Why is the road to Jericho dangerous?

It’s a well-known story, perhaps the most famous of Jesus’s stories: The Parable of the Good Samaritan.

25 An expert in the law 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 neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

29 But wanting to vindicate himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 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 took off, 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 traveling came upon him, and when he saw him he was moved with compassion. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, treating them with oil and wine. 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 neighbor 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.” (Luke 10: 25-37)

Jesus is asked a question by a scribe, a learned person who knew a lot about the rules and regulations of Jewish life. In the ancient world, they didn’t have a tidy division between their religion and their legal system. So, the expert in the law was a religious person. The questioner wants to know:

What must I do to inherit eternal life? What’s the purpose of religion? What are the requirements?

Jesus responds with a question of his own:

What does the law say? What does the tradition say? What does our religion teach us?

And the scribe summarizes the law with two major commandments. Love God and love neighbor. Jesus affirms that this is the correct answer. But the scribe presses further:

And who is my neighbor?

So, Jesus tells a story. Again, a familiar story. A story about a priest and a Levite who both do not stop to help a person in distress. It’s a critique of religious leaders. They are too busy or too holy or too something to actually live their beliefs and show compassion. They are considered the righteous ones but pass right by the one in pain.

But the story doesn’t stop there. There’s more to the story because the hero of the story turns out to be a Samaritan. A marginal figure for the Jews of the 1st century. Someone who was ignored and even hated by Jews.

Jewish New Testament scholar, A. J. Levine notes that Jews were divided into three categories: priests, Levites, and Israelites. She suggests that Jesus’s audience would have been prepared for the third person to come down the road to be an Israelite, a non-priest, a regular person. She says, “To go from priest to Levite to the fellow who stops, who was a Samaritan, is like going from Larry to Mo to Osama bin Laden,” Levine said. “It’s unthinkable.” (see more here.)

It’s a radical point about the possibility of the people we hate actually acting like our good neighbors.

So the parable also expands our idea of who our neighbor is. It's not just the person who lives next door.

But the story doesn’t stop there. There’s more to the story.

When Martin Luther King Jr. preached about this parable, he provided yet another look into the truth it beholds. He suggested that the road to Jericho was a dangerous one, a treacherous place to be, a place full of crime. He suggested then that the priest and the Levite did not stop to help out of fear, thinking, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?”

One day a man came to Jesus, and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters of life. At points he wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew and throw him off base....

Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho....

Now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn't stop. At times we say they were busy going to a church meeting, an ecclesiastical gathering, and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn't be late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that "One who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body twenty-four hours before the ceremony." And every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jerusalem -- or down to Jericho, rather to organize a "Jericho Road Improvement Association." That's a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effect.

But I'm going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It's possible that those men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable." It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 miles -- or rather 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about 2200 feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the "Bloody Pass." And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked -- the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"

That's the question before you tonight. Not, "If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job. Not, "If I stop to help the sanitation workers what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?" The question is not, "If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?" The question is, "If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?" That's the question. Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you.
----Excerpts from Dr. King's "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech delivered April 3, 1968, Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters) Memphis, Tennessee.

I’d like to use King’s imaginative reading to extend the point further.

Many times we focus on the particular individual actions of these three people – the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan – without focusing on the systemic issue of the dangerous road.

Why is the road to Jericho so dangerous in the first place?

This focus on individuals and not systems can lead to what Bob Lupton calls Toxic Charity. As described on his website,

“At its core, Toxic Charity is trying to address chronic ongoing issues through one-way giving. It often looks like this: people with resources give to those who lack resources. This kind of giving approaches inequity as though the core issue is that people don’t have the same amount of “stuff.” Of course, we know that inequity is much more complex than an imbalance of resources. It’s a symptom of something larger. But Toxic Charity often ignores that complexity. As a result, it can end up making the recipients of charity objects of pity.”

Two examples of systemic issues in our current reality are racism and poverty.

What does this have to do with the Parable of the Good Samaritan? Well, we need good samaritans in the world! Don't get me wrong. We need folks who show compassion for others. But we also need to ask why the road to Jericho is so dangerous? Why do people keep getting hurt on this particular road? Why do people fall into poverty?

We need to help individual poor people and respond to the larger systems that create poverty.

Perhaps Jesus’s parable about the Good Samaritan is meant to raise all three of these issues for hearers.

It criticizes the religious leaders who did not show compassion.

It raises the possibility that our enemies might end up with the capacity to be our neighbors.

And it brings up the systemic issue of how a whole system might be contributed to the people of people getting hurt on the road to Jericho.

Father Abraham's Many Children Discussion Guide

If you are looking for a small group study curriculum, a discussion guide for Father Abraham's Many Children: The Bible in a World of Religious Difference is available here as a Google doc.

Father Abraham's Many Children reflects on the stories of three of the most significant “other brothers” in the Bible—namely, on God’s continued engagement with Cain after he murders Abel, Ishmael’s circumcision as a sign of God’s covenant, and Esau’s reconciliation with Jacob. From these stories, I draw out a more generous theology of religious difference so that Christians might be better equipped to love their neighbors of multiple faith traditions authentically.

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