Let's move beyond divisions into a broader sense of community | Voices of Faith
There is a parable of Jesus known as “the Good Samaritan,” and it goes like this:
A man was walking down a road from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell into the hands of thieves. The man was beaten, stripped, and robbed, left half-dead in the ditch. Along came a priest, who saw the man and passed by on the other side of the road. Then came a Levite, who saw the man in the ditch and passed by on the other side. And then came a Samaritan who saw the man and stopped. Moved with pity, the Samaritan went to him and bandaged his wounds. They then lifted the man atop of a donkey and led him to an inn to recover.
We often tell and hear the story with a focus on the extraordinary act of kindness offered by the Samaritan. Within our culture, we even have legislation that grants protections for helpers known as “Good Samaritan” laws and exceptions. The empathy and response is key to this character and the power of the parable. But there is something more profound within this story, and that is uncovered within the degree of animosity between the tribe of the hero and the tribe of the crowd listening to this story unfold.
As Bernard Brandon Scott tells it, this parable would have been told to a crowd of mostly Jewish peasants. They would have been familiar with this road and the risks going down it and many others just like it. Perhaps they even knew of someone who suffered an experience like this man in the story. The crowd sees themselves in the one who was preyed upon and abandoned. There was little trust between the community and the religious authorities, who had been corrupted by the occupying forces of Rome, so there is little surprise within the audience when the priest and the Levite keep on walking. The surprise is that the Samaritan stops.
At the time, there was a hostility between the Samaritans and Jews, which is what Jesus (himself a Jew) is playing at. The crowd expects that the third person to enter the scene will be the hero, and that the identity of this hero will look like them (this is what we all imagine of our heroes). But then, an enemy walks in and they don’t cross to the other side and keep on walking, they don’t stop over to kick him when he’s already down, but they stop and have compassion for the victim.
Within the imagination of the audience, this is exactly what they saw themselves doing, and the opposite of what they suspected a Samaritan would ever do. The power of the parable is pushing up against widely held sentiments and prejudices about “them” and “us,” imagining that “they” might actually care about anyone, let alone “us;” imagining that “they” might be more human than what “we” thought; imagining that “they” and “we” might have more in common than was believed. This is the power of the story, to reveal and reflect, and to hopefully reconcile.
All of this came to mind when I looked at the county voting maps across Ohio after the recent November election. Before the election, we were inundated with predictions of how each person, town, county would be voting. It all fell along the typical lines of tribe — party, geography, gender, etc. It fit the conventional wisdom held within each tribe: “us” and “them”; virtuous and foolish; forever and ever amen.
And after the election, conventional beliefs about counties, cities, parties, and identities — all of the distance between “us” and “them” — it just faded away into various shades of purple. Our neighbors aren’t our enemies (whether “they” voted like “us” or not). We don’t all have to think and believe alike to be kin in the first place, but my goodness, we have much more in common than the conventional narratives and authorities are trying to convince us.
The maps are just a glimpse of what we hold, but it is more than enough to begin to dismantle our assumptions. We have always had more than enough to imagine a shared future together. I’m grateful for stories and maps that remind us of what we already share, and invite “us all” to move beyond divisions and into a broader sense of community.
The Rev. Chris McCreight is minister of Hiram Christian Church and chaplain of Hiram College.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Move beyond 'us' and 'them' and toward community | Voices of Faith
