The Good Samaritan

 As I listened to my different Come Follow Me podcasts this week I was struck by how many kinds of interpretations there are of the Good Samaritan parable from Luke 10:25-37. If I were teaching a Sunday School class right now, I might talk about the different ways of interpreting this parable. Here are some of them.

1. The simple interpretation:  The simplest interpretation is the one we learned in primary (or junior Sunday school).  The lawyer asks Jesus "who is my neighbor" and by telling the parable, Jesus is answering that question.  The lawyer gets it, so that when Jesus asks, "Which of these three...was neighbor to him that fell among the thieves?" he answered, "He that shewed mercy on him."  That's it.  Your "neighbor" is anyone you come across who needs help. 

2. The cultural interpretation: This is the interpretation that emphasizes that cultural difference and expectations between the groups in the story.  The people who ignore that man who is injured are Jewish religious leaders who should have had a stronger moral obligation to help someone in need, the priest and the Levite. They did not stop to help because of either indifference or fear that by helping the man they might become ritualistically unclean preventing them from performing their ecclesiastical duties. The man who helps the injured person is from a group shunned by Jesus' audience. In this interpretation, Jesus is condemning the religious leadership of the Jews of his day and teaching the lawyer to be more inclusive in his charity and less concerned with religious convention.

3. The metaphorical interpretation, the plan of salvation: In this interpretation all of us are the man who fell among thieves.  Jerusalem represents the pre-earth life, and Jericho represents earth life.  When we come from pre-earth life we encounter sin for the first time and it leaves us abused and near spiritual death. The law of Moses, represented by the Priest and the Levite, has no power to save us, but Jesus, represented by the Samaritan, comes and heals us with his oil (representing his Messiahship) and with wine (representing the atonement).  He  brings us to the inn, representing the true church, where we can stay and heal knowing that the Lord will return again and settle all debts. Greg Halverson of the Unshaken podcast attributed this interpretation to Origen, an early Catholic Father.

I think the third interpretation is intriguing, but I think the first and second are most powerful.  We can , at separate times in our lives, see ourselves in each of the roles in the story.  Sometimes we are the man who is attacked by thieves and find ourselves battered and unable to help ourselves.  Sometimes we are the thieves that leave others near spiritual death by a thoughtless word or act.  Sometimes we are the self-righteous ones who pass by those in need and sometimes we are the good Samaritan who stops to help. Sometimes we are the innkeeper, charged with caring for the more long-term needs of those the Lord has rescued from death with faith that we will eventually be repaid for our efforts. This is one of my favorites of the parables, and one that always causes me self-reflection.

Mark 7-9 and some Matthew

 Some weeks I feel like I have to stretch to find something interesting to blog about in this week's Come Follow Me reading, but this week there is so much I won't be able to cover it all. 

First of all, I am beginning to have more respect for the Gospel of Mark.  I had always thought of it as the abbreviated gospel, since it is the shortest and usually most free from commentary. We don't see much "thus we see,"  in the book of Mark.  Even though Mark is a "just the facts" kind of writer, I was impressed with the way he arranges his narrative to each principles.

My first example is in Mark 8, starring in verse 22.  A blind man approaches Jesus and asks to be healed.  Jesus takes him out of town and then spits on his eyes and asks what he could see.  He said he saw men, as trees walking (v.24).  Then Jesus put his hands on his eyes again, and he can see clearly.  

Immediately Mark recounts Jesus' question about "Who do men say I am" (v. 28) and Peter declares, "Thou art the Christ." (v. 29).  In vs 31, it says that Jesus "began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and ...be killed and after three days rise again."  Peter can't handle it, and rebukes the Lord, and then Jesus rebukes Peter.  

I don't think that the story of the blind man and the story of Peter were put together by accident. The healing of the blind man is the only account of someone being healed in stages. I think is foreshadowed Peter's progression.  In vs 29 Peter declares that Jesus is the Christ.  He is beginning to see, just as the blind man could see a little after his first administration.  But Peter is not yet seeing things clearly because he rebukes Jesus when Jesus says he must die.  Just as the blind man regained his sight in steps, Peter was coming to understand Jesus' mission in steps. 

