Fearful to Faithful
November 2008
by Audrey West
The morning headlines brought news of half a dozen troops killed in Iraq, two women executed in Afghanistan, a homeless man arrested for conning the elderly woman who lives down the street, a teenager shot in a gang-related drug deal, and a local school official charged in a road-rage incident. It was enough to make us want to stay inside with the doors tightly locked. Before we were able to take comfort in our safety, however, we discovered that even this “barricade solution” was no guarantee against the frightening world outside. That same day, the television news reported that a local man, drinking his morning coffee with his wife at their kitchen table, was murdered when two would-be robbers burst through the door and shot him.
Is nobody safe? How are we supposed to protect ourselves from the terrifying things that are happening all around us? What is this world coming to?
The good old days?
It is tempting to assume that the realities of today’s society make us more vulnerable than previous generations were, giving us more reasons to be afraid than our parents and grandparents were. After all, headlines from a half-century ago did not frighten readers with reports of terrorism, homelessness, gangs, drugs, and road rage. Back then—not only in rural communities, but in towns and even cities across the United States—people slept in their houses with the screens unlatched and the back doors unlocked. The world was much safer in those days.
Or so we like to believe.
Digging a little deeper, however, we might recall that there was plenty to fear even 40 or 50 years ago. In the time between World War II and the Vietnam War, for example, my own extended family built a cellar in my grandmother’s backyard. We called it the bomb shelter, and we stocked it with canned goods and bottled water, just in case we needed to take cover there for a lengthy period of time. At school, my friends and I practiced hiding under our desks, as if the laminated tables could shield us from a nuclear weapon launched from halfway around the world. Sometimes I wondered whether children in Russia were doing the same things.
Closer to home, legalized racial segregation was still the norm in some places, and it was not uncommon to hear warnings (from both directions) about venturing across to “the other side of the railroad tracks.” Our fear of the “other” is nothing new.
No news is new news
If newspapers, magazines, and cable television had been available in the first century, the earliest Christians would have been inundated with news reports certain to scare anybody: 18 people killed by a falling tower in Siloam, Stephen stoned to death by a mob, terrorist zealots stirring up trouble in the city of Jerusalem as well as in small towns and villages in Galilee. They would have heard that Apostle Paul and his companions had been caught up in a riot at Ephesus and had been run out of more than one town by citizens who accused these outsiders of stirring up trouble.
As for accounts of rebellion against Roman authorities, or ethnic clashes between Gentiles and Jews, or the animosity between Jews and Samaritans, news reports were unnecessary. The earliest followers of Jesus had personal experience of those conflicts, as we see clearly in the gospels and in many of Paul’s letters. Further, as had been true for most of its history, first-century Palestine was ruled by a foreign power that sent armies to maintain order, ensure the payment of taxes, and guarantee the control of the populace. It must have been a difficult time for many people, a time when peasants and wealthy landowners alike had reason to be frightened. The pervasiveness of fear may be one explanation of why the command “do not be afraid” appears more than 32 times in the New Testament.
Whenever fear takes over, it is easy to focus on the many ways that other people differ from us. At times these differences are merely interesting or entertaining, such as the sound of my spouse’s Southern drawl in the midst of dinner conversation with my California family, or of my rapid-fire accent at his parents’ North Carolina home. At other times, though, the differences are the focus of genuine tension and dread. In one of my classrooms recently, several students shared their experience of being lost in a nearby neighborhood where the residents “looked different from us.”
They were afraid, the students said, that they would be harmed for venturing into the “wrong place,” and they were greatly relieved to return to the safety of the seminary.
Imagine their surprise when one of their classmates, a young man from another country, told them that he was afraid for the same reasons, but not when he left the school. Fear came over him every time he walked into the building. People are afraid of one another, and the fear runs in both directions.
From stranger to neighbor
Jesus tells a parable that recognizes the reality of that fear and suggests a way past it. While taking a road trip, the story goes, a traveler is beaten, robbed, and left for dead in a ditch at the side of the highway. People pass by, but they do not stop to help. As the victim lies helpless at the roadside, one of his enemies comes along, administers bandages and first aid, carries the wounded traveler to a local bed-and-breakfast, leaves the innkeeper a pile of cash, and promises to return later to pay for the stay and for any necessary medical care (Luke 10:25–37).
