."
Without going into personal detail, Thomas admitted that her circumstances had been different from that man’s. "But,” [she continued,] “violence is violence - nobody deserves to be hurt, especially not for an idea."
Surely the Samaritan must have felt empathy. Maybe he had never been beaten and left for dead, but, because of his own personal experiences, he could somehow relate, somehow imagine the man’s pain and be moved to help. His own suffering had changed his heart and reshaped his moral imagination. Empathy became the catalyst for compassion. Relating to the other as a human being like himself moved him to stop and help—despite the risk and the sacrifice. The Samaritan saw his enemy as a neighbor and loved him as he loved himself and, in doing so, he became a neighbor to the man, he demonstrated what it means to be a neighbor. 
Do you see what Jesus has done? He’s flipped the script on the lawyer, turning his question upside down. Notice that in Jesus’ story, the neighbor is not the man in the ditch. The neighbor is the one who showed mercy. To be a neighbor is to actively help others, to embody love in deeds of compassion. The lawyer has asked the wrong question. The question should not be “What are the limits of love?” or “Who do I have to treat as a neighbor?” The question is “Am I acting like a neighbor to everyone I meet?” 
We are called to be bearers of God’s love. To fulfill the two great commandments is to embody love, to live it out. That love does not calculate or discriminate—because it mirrors God’s scandalously welcoming, boundary breaking, self-giving love, a Love Divine which has been embodied and enacted for our salvation and transformation in Jesus Christ. It is a love which introduces a wholly new way of being, a new and unexpected way of relating to one another. As Tom Long observes in a new book on the parables of Jesus, “what comes down the Jericho road is not merely a Samaritan, but the surprise of God’s kingdom,” the shocking revelation of God’s will, God’s love and God’s mercy “in the form of an enemy-turned-neighbor whose compassion and action are considered humanly impossibly.”  Here glimpse the Kingdom of God, the Beloved Community. Here we see how human love is to mirror Divine love: love acts with compassion toward everyone; love does works of mercy for whomever is in need, even the other and the enemy. And in doing so, in enacting love, we participate in God’s coming kingdom even now, in the middle of the suffering, division and godlessness of this world.
As Scott Hozee observes, “If our hearts are full of grace, mercy, compassion, and love , then we won’t ask, “Who is my neighbor” because it won’t matter: the question becomes irrelevant if you are yourself already being a neighbor.”   
So, the real question is this: Will we open our hearts to be transformed by God? Will we be like the Samaritan or the priest? Will we be like the Iraqis of Rutba and Keisha Thomas or like the lawyer who questions Jesus?  Will we embody love and be neighbors to whomever we meet; whomever is close enough for us to help? Will we go and do likewise?