The next major story is the mount of Transfiguration.  So much of this story harkens back to the Old Testament Tabernacle.  The tabernacle was the dwelling place of God on Earth, and when God was present it was overshadowed by a cloud.  We see the same elements here.  Peter suggests building tabernacles for the three exalted beings.  The cloud is there representing the presence of God.  Where as the Old Testament Israelites were not able to go into the holy of holies when the cloud was over it, this time, Peter, James, and John were invited into the cloud and heard the voice of God.   For members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, there is a bunch of temple imagery here.

Finally I want to jump to Matthew 16: 16-17. Jesus asks the disciples whom men think he is.  They respond that people think he is John the Baptist or one of the prophets.  Then Jesus asks whom they think he is.  Peter responds by declaring "though art the Christ." Jesus says "flesh and bone hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in Heaven."  Several podcasters mentioned that "the coasts of Caesarea" where this exchange takes place was a center of pagan worship.  One interpretation of the phrase "flesh and blood hath not revealed it.,," is that it is referencing the pagan practice of killing and animal and looking at its entrails to divine the future. If there were, indeed, people in the city offering to divine a prophecy through this kind of augury, it was no wonder that Jesus said that "flesh and blood" (i.e, the flesh and blood of dead animals used in augury) was no source of true revelation.  

So there are my favorite tidbits from this week.  Like I said, there was much more I could have written.  

Judas Iscariot

 The creators of The Chosen have short Youtube videos about different Biblical characters depicted in their drama. I was watching one while exercising this week and the narrator commented that Judas' name was actually "Judah" in Hebrew.  Of course I should have realized this before.  All the masculine Hebrew names that end in "ah"  in Hebrew end in an "s" in Greek because the "ah" ending sounds feminine in Greek. When the narrator made the comment, it created a cascade of ideas in my mind. 

All through the Old Testament we saw that someone's name is significant in the story.  One of the podcasters I listen to always says, "the name is the sermon".  Joshua means, "Jehovah Saves" and Joshua saved his people in the promised land. "Jacob" means "He supplants" and he ended up supplanting his older brother as heir to his father. I never have figured out if their names were changed in the storytelling to match the story, or if it was just divine intervention/inspiration at the time of their naming. 

What if Judas/Judah Iscariot is called Judah in the story because he represents the house of Judah, i.e. the Jews and their treatment of Jesus?  I have never heard anyone make this supposition before but I think it fits pretty well. 

What do we know about Judas?  He was one of the original twelve (Matt 10:2-4) but was not from Galilea like many of the other apostles (some scholars think Iscariot, means man of Kerioth, a town in Judea, not Galilea). He kept the purse (John 13:29) i.e. he was in charge of managing at least some of the group's finances.  He opposed Mary's waste of the ointment, (John 12 3-5) claiming it should be sold and given to the poor. John thought he was a thief (John 12: 6). He betrayed Jesus to the Jewish leaders for 30 pieces of silver (Matt 26: 14-16) John suggests that Jesus knew what Judas was going to do (13:27) and did not try to stop him. He indicated to the mob who Jesus was with a kiss (Matt 26:48-49).  John later felt remorse for what he did and killed himself (Matt 27:3-5).

How might these actions reflect Jewish response to Jesus?  Just like Judas, the Jews originally accepted Jesus and many followed him.  Then, like Judas, they seem to become distracted by the things of this world. John suggests that after Jesus fed the 5000, the Jews they wanted him to keep providing food from heaven (John 6) and when he didn't, but instead spoke to them "hard sayings" (John 6:59) they stopped following after him. Like Judas, they were focused on what they could get from Jesus materially instead of spiritually. Like Judas, the Jewish people betrayed Jesus by working through authority figures. Just as Judas approached the Jewish leaders to betray Jesus, the Jewish leaders used the Roman government to cause his execution. As Judas, once part of the inner circle, betrayed his master, the same Jews who had welcomed Jesus when he fed the 5000 and made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, later cried out, "Crucify him." Finally, as Judas ended up paying for his betrayal with his life, the Jews as a nation suffered much persecution for centuries because they were seen as the group that killed Jesus.

This may be bit of a stretch, but I think that (particularly) Matthew and John used the figure of Judas to represent all of Judah and their betrayal of Jesus.  I think they did this because it is easier for us to understand the relationship between two men than between one man and a whole nation.  Readers feel Judas' betrayal poignantly, and so we can understand the betrayal of the whole nation more clearly.  As it says in Zachariah 13:6 "And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends."  Judah, who was once Jesus' friend, represents the house of Judah, who should have been Jesus' friends.