We have learned from this Parable of the Good Samaritan that Jesus invites us to be like the Samaritan, to reach out to those in need, even if they are different from us. This is an important lesson, but the parable offers another teaching as well. It invites us to be like the traveler, to recognize and receive gifts offered, even when offered by the stranger. The parable is a two-way illustration of what it looks like to love one’s neighbor.
Considered from the perspective of the traveler, the story might be called the Parable of the Samaritan and the Man in the Ditch. (The titles are not original to Jesus’ parables; they are later additions by modern translators.) The traveler is in a dangerous area, a known hideout for thugs and thieves. Not only is his own life in jeopardy, but it would be foolish and risky for anyone to stop to offer help. We can imagine the man’s relief, then, when a priest and a Levite approach, two religious professionals with a holy reputation. “I’m saved!” our traveler thinks to himself. But he loses hope as each one walks by. The traveler is stuck in a frightening place, longing for a friend, hoping against hope to be rescued. Just when the situation looks bleakest, God sends a most unlikely ally: a Samaritan.
The man in the ditch would not have been happy about this turn of events. From his perspective and from the perspective of the Jewish followers of Jesus, Samaritans were unclean. They had strange ideas about God and about what is holy, they did not worship correctly, they lived in separate towns and neighborhoods, they did not share the same ideals and practices with the Jews. Because of their mutual prejudice, many Jews and Samaritans despised and feared one another.
Perhaps we are not far removed from that experience. We have our own “Samaritans,” people who differ from us in nationality, ethnicity, religious faith, customs, economic status, education, political party — and whose differences evoke our fear and sometimes our intolerance. These are the last people from whom we expect to receive anything, the folks about whom we might think if we needed assistance at the side of the road.
These are the people Jesus calls our neighbors.
A way through the fear
The impulse to reject others due to our fears or preconceived ideas about them runs counter to Jesus’ teaching; the man in the parable would not have escaped his terrifying situation if he had been unwilling to receive the help of the Samaritan. When fear is the driving force behind our choices, however, it is difficult to recognize the gift represented by the stranger.
This is not to suggest that God removes us from all danger, or that we should blindly trust everybody and not protect ourselves in situations of real threat. After all, when Jesus sends his disciples to share the Good News, he instructs them to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). It is to suggest, however, that our lives are given to us for the purpose that we might love God by loving one another, not so that we might distance ourselves from others on account of our fear. Perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18).
Jesus is prompted to tell the parable of the Samaritan and the man in the ditch when somebody asks what one must do to inherit eternal life. The answer? Love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as yourself. These two commandments, to love God and love neighbor, come right out of the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18), and they stand at the heart of Jesus’ teaching and his ministry. By illustrating these commandments with a story about a Samaritan and a Jew—opponents who respond to one another in unexpected ways — Jesus shatters the worldview of his followers and breaks open the grip that fear holds on our lives.
Guided by Love
Christ’s teaching is not a pie-in the-sky fantasy or ivory tower pronouncement, but a lesson already lived out in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. As the incarnate Son of God he experienced this world in all its fearful reality. His people rejected him and his closest followers denied him. He knows the many reasons we have to be afraid. Despite this, his life is testimony to a reality that is guided by love, and his death forever breaks the chokehold that fear has on this world.
No doubt the TV news will continue to be bad, for that is what gets ratings. Newspapers will continue to report events that feed the lie that we are safer when we hunker down behind locked doors, estranged from our neighbors both far and near. That is what sells newspapers. But God in Christ proclaims to us the good news, which encourages and empowers us to live into a different kind of reality.
Whenever we support food pantries and homeless shelters that serve the outcast in our communities, when we break bread with strangers and friends, when we work for justice for those who live on the “wrong side of the tracks,” when we pray for our enemies who live both near and far from us, when we receive with gratitude the gifts offered by those who are “other” to us, we take our stand on the side of the One who lived and gave his life so that we might live without fear. May we go and do likewise.
Audrey West is adjunct professor of New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology of Chicago and the author of the 2004-05 Lutheran Woman Today Bible study, “Everyday Surprises: The Parables of Jesus.” She lives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
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