HEROES WITHOUT BORDERS (LUKE 10:25-37)
A few years ago I saw a truck in front of me roaring fiercely as it was about to turn the corner onto the freeway ramp. In the driver’s seat of the humongous truck was a man in his late 20s, ramming his engine and blasting his stereo. The guy had dark glasses and a black T-shirt – the type you associate with a rabid Raider fan. I had nothing but dislike, distaste, and derision for his outward appearance.
As the man was turning into the freeway, he did not slow down but was traveling at his normal speed. He was in such a hurry that I thought he was putting his life and the life of others in danger. However, he made a U-turn into the opposite lane instead of entering the freeway ramp. Slowing his truck down, he jumped out of his truck as it screeched to a complete stop. How dangerous, I thought to myself as I took a clearer look at the stocky man who was wearing shorts and spotting tattoos.
Then I saw smoke coming out of a car lying on the side of the road where the man had stopped. How wrong I was! Beside the car was a woman who was in need of help and it turned out that the young man was not a danger or nuisance to the public, but a good Samaritan and a hero to a damsel in distress.
In Luke 10, Jesus told a story to a smart-alecky man who challenged his teaching. The travel from Jerusalem to Jericho was as dangerous a travel zone as any. According to Walter Liefeld, robbers could easily hide on the rugged, bleak, rocky terrain that characterized the 17-mile stretch travel (Expositor’s Commentary, 8:943). The traveler in the parable was an easy target. He was traveling alone when he was preyed on, set on, and beaten up by robbers, not thieves. Thieves rob at night, but robbers in broad daylight. The robbers were well-organized, well-equipped, and well-informed gangsters and criminals, and they easily overpowered the unsuspecting travelers.
Who is a hero? A hero is one who sees a neighbor or stranger in need and whose help you can meet. Heroes are ordinary people who do what they can out of extraordinary compassion, mercy, and kindness.
What motivates heroes and helpers? Why are they different from spectators and bystanders? How do they conquer their fears?
A Hero Does Not Close His Eyes to What Is Happening
30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. (Luke 10:30)
Lost behind the story of Seabiscuit, the most celebrated racehorse of the 20th century, and the jockey played by Spiderman’s Tobey Macguire was the story of its peculiar trainer, Tom Smith. When a rich man decided to turn to horse racing, he needed to find a trainer for his horse. He stumbled on an eccentric and old, but a talented and tender trainer whose chances of training a racehorse had all but slipped by.
When the owner Charles Howard first met his future trainer, he spotted the horse lover caring for an injured horse that was past its time and no longer in racing favor. Unlike other trainers, Smith did not have a barn or stable or home. He was living outside in the bushes with the one horse he had rescued from owners who wanted to shoot the poor animal.
The shrewd and curious businessman then visited the trainer in the middle of the night to ask him why he was wasting his time on an out-of-favor and down-on-luck horse. Howard asked, “Will he get better?’ Smith replied, “Already is…a little.” The owner then got to his point: “Will he race?” Smith acknowledged, “No. Not that one.” The curious owner exclaimed, “So why are you fixing him?” Smith spoke with candor and won the owner over with his answer: “Cause I can. Every horse is good for something. He could be a cart horse or a lead pony. And he’s still nice to look at. You don’t throw a whole life away just because it’s banged up a bit.”
The sufferer and victim lying on the road was not a thing, but a person; not an animal carcass, but a human body; not somebody known to the Samaritan, but dear to someone. The ghastly sight and the lifeless body did not accurately reflect or portray the person he was. The beating stripped him of his humanity. The robbers derived the man of his clothes (v 30) and possibly everything he had, including his money and his donkey. The verb “stripped” was used of only one other person in the Gospels – Jesus Christ (Matt 27:28-31, Mark 15: 20). The man had both an unwanted messianic moment and a Pauline moment; besides being stripped the same way Jesus was (Matt 27:28, 31, Mark 15:20) he suffered “beating” (in Greek), the same as Paul’s flogging (Acts 16:23), wounds (Acts 16:33), and beatings (2 Cor 6:5).
