You’re Probably Not the Good Samaritan

I grew up with parents who were very dedicated to caring for those in need. My dad is a pastor, my mom is a social worker, and we grew up fostering lots of kids; six of my nine siblings are adopted. My parents’ values were passed on to me. I used to work as a criminal defense attorney for poor people accused of crimes. I am now the director of advocacy at Jericho Road, a community health center that cares for some of the most marginalized people in Buffalo, New York.

In law school it dawned on me that not everyone sees the world in this way. Many of my colleagues were just trying to land the job that paid the most, but were also quick to applaud my dedication to public interest law. First, when I was a public defender, and now, in my position at Jericho Road, people often tell me that I am doing good work. They tilt their head, smile, and say that I must be a good person.

Our health center is named after the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37). When Jesus was asked “Who is my neighbor?” he responded with a story about a man, dying on the side of the infamously dangerous road to Jericho. A priest passed by, then a Levite, and both failed to stop and help the dying man. Then a Samaritan walked by and stopped. He bound up the man’s wounds, put him on a donkey, and took him to an inn to rest and heal. “Who is the neighbor in that story?” Jesus asks. Clearly, it was the Samaritan man.

Sgraffito of the Good Samaritan, 1950s, Siegen-Wittgenstein, Germany. imageBROKER.com GmbH & Co. KG / Alamy Stock Photo.

I have spent a great deal of time thinking about this story, about a similarly dangerous route that many of our clients take to get to the United States, and about the Samaritan and why he needed the word “good” to precede his ethnicity and religious identification. I have also wondered why so many of us self-identify as the Samaritan.

You see, when Samaritans are mentioned in the Bible, it is often negative: they were religious outcasts, the people you wouldn’t invite over for dinner. Samaria was an area you tried to avoid. So, the word “good” was necessary. Knowing that, it doesn’t seem quite right to say that we – the pastor’s kids, the do-gooders, the nonprofit employees – are the Samaritan man in the story. Like the priest, we are already well positioned and even expected to care for those in need. Yet in Jesus’ parable, it was the outsider, the one pushed to the fringes, who did the right thing and, in turn, made that story one worth telling. Perhaps he understood what many miss.

I am convinced that this mandate to love our neighbor, to care for the needy, is less about us being good and obedient, and more about getting to experience God. It has been in those spaces – where I am supposed to be the one doing good, the one who stops and helps the dying man – that I have been the one cared for, the one transformed by a grace I never saw coming.

I experienced this grace again and again with my incarcerated clients, especially when all I could do for them was listen and bear witness. Like the time I had to tell a client that his mom didn’t want him living in her house anymore, knowing he would have to stay in jail simply because he had nowhere else to go on house arrest – but he thanked me profusely for coming to see him. Or the time my client told me he wanted to end his life and showed me the scar on his neck from the last time he tried. All I could do was sit and cry with him, but when he walked out of our little interview room and headed to his cell block, he turned back and said, “I feel much better.” It was while sitting in jail with my clients, having some unimaginably difficult conversations, that I experienced this devastating grace. It was a gift, perhaps of connection over shared brokenness, that took me out of myself and moved me to be better.

In a similar way, working in my current position has given me proximity to refugees and asylum seekers, and my time with them has transformed my perspective. It happened when an Ecuadorian family bravely volunteered to share their story with our local news, even as their neighbors were at town hall meetings spreading hateful narratives and advocating for their expulsion from the area. Every time I met with them, they gave me a bottle of water, a humble token of their appreciation, and always thanked “the people of Buffalo” for helping them start a life here. And it happened while watching refugees somehow still able to dance and sing in church even after experiencing atrocities in their home countries and losing almost everything. After so much trauma and having to start over in a place that wasn’t always welcoming, I saw faith, resilient joy, and a commitment to others. It moved and changed me.

At Jericho Road, we certainly want to do good and to care for the poor, but we also realize what an incredible position that puts us in. The people who so many push to the margins of society, the people who get targeted by our systems of oppression, the people who we want to look away from, those are the ones who change everything, who show us God’s love and grace – in quantities we would otherwise never experience. Whether it is the Samaritan we are told to avoid, or the man dying on the side of the road, it is often the people we least expect who are the ones that care for us in transformational ways. So really, I think that makes us the lucky ones, the ones on the receiving end, as we seek to love our neighbors.