Last week, we journeyed with Jesus to Samaria, where he met the Woman at the Well and exchanged conversations with her. Perhaps that Samaritan Woman changed his taken-for-granted assumptions about his own cultural superiority. Indeed, this encounter reminds us of a parable we hear today that is very familiar to us, that of The Good Samaritan. As you pray with the story, how might you be invited to read the narrative differently than in the past, through a lens of racial justice?
In the passage, The Scholar of the Law wants to justify his superiority, so he asks Jesus the famous question: "who is my neighbor?" Jesus responds with the story of the Good Samaritan, indicting his listeners in the process. When a man falls prey to robbers, it is not the good, holy, Jewish Levite or the priest who stops to care for him. It is the culturally inferior Samaritan man who stops to tend to the Jewish man. Although the stranger on the ground is a Jew, the Samaritan is able to see his humanity. Though the Jews demonize and strip away human dignity from the Samaritans, it is the Samaritan who sees this Jew as human, hurting, and needing of his compassion and mercy. The excluded Samaritan binds the wounds of the beaten Jew, and in doing so, he models how to bind together the severed Jewish-Samaritan relationship due to prejudice and hatred.
In his latest encyclical Fratelli Tutti, Pope Frances notes that "the story of the Good Samaritan is constantly being repeated. We can see this clearly as social and political inertia are turning many parts of our world into a desolate byway, even as domestic and international disputes and the robbing of opportunities are leaving greater numbers of the marginalized stranded on the roadside."
We might ask ourselves today how might a person of color be the man beaten in the story? What structural or cultural factors might lead the robbers to beat him? What leads the priest and Levite to be disgusted and literally avoid him at all costs? And how is it that the one marginalized today might be the one who is able to care for him?
I begin by asking for the grace to understand racism through the lens of Jesus deeply.
I imagine the story of the Good Samaritan. I recall the scene: what did the road look like? Was it nearby or in an abandoned area? Were there points in the road that made it hard to see who was coming? Who were the robbers in the scene? Where were they hiding?
I imagine the man traveling down the path. What did he have with him? Was he affluent or poor? Did he have an animal like a donkey or was he walking on foot? Who hit him? Who took his things? How did he feel? Did he try to fight back? What was he thinking as the robbers ran off? Did he think he would live or die? How did he feel as he cried for help and the priest and Levite crossed to the other side of the road to avoid any encounter with him?
What were the Levite and priest thinking? What motivated them to turn a blind eye?
I imagine the Samaritan traveler. What did he feel when he saw the man dying on the side of the road? What led him to have compassion? How did he feel, knowing the Jewish man lying on the road through his people were inferior, dirty, and idol-worshipers? What compelled him to reach across the racial divide, bind his wounds, put him on his own animal, and take him to an inn? What led him to display such radical generosity in paying the man's bills?
What did the innkeeper think - a Samaritan man tending with such compassion to a Jewish man?
And what about The Scholar of the Law? What did he feel as Jesus told his story and made the hero of the story someone he deemed to be culturally inferior?