July 11, 2010

“The Good Samaritan and Walt Kowalski”

Luke 10:25-37

 

There was this guy who was driving down the road and noticed a truck pulled over by the side of the road, with its hood up. Being the kindly Good Samaritan type, he pulls over and asks the man if he needs any help. “Well, my truck just broke down and I don’t know how long it will take before I get it running. I have a bunch of penguins I’m supposed to take to the zoo.” He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a $50 bill and hands it to the Good Samaritan. “I’ll give you fifty dollars if you’ll do that for me.” The Good Samaritan loads all the penguins in the back of his van and heads for the zoo. The truck driver heaves a sigh of relief and continues his repairs. About two hours later, he sees the Good Samaritan driving back from the zoo. As he nears, he notices the penguins are still in the back of his van. He flags him down. “Hey man, I gave you fifty dollars to take those penguins to the zoo. What’s going on?” “Oh,” said the Good Samaritan, “We’re finished with the zoo. I still have ten dollars left so we’re going to Dairy Queen.”

It all began with a question about eternal life. A lawyer was trying to test Jesus’ orthodoxy, that is, the purity of his Jewish beliefs. Lawyers in that time and place were actually more like religious scholars are today because their laws were predicated upon their religion. So it wasn’t unusual for a lawyer to ask about something like eternal life. Jesus answered with a question directed back at the lawyer, “What is written in the law?” He meant the Law of Moses, the Torah. Without batting an eye, the lawyer combined the most important text in the Torah, the Shema, from Deuteronomy 6, which teaches people to love God, and a more obscure text from Leviticus 19 about loving one’s neighbors.

Jesus then gives what might be a modern equivalent to the phrase, “No duh,” and tells the lawyer to do this and he will live. But the lawyer isn’t yet satisfied. He still desires to trick Jesus, so he asks him rather flippantly, “And who is my neighbor?” This time Jesus doesn’t answer a question with a question. Instead, he answers even more indirectly by telling a parable. And like the rest of Jesus’ parables recorded in scripture, this one is extremely provocative. It is designed to make a person gag and think deeply at the same time.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus really doesn’t answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?” Instead he explains what it means to be a neighbor—a good neighbor. And his answer does not consist of the nice and quiet elderly couple that lives next door, keeps their lawn pristine, and feeds your cat when you’re out of town. Jesus tells this orthodox, educated Jewish lawyer that he needs to be more like a Samaritan. Hence, the gag reflex. For centuries, Samaritans were considered to be a first century version of Scots-Irish trailer trash. They had Jewish blood in them, but it had been mixed with gentile DNA long ago. Samaritans were deemed worse than those foreigners who live far away and are out of sight out of mind. They are “half-breeds.” And historically, “half-breeds” have been treated with disdain by both blood lines. The Samaritans were the scum of the earth, or at least the Palestinian region. They were ghetto dwellers. They ate unclean food. They worshiped in unholy places. And they were not very hospitable to any Jew who had the audacity to walk through their region. The “Good” Samaritan is an oxymoron.

So, Mr. Lawyer, if you want to be a good neighbor you must act like the Samaritan in my parable. He is the one who stopped to help a person in need, unlike the “good” priest and “good” Levite—both religious professionals—who passed by the person in need.

When we think of neighbors we tend to think of the other persons. We also tend to think locally, as if neighbors are those other persons who live in our vicinity and who live much the same way we do. When the lawyer asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” he assumes the answer is, “Your fellow Jews.” After all, the Hebrew Scriptures implied that a neighbor is limited to those who share one’s ethnicity and geographical location. Jesus shows his unorthodox view of the Hebrew Scriptures by suggesting that a neighbor can be someone with a different ethnicity and who lives in a different geographical location. He expands the definition of neighbor.

In our world today, with our advanced technology in communication and transportation, our definition of neighbor is expanding rapidly. And as Americans we can go a step further. We are an immigrant nation, meaning we are a nation of Samaritan types! We are a nation of half-breeds, mixed breeds, and mutts! We may not be a “melting pot” yet, but we are certainly a “tossed salad.” Ethnic purity is almost non-existent in our country. And because we have welcomed people from all over the world to be American citizens, we are more likely than most nations to have a greatly expanded understanding of neighbor. This is why the immigration issue in the Southwest part of the country is such a volatile issue. Philosophically and emotionally, we are caught between our own self-image as a nation of immigrants, our pragmatic concerns about population, jobs, and resources, and yes, an unfortunate strand of xenophobia or fear of foreigners. We are “conflicted,” to put it mildly.

