Putting ourselves in the shoes of a character in a parable has a long history of interpretation. For instance, the ancient church leaders read the parable as an analogy, meaning that each character symbolized someone in the real world. Our Vacation Bible School is going to study the parable of the Sower this week. As Jesus explains, the seed represents the word of God and the good soil symbolizes the people who hear God’s word.
But many biblical interpreters of the past also read the parable of the Good Samaritan as an analogy. The inn represents the church. Like the inn, the church is a place where people come to be healed. Jesus is the Good Samaritan who rescues people and then brings them to the church. That means that we are like the innkeeper. We have been trusted to continue the ministry of compassion that Jesus began.
This interpretation fascinates me.
Now this familiar parable takes on a whole new meaning! If we identify with the innkeeper, we realize that sometimes the opportunity to help others comes to us. We are called to practice acts of compassion in our everyday jobs. The example of the innkeeper also teaches us that it takes more than one person to lend a helping hand. It seems to me that these are important points to bear in mind.
Often we think of this parable and imagine ourselves as the Good Samaritan. Typically, we are encouraged to stop and assist a person in a car accident on side of the road. It is a good thing to lend a helping hand, but the truth of the matter is that every situation is not a choice between stopping or passing by on the other side. This idea is too simple to ring true in our complex world. From the homeless veteran sitting at the intersection to the media coverage of disasters all over the world, we see and hear of people in need on a daily basis. I don’t know about you, but I can feel overwhelmed; I can feel bombarded. If I am always identifying with the Good Samaritan, I feel helpless. How can one person meet so many needs? How can I stop for every single person on the side of the road?
I can’t; you can’t.
But Jesus calls us to go and do likewise! What then can we do?
Instead of comparing every situation to the Good Samaritan, it is helpful to think of ourselves as a community. The church really is like an inn. People come here to find rest and strength for their journey. During their stay, they meet fellow travelers. Even if you have walked a great distance by yourself, you are part of a community once you step foot into the inn. As a group of helpers, we can use our resources to address needs. Like the innkeeper, we are called to be good stewards of financial resources. We are trusted to spend our money and our time in ways that provide care.
When I was interviewing to be the pastor of New Dublin, certain members on the search committee expressed great excitement about a past partnership with a Presbyterian church in Merida, Mexico. I was told that strong relationships have been formed between families and individuals. I was very excited to see this for myself. During my first trip to their church, it was truly wonderful to see the joyful reunions between the Americans and the Mexicans. As people embraced, there was genuine love in everyone’s eyes. We visited people in their homes and our brothers and sisters graciously hosted us. Through “Spanglish” and hand gestures, we exchanged details about family members and gave updates about church programs. We rekindled our partnership.
One evening, our group met with their session about ways that we could strengthen the relationship between the two churches. By the end of the meeting, we had agreed to form an email prayer chain to maintain open lines of communication. I was grateful for the commitment to mutuality. This is not a charity project, but an ongoing and evolving partnership, which entails learning and sharing from both parties. This is not a case where we are the Good Samaritans; with our partners in Mexico, we are called to be part of the same inn.
In calling the church to be the hands and feet of the savior, God has charged us to continue the ministry of compassion by working as one community. May we be servants to those Christ calls into our midst; may we be found faithful when Christ comes again to see that those entrusted to our care are nursed back to health; may we all be good innkeepers together.
1. Taylor, Leaving Church, 135.
2. Ibid., 136.
4
Praying the Questions
THE MYSTERY
ADMITTEDLY, MY PRAYER LIFE has been inconsistent over the course of my life. When I was young, there were many days when I would wake up early just so that I could read my Bible. In the margins, I would scribble little prayers that were prompted by the particular text. I still have that Bible and I like to re-read those prayers, which are snapshots of my faith and my life from years gone by. The prayers are unsophisticated, but I try to be gentle with myself. More often than not, my intensity is evident; it is clear to me, even in looking back, that I was trying to be the best Christian that I possibly could. My dad likes to quote a line from the mystic, Kabir, when describing that time in my life: I was a slave to intensity.1
Years later, I think that I was motivated at least in part by a kind of bargaining with God. I was trying to earn blessings by my good behavior. While the blessings that I desired were quite juvenile, I remember thinking that if I did this or if I didn’t do that, God would give me exactly what I wanted. This attitude towards prayer lasted well into my adolescence. During my junior year of high school baseball, I was in a deep slump at the plate. I wasn’t even hitting the ball out of the infield. One game, I made a big demonstration of prayer, stopping to take a knee and bow my head as I approached the batter’s box. I still struck out!
As a pastor, I have encountered in other adults a similar view of a prayer as a bargaining session with God. There seems to be a kind of theology in which it is believed that the prayer will only be efficacious if the person is fervent enough or pious enough or any number of fill-in-the-blanks. Many people pray before stepping up to the plate, so to speak, and while it certainly seems natural to pray for oneself, the problem is that such attitudes towards prayer can imply a view of God as one who needs to be coerced, convinced, or cajoled. I think we need to think hard about the ramifications of such theology. In the verse just before he teaches the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus states emphatically, “Your Father already knows what you need before you ask Him” (Matt 6:8). This makes sense to me. Isn’t this part of what we mean by claiming that God is omniscient or all-knowing?
Perhaps what’s really going on is a kind of “magical” understanding of prayer. I understand “religious” belief as an idea about the Being (or beings) that are somehow beyond and greater than the human self. “Magical” beliefs would then be the attempt to manipulate those beings. For instance, I know another pastor who once told me that he had prayed away a rain storm. I looked at him in disbelief, not because he would pray for good weather, but because of the magical power that he assigned to his own prayers and, as a consequence, to himself. To put it another way, if prayer is magical, then is God omnipotent or all-powerful?
One thing is for certain: I am expected to pray with people as a pastor. This expectation goes far beyond Sunday morning worship, and rightly so. Faith spills out from the walls of the church, running into homes and hospitals, and even filling up baseball stadiums. I pray for people every day, and I am sincere about those prayers. But I do think that there is a danger that such expectations to pray in different places for different things could go to one’s head. (I might start believing that I can control the weather!) Though I recognize my role as a spiritual leader, I consciously resist the implication that my prayers are somehow more powerful than others. When people come to my office for prayer, I often point at the phone on my desk, insisting that is a regular phone and not a direct line to God! When asked by the farmers in my congregation to pray for rain, I printed a prayer in the bulletin and encouraged everyone to pray. I tried to stress that this rain prayer was not some kind of magic chant: it is something that we do together.
Yet