hello my friends Lee see camp here coming to you from my office in Nashville Tennessee I'm having to keep my voice down because there are some people wandering the halls who were not very happy with me about the little tacky poem I wrote yesterday on the blog about Columbus Day according to them it was very politically incorrect it was that it was politically incorrect according to those who are very anti political correctness or something like that I don't know you know when the token show were all about breaking down false dichotomies and well what about the false dichotomy of a Jewish New Testament scholar I know it sounds crazy but we've tried it and matter of fact it works out pretty fascinating professor AJ Levine who has been on our show a couple of times brilliant professor wonderful friend of the token show has been on the show several times and we thought you might enjoy this six minute lecture she gave recently on the god Songs episode on the Good Samaritan enjoy I get to talk to you for six minutes about the Good Samaritan we can do this let's take this off can I take this off here we go six minutes parables in general are not children's stories and they are not banal statements of the obvious there's an old line about religion that religion is supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable so if we hear a parable and we think isn't that nice or isn't that lovely we may be hearing it through our ears but we're not hearing it through first century Jewish years because those first century Jewish years knew that parables were designed to provoke or to indict which brings us to the Good Samaritan you know the story a lawyer comes up to Jesus they have a bit of a conversation and the lawyer says to Jesus at one point so who is my neighbor I used to think that was a very snarky question it turns out it's a very good question because we ask that all the time we need to know who the neighbors are they are the people who have the same rights and the same responsibilities as we do so neighbors are people are who can vote in our elections Canadians their neighbors they can't vote in our elections they have different rights and different responsibilities so it's actually a very good legal question but Jesus is not concerned about the minutiae of legality Jesus is concerned about love and he knows that Jewish law says not only you shall love your neighbor as yourself but you shall also love the stranger who dwells among you because you were strangers in the land of Egypt so the lawyer says who is my neighbor Jesus could have given him a discourse on what constitutes neighbor but instead he hurls a parable at him which means the lawyer is about to be indicted and Jesus explains how a fellow was going down to Jerusalem to Jericho Road by the way you always go up to Jerusalem and down from Jerusalem you could be on the moon you go up to Jerusalem but this fellow's going down and he's waylaid by bandits he's beaten robbed stripped and left left half dead in a ditch and he's wondering who's gonna help me so along the road comes a priest and the priest sees him and he walks by on the other side and shortly thereafter comes to Levite and he sees him and he walks by on the other side too countless commentators who know nothing about Judaism explained that the reason the priest and the Levite walked by the fellow in the ditch is because they're afraid if he's dead and they touch him or if he dies while they're attending him then they will become ritually impure because of having touched a corpse does that sound vaguely familiar nonsense nonsense there's no law preventing a Levite from coming in touch with a corpse and Luke gives them no excuse in neither diseases and no excuse would have mattered the best explanation I heard for why they walked by came from the Reverend Martin Luther King jr. and here's what King said King says I'm not sure what happened but here's what my imagination tells me it's possible said dr. King these men were afraid the priest and the Levite asked themselves if I stopped to help this man what will happen to me because there are bandits on the road but the Samaritan that's a different question the Samaritan asks if I do not stop to help this man what will happen to him and then King goes on to say if I don't stop to help the sanitation workers in Memphis what will happen to them and we know what happened to King because there are bandits on the road but the issue is here how do we ask the right question so what do we do we need to ask questions that first century Jews would ask every Jew knew back then if you had a priest and a Levite the third one would be an Israelite because Jews divided into three groups priests descended from Moses brother Aaron Levites descended from Lavy aarón's ancestor one of Jacob's kids and everybody else was in Israelite this is sometimes called the rule of three if you say two words you should be able to know the third so we're about to do token participation I am going to give you two names you are going to give me the third I don't think you can get this wrong we're going to try it twice for people my age Larry Moe curly Jews by the way I've only got six minutes be quiet father son well you can say Holy Ghost adjust dates you find Holy Spirit so if you have the first two you know of the third and all Jews knew back then and that if you said priest Levite the third one would be Israelite but instead you get priest Levite Samaritan to go from priest to Levi to Samaritan is like going from Larry to Moe to Hitler or father to son to Satan it was unthinkable today we think of Samaritans as people who help you by the side of the road we have Good Samaritan hospitals and Good Samaritan cars services but that's not who Samaritans were in antiquity and they weren't the oppressed minority either they were the enemy one chapter before our parable Jesus in the entourage are going to Jerusalem and they stop off in a Samaritan village and asked for hospitality and the Samaritans refused them hospitality because they're Jews and their faces set toward Jerusalem at this point James and John two of the Apostles in their apostolic best say to Jesus Lord shall we call down fire from heaven and destroy this village and Jesus has to explain that dropping a bomb is not the appropriate response to lack of hospitality so what do we do today when we hear this parable we think of ourselves as the Samaritan but in antiquity they actually refer to the parable as the parable of the man who fell among the robbers we're the person in the ditch and we might think with the Samaritan coming I'd rather die than acknowledge one of that group helped me and then it's even harder because we have to realize the face of the enemy is also in the image and likeness of God and the face of the person we think might kill us is the very person who might save our lives yes there are bandits on the road and yes it's dangerous but what Jesus is saying here is recognize that everyone is a human being recognize that the person who say you might be the person you think is the enemy you're not the Samaritan you're the person in the ditch who will save you and can you acknowledge that everyone has the possibility of doing that if you can do that the parable has worked on you professor Amy Jo Levine from Vanderbilt Divinity School thank you good professor [Music] [Music]