Despite our conflicted views on the migration of brown skinned people across our borders, we have in some respects continued and expanded what Jesus tried to suggest to that lawyer, that our neighbors encompass more than just the nice middle-aged couple who lives next door, trims their hedges, and collects your mail when you are on vacation. But, again, Jesus did something even more radical than that. In addition to getting the lawyer to think, “Who is my neighbor?” he steered him toward the question, “How can I be a neighbor?” Leviticus tells us to love our neighbors, but Jesus tells us how to be a neighbor worth loving. His answer is to be like a Samaritan. Just suggesting that would have broken up a crowd of eager listeners, sending them scampering back home to their safe Jewish neighborhoods.

In our own context we need to come up with an example of equal weight and provocation. Who among us is a good, modern-day equivalent of the Good Samaritan? Is there a contemporary parable we can point to and say, “This is what it means to be a neighbor?” The modern movie is our attempt to do visually what Jesus did verbally: tell parables. Of course, they first come out in print form, but if they are good, if they catch someone’s professional eye, they are likely to end up on the big screen.

To me, the best example of a contemporary Good Samaritan in movie form is the character, Walt Kowalski. Walt is Clint Eastwood’s character in the movie, “Gran Torino.” The reason I have chosen him to be a modern day Good Samaritan is because, like the Good Samaritan in Jesus’ parable, he is the last person one would choose as “neighbor of the year.” The movie is set in Detroit. If you were given a list of a hundred cities in which you could live, Detroit would probably be at or near the bottom of everyone’s list. It’s not a happy place.

Kowalski is a retired auto worker and a Korean War veteran. The movie begins at his wife’s funeral. From the famous Eastwood scowl on his face, it looks as if he’s ready to join his wife in eternity. Instead, he spends his days sitting on his porch chugging cheap beer after cheap beer, perhaps remembering the acts of violence he was forced to commit in war decades earlier. His Labrador, Daisy, is at his side as he keeps an eye on his multicultural neighbors, always ready to offer a bigoted commentary. We learn he has two sons with big houses, big cars, and big waistlines, and who want to bring him out of his funk, but he has very little use for them.

He just wants everyone—family and neighbors alike—to leave him alone. But that proves to be impossible. The world keeps encroaching on his territory. Most noticeable are the Hmong, or Asian, immigrants who live next door in a rundown old house, and who no doubt remind him of the people he fought against in the 1950s. Much to Walt’s chagrin, their lives are about to become interwoven. Under violent threat from some Hmong gang-bangers, the next-door neighbor’s teenage son, Thao, tries and fails to steal Walt’s cherry 1972 Gran Torino, and in the process nearly loses his life to its angry, armed owner. Thao’s family, led by his mouthy, friendly sister, Sue, forces the teenager to do penance by working for Walt, an arrangement that pleases neither the man nor the boy.

Never has there been a more unlikely surrogate father. Walt is a foulmouthed bigot with an unprintable epithet for every imaginable racial and ethnic group. He is literally a horrible neighbor. He constantly growls, literally, and resists the Hmong family’s persistent attempts to be a good neighbor to him by offering him food. Gradually, however, Walt becomes his neighbors’ protector against the gang members. At first it almost seems comical if not entirely uncomfortable. Like choosing Detroit last on a list of cities a person would wish to dwell in, Walt is the last neighbor anyone would want to have. But what we learn in this movie is what we learn all throughout the Bible, from Noah to Moses to David to the Good Samaritan, that God uses the most unlikely, ill-prepared, ill-suited people to help bring in the kingdom of God.

You and I will never shed our conventional views on neighborliness. We will always initially interpret a good neighbor as someone who lives nearby, lives like we do, eats the same kind of food, sweeps their sidewalks, and waves at us from the front porch. The best relationships we will continue to have with our neighbors will be conventional relationships, built on trust, good will, and friendliness. What the parable of the Good Samaritan and the story of Walt Kowalski teach us, however, is that the Christian view of neighborly love is peculiar, unexplainable, and undeserving.

Here’s the point I’m trying to make: the in-breaking of the kingdom of God does not occur in a Norman Rockwell painting; it occurs when a half-breed heretical Samaritan aids an enemy Jew; it occurs when a foul-mouthed growling bigoted Korean War vet comes to the rescue of un-welcomed Asian neighbors. If we could only use one word to describe the theme of the parable of the Good Samaritan and the movie, “Gran Torino,” that word is unexpected. That may be the most important word that is rarely used in our faith. The essence of the kingdom of God is always that which is unexpected, unforeseen, unlooked for, unpredicted, unanticipated, and unprepared for. That’s how God “rolls,” as young people like to say.

I’ll conclude with another salad analogy: If we were making a salad and tossed in all the ingredients needed to make up an authentic bowl of Christianity, we would add most if not all of the following ingredients: love, peace, joy, hope, justice, forgiveness, healing, and grace. All of those things make for a very tasty Christianity, and they all make for good neighborliness too. But there is still one thing missing: the salad dressing; that which is poured in on top giving it its ultimate flavor. And the salad dressing of Christianity is the unexpected. So, are you a good neighbor?