Jesus, Jazz, and Buddhism

A Parable for all People
Commentary 


Many of us -- myself much included -- are too busy much of the time.  We pass by strangers without caring about them because we have (what we consider to be) more important things to do.  Perhaps we don't want to intrude in other people's lives.

The parable of the Good Samarita can help all of us who are trapped in compulsive busyness and callousness.  In the words of a JJB columnist from China -- Songhe Wang -- it can help us call back our soul.  GO

The parable does this by reminding us that being kind to strangers isoften more important than anything else we can do.  It helps us overcome what people call the bystander syndrome.  This is the syndrome of standing by even as could help someone, because we don't want to stick out in a crowd or be perceived as different.

Walking with Jesus

The parable can also help us to walk with Jesus.  To walk with Jesus is to share in his journey, to share in his hopes and dreams, to share in his courage, to share in his belief that a single act of loving-kindness is more important than obedience to a law. 

For my part, I do not think a person needs to identify with the Christian religion in order to walk with Jesus.  Yes, being a baptized Christian can provide a beautiful and wonderful way of walking with Jesus.  I am a baptized Christian myself.  But many people in our world walk with Jesus without being baptized or being believers.  Some atheists walk with Jesus, too.

The Public Side and the Private Side

The parable invites us all to become Good Samaritans, each in our own way.  The Samaritan's actions had a public side and private side.  

The public side was something that others could see.  He put the man on his donkey and took him to the inn.  He left money for the man to be taken care of.  In principle, had we been there with our videocamera, we could have photographed these things.  We could have made a documentary.

But the activity of the Good Samaritan also had a private side.  It was something he felt inside his heart.   When he saw the man half dead on the road, he felt the man's suffering.  In feeling this way, he had an intuitive sense of the man's subjective states and he imagined himself inside the man's situation.  Psychologists call it state-sharing and perspective-taking.  Christians call it walking with Jesus.  Or to say the same thing, feeling with Jesus.

God's Openness

Christians believe that this kind of feeling is characteristic of God, too.  At least this is the case with Open Theists and Process Theologians propose.  They say that God is like the Good Samaritan, magnfified by infinity.  Indeed open theists such as Dr. John Sanders propose that this is a very biblical way to think.  Empathy, including divine receptivity to the pain of the world, is part of what open theists mean by the "openness" of God. GO

Process theologian make a similar point in a more cosmological way.  They say that the life of each living being on our planet and, for that matter, each living being anywhere in the universe, is an ongoing process of experiencing and responding to the world, and that at every moment of this process there is a reality -- very God revealed uniquely, but not exclusively in Jesus -- who is an ongoing activity of feeling the world.  God is, for process theologians, the unity of the universe itself, understood as an ultimate Life in whom the universe lives and moves and has its being.

We Become God's Hands and Heart

But back to the bloodied man who was beaten by the bandits.  As he lay dying on the road, alone in his pain, God was feeling the feelings of the bloodied man.  The man's pain was God's pain, too.  Would such ideas matter to him?  Perhaps so, sometime. 

But as he lay on the ground, the world needed someone who would serve as the hands and heart of God.  He met the openness of God through the openness of the Good Samaritan. 

In Jesus' time, we can well imagine that some people met the openness of God through his healing ministry, too.  Through his loving-kindness, his forgiveness, his receptivity to the pain of others, his impulse to help; and his willingness to act on that impulse, by healing others; he invited them, and us, to become healers, too. We become God's hands, God's heart.  Each one of us, in our own unique way.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan*
Luke 10:25-37 New International Version (NIV)


On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered, “‘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, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.  He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii[c] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”  The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

 Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”


* A "Samaritan" is a member of an ethno-religious group in ancient Israel related to Judaism.