Lk 10:25-37; Answering a Lawyer I

"Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus.‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ 26 He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ 27 He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’ 28 And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’

29 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ 30 Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” 36 Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ 37 He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’"

Introduction

Since time immemorial this text has been known as the Parable of the Good Samaritan. We often skip right to the "good" part of the parable, where we have a priest, a Levite and a Samaritan, with the third of the group showing mercy to the injured man. But the dynamics of the parable are even more arresting if we realize the context in which it is placed: a "rabbinic," or legal, dispute. Though Luke characterizes the lawyer as one who is trying to "test" Jesus, a sort of "gotcha" type-of-approach, the lawyer actually is the one who provides the occasion for Jesus to develop one of his most noted parables. Perhaps if it wasn't for the lawyer's persistence and attempt to justify himself we would never have had this parable. Who knows? This story might even have "come to Jesus" only because of the continual questioning of the lawyer. Thus, in a time and culture where lawyers jokes are all the rage, I want to say that the lawyer in this passage is the one who creates the context for Jesus' most memorable parable.

I will briefly treat three points here: (1) The lawyer's questions; (2) The call of story; and (3) The main point of the parable.

I. The Lawyer

Lawyers are trained to ask difficult questions--but these questions are those that benefit their clients. Lawyers are rarely on a disinterested quest for truth. They (we) exist to make a case that helps the people who pay our bills. Well, there is also such a thing called public interest law--where the lawyer takes on the case because of an idea that interests him/her. For example, one of my friends is a prominent civil rights law professor. Before becoming a professor many years ago, he cut his teeth on immigration cases and housing cases on behalf of minority people. But the major purpose of most lawyers is to try to place their clients' problems in the most favorable light to a judge, jury or society.

Rarely will a lawyer ask a question to which s/he doesn't know the answer--or have a good inkling of where the answer will go. Indeed, a good lawyer is like a symphony conductor; you bring together the various "sections" of your symphony, such as witnesses, defendant, expert testimony, and others to put together a compelling case before the trier of fact.

In this case the lawyer asks Jesus a question, but he does it from his own perspective and his own interests. He says, literally, "doing what (thing) can I inherit enternal life?" The little word translated what (thing) is interesting. It is ti in Greek. It is a singular and is indefinite. Thus, the lawyer is asking about what we might call that one thing that will give him eternal life. He is asking for a key, a shortcut, or, in other words "faith in a nutshell." Lawyers are always busy with complex cases; he wants Jesus to boil down the "case" of salvation to something easily manageable. What is that one thing?

Jesus responds in an unexpected way. Maybe the lawyer was expecting a "love God and your neighbor" type of answer, but Jesus turned the law back on the lawyer. By asking the lawyer what he knew about the law, Jesus was, as it were, telling the lawyer that he knew the answer to his question all along. All he had to do was to follow the law in which he was supposed to be an expert. The lawyer was embarrassed. It is like a person showing a preacher John 3:16 when the preacher asks about salvation. OF COURSE the preacher knows that verse. OF COURSE the lawyer knows the commandments. But he is disarmed by Jesus' insistence that he already knows the answer to his question.

Perhaps that is the way that questions often work. We ask questions, tons of them. But we probably know or can easily discover the answer to most of them. We really don't need a teacher for most questions in life. Life itself will teach us the answers. Or, conversely, we already know the answers to the questions because we have studied the subject. We only "forget" the answer because other things have forced their way on our consciousness. So Jesus reminds the lawyer that he already knows the answers. Lawyers don't like to be told such a thing.

So the lawyer persists in his questions. He has to do so because otherwise he would be admitting defeat. He would be agreeing with Jesus that the answer to his question really was a very easy one. He was expecting a difficult answer to his question (what one thing?) but he got an easy answer--of several things. The lawyer has to save face and dig himself out of the rhetorical hole he has dug for himself. He has to think quickly, however, because the whole crowd will now be looking at him after his exchange with Jesus. He grasps for a straw, any straw really, to keep himself from drowning. What is it? It is the last word that Jesus has said. Jesus has quoted from the Torah, with his last words being "your neighbor as yourself." Well, these words are still ringing in the lawyer's mind, and so he plunges ahead.

He takes Jesus' last word--neighbor--and decides to run with it. Who, in fact, is my neighbor? Lawyers have a way of making a question that just popped into their head seem like it has been one they have been wrestling with since adolescence, and so I am sure that this lawyer mustered all his gravitas, his learning, his deepest voice and said, "But who is my neighbor?" In terms of power relations and conversational flow, the effect of his question is to shift the conversation to Jesus. All eyes now depart from the lawyer and turn to Jesus. Will he be up to the task? Will he be "bested" by the lawyer? A contest of minds and wills is developing.

I need one more essay to finish these thoughts.

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