“How readest thou?”
How do you read? Jesus asks the certain lawyer who had asked him about eternal life. Jesus responded with two questions: first, “What is written in the Law?” and then, secondly, “how do you read?” He means, I think, how do you understand or discern what is written in the Law, in the Scriptures more generally speaking.
This exchange serves as the introduction to one of the most familiar and, perhaps, most powerful of the Gospel parables, the parable of the so-called Good Samaritan (so-called because ‘good’ is not stated in the text; it belongs, and rightly so to the interpretation). The parable complements wonderfully Paul’s command in today’s Epistle (Gal. 5.16-24) to “walk in the Spirit” as against “the desire of the flesh”; it is really an illustration of “the fruit of the Spirit” alive and at work in us in our care and concern not only for one another, the neighbour whom we know, but also and importantly towards the stranger, the outsider, the neighbour whom we do not know. Somehow the stranger, too, is neighbour because the stranger, too, is human. This is quite radical and yet at the same time part and parcel of an older Jewish understanding about dealing with the sojourner, the stranger in your midst, reminding the people of Israel that they, too, were once strangers in the land. But in every way the exchange and the parable speak profoundly to what it means to be human by opening us out to a more explicit and more universal view of our humanity.
This gospel opens us out to the largest dimensions of love, the divine love which shapes and moves our human loves. Its radical message is that the love of neighbour, the possibility of our love for our fellow human beings, depends upon the love of God alive in us.
And yet that concept really all depends upon our how we read, especially how we read the Scriptures! Now there is a thought which must give us pause. Somehow our thoughts shape our actions; our thoughts are not simply afterthoughts but the very principle or living force of our actions. To put it another way, our actions are to be thoughtful actions. They arise out of our sense of humanity and of God. That is why the exchange which precedes the parable is so important. Jesus is at once countering and correcting the lawyer whose intent is actually to tempt Jesus, to put him to the test. But what about? Perhaps about this deeper understanding of the universality of our humanity which turns upon the primacy of the love of God. Somehow that love enables what otherwise seems hard and impossible, the point of view, it seems, of the lawyer who answering Jesus’ question rightly about the Law and its interpretation, then seems altogether sceptical about the possibility of doing the Law in his apparently dismissive question “and who is my neighbour?”
The parable is told to answer that question but before turning to the parable it is worth staying with “the summary of the law” which the lawyer has stated and which Jesus endorses. Why? Because it reveals to us something about what it means to read. To read is to discern an understanding. The lawyer here refers to someone who is an expert in religious law, Jewish Law. The Law here means the Torah, the first five books of the Jewish Scriptures, commonly called collectively the Law. The term, too, I think can be extended to refer to the entirety of the Jewish Scriptures through a kind of synecdoche, the part referring to the whole; the Law being the most important part of the Jewish or Hebrew Scriptures in the same way that the Gospels have a kind of primacy in the New Testament but extends as a term of reference at once to the New Testament as a whole and even more to the both the Old and New Testaments. This is itself a way of reading and understanding the Scriptures. Far from being arbitrary, it reveals a sensibility, a way of making intelligible a great melange of scriptural passages and images, especially in terms of the Torah.
Reading as understanding is not simply about randomly choosing or cherry-picking a particular passage of Scripture. The answer of the lawyer is itself instructive. What he says here is what Jesus in one of the other Gospels says himself is “the summary of the Law,” a phrase familiar to Anglicans from the Liturgy as being the “two commandments” upon which “hang all the Law and the Prophets,” pointing really to the whole of the Old Testament. That summary collects and links together two distinct passages from The Book of Leviticus and The Book of Deuteronomy. That very act is an act of intellection, of understanding: not just any two passages of Scripture, not something random, but two passages from two different books which illumine in their unity so much more. The summary provides an interpretative commentary on the Jewish Scriptures as a whole which in turn becomes the basis for a new and distinctive Christian emphasis on the relation of the divine and the human in Jesus Christ.
The parable counters the sceptical indifference, even despair of the lawyer about “who is my neighbour?” It suggests radically and powerfully that your neighbour is each and every member of the human community. It directs us radically and powerfully to an ethic of action rooted in compassion. The word compassion is a very strong word. It signals a kind of inner movement of the spirit towards other[s] that requires outward expression. The Greek word refers to the inmost being of a person; its Latin translation is misericordia, a term which has a rich resonance, for instance, in what are actually called misericords found in a number of medieval cathedral and church choirs.