The beating he suffered has been translated elsewhere in the Bible as “blows” (Luke 12:48), flogging (Acts 16:23), wounds (Acts 16:33), beatings (2 Cor 6:5), flogged (2 Cor 11:23), and lashes (2 Cor 11:24). The word can be singular or plural; in this case, the traveler, unfortunately suffered not a single blow, but numerous “blows” to the head, body, and all over that sent him crashing to the ground. The robbers beat him to the pulp, till he was unrecognizable. This was so that the man could not call for help, follow behind them, or call the police.
Verse 30 says the man was half dead, or hemithanes in Greek – the word hemi (from hemisphere) is half and thanatos is “death.” He could hardly move a muscle, lift a finger, or bat an eye. The man lay there motionless, helpless, and friendless. The text did not say he was barely alive, but emphasized that he was half dead. The burden to help or seek help was on every pedestrian who saw the man who was slipping into a coma, in such an extreme state of duress, and was defenseless against inclement weather, straying animals, and further cruelty.
A Hero Does Not Turn His Back on What is Happening
31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. (Luke 10:31-32)
Social psychologists Latané and Darley did a classic experiment on how the number of people present in an emergency situation would influence the likelihood of their offering help. They discovered that the more people present, the less likely they are to help. So they coined this unconcern the “bystander effect.”
In the actual experiment, when one bystander heard a voice crying for help and sounds of severe choking, 85 percent of the students who were alone rushed to help. When they thought another person besides them was present and can help, the percentage dropped to 65 percent. When they thought five were present, this dropped again to 31 percent.
http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/bystander_effect.htm
The Chinese say, “When three monks are present, no one gets the drink.” Another saying is that “The sheep is stolen when two shepherds are present.”
The priest and the Levite represented the experts of the Law – they were godly, religious, and moral, but they were also realists, veterans, and dodgers. They could smell an upcoming moral dilemma, a scriptural controversy, and a trick situation in the making from afar. So they had to use their wits, look for loopholes, check their liability, and cover their backs. The Law was not blind to the needy, but the system was. Everyone knows of a second interpretation of a text, the room for flexibility in their profession, and the presence of ambiguity, vagueness, and gray areas on an issue. The priest and Levite knew how to get around the letter of the Law. No fine print or do’s-and-don’ts was too difficult to pick apart. They were like the Law expert who was flawless in his answer and brilliant in his question to Jesus. The lawyer, who was schooled in the art of debate and rhetoric and of parsing words and dictionary meanings, asked, “Who is my neighbor?” In other words define neighbor (v 29)!
The attitude of the expert in the Law was no different from that of the priest and Levite when they saw the loner writhing on the ground. The actions of the priest and the Levite are the same in Greek. They crossed the other way, or antipareélthen (anti = “opposite” + parerchomai = “go”) in Greek. They went the opposite way – they reversed course and turned around or they walked backwards as fast as their feet could carry them; they didn’t pass on the right or left side or even hop, skip, jump, or step over him. The two men did not bother to come close, find out, know more or get involved. They did what was unspeakable, ingenious, and original – the Greek verb “passed by” (vv 31, 32) appears nowhere else in the Bible.
The poor man was somewhat unfortunate but the two had much at stake. The thought of having to cleanse themselves ritually if the man was dead and if the body was a corpse did not appeal to them. Corpses were considered unclean and defiling in the Old Testament. Whoever touches the dead body of anyone would be unclean for seven days. He must purify himself with water on the third day and on the seventh day; then he will be clean. But if he did not purify himself on the third and seventh days, he would not be clean. (Num 19:11-13) Too troublesome! After all, who wants to revisit Jerusalem for the ceremonial cleansing after just visiting there?
A Hero Does Not Harden His Heart to What is Happening
33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.' 36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” 37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:33-37)
On August 8, 2004, the Vietnamese community of Westminster, California, celebrated one of the kindest and bravest acts performed by a stranger on them. On November 13, 1985, ninety-six Vietnamese refugees despaired for their lives and their families when the engine of the boat carrying them across the South China Sea went dead. The boat people, crammed onto the rickety boat, could see a tropical storm headed their way. For four days they had watched as ships passed by - first one, then two, and even fifty, but none would stop to rescue them.
