Who is a Good Samaritan?
Who is a Good Samaritan?
During the aftermath of the school shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, several headlines have named Kaylub Giamanco as a Good Samaritan for killing Griffin J. John II. In these early days after the killings it’s impossible for anyone who wasn’t there to appraise Giamanco’s actions, so I won’t do that here. However, in light of the headlines, we do need to take another look at the parable we call The Good Samaritan. As we seek to comfort those who grieve and care for those who are wounded, we have been given an opportunity to imagine how we each embody the spirit of that story.
In Luke 10, Jesus tells this parable in response to someone who knows the commandment to “love your neighbor as you love yourself,” but wants to justify counting certain people out of the category of neighbor. Answering the person’s question, Jesus tells them of someone being robbed and thrown in a ditch to die. Two good people walked by the person in the ditch before a member of a despised minority (a Samaritan) stopped to help. Jesus finishes by asking, “Who was the neighbor to the one who was robbed?”
In the context of the story, we’re invited to wonder who we accompany in their time of need, and who we’ve cut out of our circles of care. We’re also invited to ask what helpers we haven’t noticed, because we’re only looking for one kind of good person. The story is meant to puncture our myths about good guys and heroes, not reinforce them.
If we’re looking to embody the Neighbor Samaritan, we shouldn’t be looking at the people in the headlines. We might, instead, think about the people who are even now still responding to the aftermath of this event – the medical personnel, the professional cleaners, the chaplains, the teachers and therapists and social workers, and the regular folk who are holding hands and making casseroles. There are so many good neighbors in this story.
When we're looking for examples of Samaritans, we also might think about the people who get left out, because we’ve decided they’re not good people. I think about the children in that Special Needs classroom (which once included Griffin J. John II), and the ways we as a society too often classify them out of our circles, because they’re not seen as good or productive. This is an opportunity to notice the lack of resources allocated for Special Needs students, and the fact that courts seem to be returning us to a time when people with disabilities will once again be shunted into institutions where they can be treated as Samaritans, out of sight and out of mind.
The question that prompted Jesus to tell the story we call The Good Samaritan was, “Who is my neighbor?” The invitation from Jesus was to see neighbors everywhere and in everyone, to stop dividing the world into good guys and bad guys. This story is actually an invitation to stop looking for a Good Samaritan, and instead start looking for all of the people who could be our neighbors.
In the midst of this moment of grief and hurt, my prayer as always is a prayer of gratitude for our churches who are being the neighbors God needs in the world today. Thank you for being the Church for this time and this place.
Blessings,
Tyler