These are the ledges or brackets attached to the hinged seats of the choir which allowed the monks to take some of the weight off their feet while technically still standing for prayer. Of great interest are the various carvings found on the underside of the seat, visible only when tipped-up for the relief of the monks – hence mercy or pity seats. These carvings reveal a wonderful sense of playfulness and imagination, on the one hand, and a deep sense of scriptural imagery and piety, on the other hand, serving at once a didactic or teaching purpose as well as providing some holy humour, such as a pig playing the bagpipes, not to mention a fox preaching to a goose and a rooster- his intended prey, a not too subtle critique of predatory preachers, perhaps, and certainly a critique of the friars in the view of the monks! Ripon Cathedral has a remarkable collection of mostly 15th century misericords including one that depicts a rabbit caught by a gryphon while another rabbit escapes down a rabbit hole.
Lewis Carroll’s father was a canon at Ripon Cathedral and some have speculated that this may have been the source of the opening of his fantasy Alice in Wonderland. The symbolism of one rabbit being caught and the other escaping in the misericord is probably related to the theme of sacrifice –the mercy of the one for the sake of the many. “Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Such is the compassion, the mercy of Christ, which is, I think, the deeper reading of the parable of the Good Samaritan.
The certain man who fell among thieves and lies wounded and half-dead is on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem, symbolic respectively of the earthly city and the heavenly He is said to have going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. The certain man is an image of our fallen humanity. Note that he – we – are going in the wrong direction! A Priest and a Levite – both figures from the older Jewish culture – see him but pass by on the other side. It seems that they are going in the same direction! They “see him” but do nothing for him. The language is powerful in its understated quality. They see and know but do not act. This is at once an indictment against Israel and our humanity more generally. We fail to act upon what we see and know. It is a lack of compassion, of care and concern for others. It diminishes us as much as it betrays the other.
This is the setting then for “a certain Samaritan” who “as he journeyed, came where he was;” though nothing is said about what direction he was journeying, but “when he saw him, had compassion on him.” The extravagance of his care is wonderfully illustrated in detail. He “went to him.” He “bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine.” He “set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn.” He “took care of him.” He provides for his further care, taking out two pence and bidding the inn-keeper to take care of him till he comes again. There is a rich symbolism suggested in the simple telling of this story. All of these images can be seen in reference to the forms of our incorporation into the life of Christ; they are all the images of redemption and care, sacramental and pastoral.
That it is a certain Samaritan is itself also extraordinary. Why? Because the Samaritans were despised by the majority of the Jews as being an outcast sect owing to a difference of opinion about the place in which the Law was given. As the woman at the well of Samaria puts it rather bluntly to Jesus, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” The fact that it is a certain Samaritan who helps the man wounded on the wayside intensifies the lesson about who is my neighbour. Jesus confronts the lawyer and convicts his conscience. “Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?” The lawyer can only answer, “he that showed mercy on him.” He is compelled by the force of the parable to a larger understanding of humanity. “Thinkest thou”, Jesus asks the lawyer pointedly. How do you think given how you read the Law!
Reading this parable in a strong Christocentric way brings out a further dimension. The parable does not simply convict Priest and Levite but all of us. In a way, all that we can do of ourselves is look and pass by. We do not have the means and the power in ourselves to repair the brokenness of our humanity which is the deeper meaning of the parable. That is ultimately the work of God in Jesus Christ. That ultimately is redemption. In the radical reading of this parable, Christ is the Good Samaritan, the one who not only looks but comes to where we are, the one who heals and restores, the one who continues to take care of us in the inn of his Church with the two pence of baptism and communion. This kind of reading unites the twofold nature of the love of God and the love of neighbour. The latter is only possible through the former alive and at work in us. Christ is himself the unity of God and man, the perfection of the love of God and humanity.
For Christians, I think, the reading is inescapable. We confront the failings of our own loves for one another only to realise that it is the divine love which alone makes it possible for us to “go and do likewise,” transformed in our outlook about who is my neighbour. Such compassion is simply and entirely Christ in us; the divine mercy which compels us to render mercy towards one another. It is how we read and how we act.
“How readest thou?”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity XIII,
Christ Church & Avon Valley & Hantsport
August 30th, 2015