When the fifty-first ship passed, the refugees waved, screamed, and clamored in vain as before. The South Korean fishing ship traveled on but turned around ten minutes later to save them. On board the ship, Jeon, a captain employed by Koryo Wonyang Corp. for 16 years, was returning from the Indian Ocean with 25 sailors and more than 350 tons of tuna. As Jeon's ship, the Kwang Myung 87, approached them, the captain could see the dire straits the people were in. He called the sailors together because it was against company policy to pick up boat people, but Jeon told them he would take responsibility. The sailors told Jeon they were with him. Many years later did the refugees know what had happened to Jeon. The shipping company fired him for picking up the boat people, which was against the company’s rules. He could not find another captain's job, and he survived by using his savings and by helping out at friends' businesses.
On August 8, 2004, nineteen years after the dramatic boat rescue, hundreds of people in the Vietnamese community of Westminster repaid the debt. They honored the ship's captain, Je Yong Jeon, after survivor Peter Cuong Nguyen managed to track him down.” Nguyen said, “He has the biggest heart. Without his rescue, there would be no today. We would have been dead.” Jeon, now 62, shrugged off the compliments, saying, “If I wasn't there, other people might have done the same thing that I did. As a fisherman for 25 years, I've caught a lot of fishes. And during the 25 years, it was with God's grace that we found the boat people and were able to save all of them.” (Los Angeles Times, August 9, 2004 “Fishing Captain Who Saved 96 Boat People in '85 Is Honored”)
In Jesus’ story the one who finally helped the loner was a Samaritan. The parable has traditionally been called the Parable of the Good Samaritan for an apt reason. A good Samaritan was an oxymoron to the Jews. The Samaritans were the offspring of Assyrian settlers and Jewish northerners after Israel, the northern kingdom, fell in 722 BC (2 Kings 17:24). They were also despised because they were not considered the cream of the crop. The very bright or worth taking were exiled into the conquering nation’s service (2 Kings 25:12).
The body language is obvious. The robbers (with their hands) had stripped the neighbor of his clothes and beat him (v 30), the priest and Levite ran away (on his legs), but the Samaritan had a heart of compassion. He felt pity for the loner. The man was right in his way and right under his nose. He couldn’t help but have a sick feeling; he was about to vomit and throw up at the sight of the foul-smelling blood-covered man. The Greek word for “took pity” or “had compassion” is splagchnizomai, the movement or call of the bowels. The churning of bad diarrhea in the Samaritan’s stomach started when he saw the man. He could not control or suppress his feelings and sympathy for the helpless stranger. When nature calls, one must act on it.
So the Samaritan went to the victim, not away from him, stayed on and did not stray from the path, and bandaged his wounds. The distance and direction of the three groups of people could not be any starker in contrast. The robbers “went away” (v 30) or with the Greek preposition “apo/from” (aperchomai or “went from”); the priest and Levite (vv 31, 32) “passed by the other side” (antipar-erchomai) with the prepositions “opposite” (anti) and along (para); and the Samaritan (v 33) “went pros/to” (proserchomai) to the man or with the Greek preposition “to.” They share the same root word (erchomai), but the first and the last words are strict contrast. Also this is the only time the word “bandaged” or “bound” is mentioned in the Greek New Testament. The Greek word is katadeo (v 34) or “bind up,” not just “bind.” As he wrapped the wound, he took care not to bind it too tight or too loose but to make sure the man’s bleeding had stopped. Next, he poured oil and wine on the wound to clean it.
Not only did the Samaritan have compassion and care on the man; he also had commitment. He could not do everything by himself, but he helped the nameless man as much as he could and did all that was in his power. He had run out of money to cover such an expense; so he promised the innkeeper to pay the bill on his return trip. “Look after” (v 35) is an imperative. The Samaritan committed his time, money, and attention – his touch and contact - to someone who despised him.
Conclusion: A hero conquers the mental fear he feels when he considers the actual fears the victims experienced. Faith without conscience or compassion or courage is weak and worthless. Someone has said, “One cannot define one's neighbor; one can only be a neighbor.” Haddon Robinson said, “Your neighbor is anyone whose need you see, whose need you are able to meet.” A neighbor is someone who says, “What is mine is God's and what is God's belongs to my neighbor because my neighbor belongs to Him.” (Bob Larson) Do you help people based on their merit or needs? Do you care about your well-being or the victim’s well-being? Do you contribute what you have or complain what you lack? Do you make the first move or wait for others to do so? Do you who attack your neighbors (like the robbers), avoid them (like the priest and the Levite), or assist them (like the Samaritan)?
Victor Yap
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