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“Why Did the Samaritan Cross the Road?”
Luke 10:25-37
July 10, 2016
Dr. Jimmy R. Watson, Immanuel UCC
Nine days ago on a Friday I took the liberty of goofing off for a few hours. While driving in my pickup I heard a
variation on the “Why did the chicken cross the road?” joke on the radio and decided, you know what, I can do
better than that!
So I set about the task of coming up with new comedy material, inventing several new variations on the “Why did
the chicken cross the road?” joke. Much to the chagrin of my Facebook audience, I shared all of them. The first one
that popped into my head was:
Why did the playground equipment salesperson cross the road? To get to the other slide.
I followed up with:
Why did the duck cross the road? Because she wasn’t chicken.
Why did the Protestant cross the road? Because he didn’t know how to cross himself.
Why did Donald Trump cross the road? To part his hair on the other side. Trying to be fair, I couldn’t come up with
a Hillary joke, although I have one now: Why did Hillary cross the road? She didn’t. She used email.
After that I got a little too big for my britches and came up with one that few people “got”:
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because she had yet to be introduced to the poetry of Robert Frost. I don’t
mean to be condescending, but I’m referring to Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken.”
After my next offering I realized my creative juices had run dry: Why did the vacationer cross the road? Answer:
GPS
That was going to be all but then I remembered I had promised Dwain that I would come up with one just for him.
Here it is: Why did Dwain Bollinger cross the road? Because he can.
That same evening I was sitting in my screened in back porch to look at the Gospel reading for today: the Parable
of the Good Samaritan. The parable is about someone who is willing to cross the road to care for someone who
had been robbed and beaten half to death.
It didn’t take two seconds for me to realize that my sermon title this Sunday would be, “Why did the Samaritan
cross the road?”
Before I answer the “Why” question, let me first talk about the Samaritan in Jesus’ parable. Notice that Jesus never
calls him the “Good” Samaritan. He didn’t need to. The Samaritan’s goodness is implied in the story.
The second reason Jesus doesn’t call him the Good Samaritan is because this would have been an oxymoron, a
contradiction in terms. No Samaritans were good from the perspective of Jesus’ listeners.
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To refer to the Samaritan as good would have created a reaction at best of rolled eyes and a dismissive smile and
at worst the lawyer would have spat on the ground, cursed, and walked away. A good story-teller, as Jesus was,
would not want to sabotage his story by turning off the listener at such a critical point in the story.
According to first century “standards,” Samaritans were ethnically and religiously “below par.” They had Jewish
ancestry, but may have comingled with some gentiles during the time of the Babylonian exile over five hundred
years earlier, when the “best and brightest” Jews were forced into exile.
The irony is that the word “Samaritan” means “Guardian of the Law” (or Torah). The Samaritans saw themselves as
religious purists in that they believed they kept the original religion of Judaism intact. But to their neighbors to the
north in Galilee and to the south in Judea, the Samaritans were ethnically and religiously “impure” and therefore
looked at with contempt.
Because of that, their morality was suspect as well. When I first started writing this sermon I wanted to compare
them to a specific ethnic and cultural group today called the Romani, or Gypsies.
For a long time people thought Gypsies were from Egypt, thus the connection in the name. But the consensus now
is that they originally descended from India about a thousand years ago and now live all over the world in different
cultures, speaking different languages.
They are pejoratively called “Gypsies,” which has a connotation of being illegal and irregular. In fact, the label
“Gypsy” is where we get our word “gyp,” which means to cheat or swindle. We’ve all heard the stories.
I suspect that while Jesus is telling the lawyer a story about a Samaritan who is willing to “cross the road” to help a
man that not even a priest or a Levite is willing to help, it would have sounded to him much like it would sound to
us if someone told a story about a Gypsy crossing a dangerous road to help someone rather than rob someone
who is lying there half dead. Listeners today might roll their eyes as well.
After what has occurred in our country this past week and in recent weeks, however, I think we can safely say that
the Samaritan is symbolic of the “other” in our midst. The “other” is defined by who we are.
If we are white, the other is a person of color, and vice-versa. If we are straight, the other is gay, and vice-versa. If
we are African-American, the other might be a police officer, and vice-versa. If we are Christian, the other might be
a Muslim, and vice-versa. Just like if we were Jewish in the first century, the other was a Samaritan, and vice-versa.
Reading this parable of the Good Samaritan is just as relevant as it was then because the other doesn’t seem to
want to go away. And the one thing that can rock anyone’s world is the notion that the other can be morally
superior to us, no matter who “us” is.
Crossing the road, therefore, is a metaphor for engaging the other when the others are bleeding to death, both
literally and metaphorically. Crossing the road is also a metaphor for recognizing the good in the other.
We are called to cross the road, no matter how dangerous we might think it is. I came up with a new phrase for
our calling to cross the roads: “Jaywalking for Jesus.” You have my permission to use that!
So why is the road dangerous? The parable mentions the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. This road follows a
“wadi,” specifically the Wadi Qelt, which is a deep ravine.
Crossing a wadi to get to the other side of the road is dangerous because either wild animals or bandits could have
attacked them as well, which is one reason the priest and the Levite in the parable were afraid to cross the road.
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It wasn’t like crossing a path or a modern paved street. It really wasn’t like jaywalking at all. It was climbing down
into the ravine and climbing up the other side. Anything could happen!
The Samaritan does so, courageously, and does four things. He stops the man’s bleeding, takes him to a safe place,
spends the night with him, and then leaves money for his care.
This is why there are hospitals and many other charitable organizations around the world that have utilized the
name “Good Samaritan” in their official titles.
So, why did the Samaritan cross the road? My first thought was, “To avoid the priest and the Levite.” But this is
really a question about motivation. The Samaritan was motivated by compassion.
The priest and the Levite were not motivated by compassion. They were motivated by self-preservation. They
understandably didn’t want to risk getting robbed and beat themselves. Also, according to their laws they were not
even allowed to touch a corpse or blood, both of which would make them ritually unclean.
And the last thing a priest or Levite wants to do is become ritually unclean. They would have to miss work for a few
days. A Levite, by the way, was a priest that worked primarily in the Temple in Jerusalem.
Now, you might think the Samaritan didn’t need to worry about either one of those problems—getting robbed or
becoming ritually unclean. To the contrary, a Samaritan outside of his region would be in even more danger of
physical harm.
To be brutally honest, here are a couple of modern parallel examples: a white person who is afraid to drive
through a predominantly African-American neighborhood, and a black person who sees the lights of a police car in
their rearview window. That’s what it was like for the Samaritan to even be traveling between Jerusalem and
Jericho.
Also, remember that the Samaritans saw themselves as religious purists—they are the Guardians of the Law. So,
they would be even more concerned about touching blood or dead bodies.
And yet, according to this oxymoronic story, the Samaritan, with so much at stake, is the one who crosses the road
or ravine to get to the half dead man. The question is, then, why would such a purist of the law be the one that
sidesteps the law in order to practice compassion?
Perhaps because he was a purist, he knew the essence of the Law better than the Jewish priest or the Levite.
Perhaps he knew that obeying the Law should never get in the way of showing compassion.
To paraphrase the voice of God from our reading in Deuteronomy 30: You don’t have to travel into space in order
to practice the law of compassion, nor do you need to cross an ocean. It’s not that hard. All you need to do is cross
the road.”
Why did the Samaritan cross the road? Because someone needed him. So what roads are we being called to cross?
How can we jaywalk for Jesus?