by Jack Miles
Recall that the story is told to answer the question “Who is my neighbor?” in clarification of God’s commandment “You must love your neighbor as yourself.” In the context of Leviticus 19:18, “your neighbor” is not defined as anyone you come across. But “anyone you come across” is just the definition that Jesus gives in this story, and his definition is of a piece with the earlier, explicitly revisionist statement on which so much depends:
You have heard how it was said, “You will love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say this to you: Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he causes his sun to rise on the wicked as well as on the good, and he sends down his rain on the just and the unjust alike. (Matt. 5:43–45, italics added)
In the parable of the good Samaritan, Jesus gives an ethnic version of his earlier statement, as if to say of God, “He causes his sun to rise on the Samaritan as well as the Jew, and sends down his rain on the foreigner as well as the native.” But it is crucial to recognize that what is being promulgated, rather than ad hoc generosity toward an opponent, is uniform treatment of all. And this rule, new for Israel, is drastically new as well for God himself. It is a repudiation of the jealousy that he made his defining characteristic in the first words of his revelation at Mount Sinai:
I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. Thou shalt have none other gods before me. Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. (KJV; Deut. 5:6–10)
The God who now defines himself by comparing himself to the sun, which is not jealous of its rays but sheds them indiscriminately on all, including those who worship another god than him, has in effect given himself a new commandment: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s worshippers.
Can any greater change be imagined? Can this truly be the import of what Jesus is saying? What, in practical terms, would be the consequences if God himself were to so revise Leviticus 19:18 that there would no longer be any need to distinguish Israel from the other nations of the world? Jesus gave an answer to that question in a parable that rings changes on the verse that immediately follows the “love your neighbor” verse in Leviticus. That verse (19:19) reads with more coherence than might first appear: “You shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed; nor shall you put on a woven garment made of two kinds of yarn.” These separations—one breed of cattle from another, one kind of seed from another, and so forth—are a symbol, woven into the texture of everyday life, of how God has separated the people of Israel from the other peoples of the world:
I am the Lord your God, who have separated you from the nations. You shall therefore make a distinction between the clean and the unclean beast, and between the unclean and the clean bird. You shall not make yourselves abominable by beast or by bird or by anything swarming on the ground, which I have designated for you to hold unclean. You shall be holy to me; for I the Lord am holy, and I have separated you from the peoples to make you mine. (20:24–26)
The reference to love of neighbor at Leviticus 19:18 must be understood in this context; and so understood, its aesthetic unity with 19:19 becomes clear. Love of neighbor does not obliterate the distinction between the Israelite and the other but, in fact, expresses that distinction, for it is, above all, the Israelite neighbor who is to be loved.
But if that was God’s old regime, is it also his new regime? Teaching in Galilee, Jesus answered that question in the negative not directly, by speaking about the mingling of peoples, but indirectly, by speaking about the mingling of crops. In effect, he commented on Leviticus 19:18 by commenting on 19:19:
The Kingdom of God may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was sleeping an enemy came, sowed weeds among the grain, and fled. And when the young grain sprouted and began to ripen, weeds appeared as well. The owner’s workers went to him and said, “Sir, was it not good seed that you sowed in your field? If so, where do weeds come from?” He told them, “An enemy has done this.” And the workers said, “Do you want us to pull them out?” “No,” he said, “because in pulling out the weeds, you might pull out the grain with them. Let them both grow until the harvest. Come the harvest, I will tell the reapers: ‘Gather the weeds first, and tie them in bundles to be burned. Then gather the grain into my barn.’ ” (Matt. 13:24–30)
Asked privately by his disciples to give a fuller, less parabolic explanation of his meaning, Jesus complied:
The sower of the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world. The good seed is the children of the kingdom. The weeds are the children of the Evil One. The enemy who sowed it is the Devil. The harvest is the end of the world. The reapers are the angels. As the weeds are gathered up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of time. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his realm all who cause others to sin and all sinners, and then throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the upright shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. (13:37–43)
“The harvest is the end of the world,” he says, but, very significantly, the great separation will come only then. Until then, weeds will be treated like grain, sinners like the just, and, to return to the parable of the good Samaritan, a wounded stranger like a wounded countryman.
The parable of the sower and the seed is a tale that Jesus told to make sense, perhaps first to himself, of a shocking comment he had just made about his own family. He had been speaking in a synagogue when unexpectedly,
his mother and his brothers were standing outside and wanted to speak to him. A man told him, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside; they want to speak to you.” But his response to the man was “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” And gesturing toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matt. 12:46–50)
“The land is mine, I consider you just resident aliens,” God said in one of his darker moments. Jesus seizes that moment and radicalizes it. The point is not that Jesus’ human family means nothing to him as a man but that God Incarnate (who, significantly, never promises anybody a baby) is prepared to extend the precious privileges of family to all mankind regardless of consanguinity.
Under the old regime, Israel and its one God were separated in myriad ways from the other nations and their many gods, and the means of the separation were as old as the Sinai covenant itself. Under the new regime, there is still a separation, but the criterion for it is ethical rather than ethnic. As Peter, who fought hard against this unnatural idea, would later put it: “Now I understand that God does not play favorites. In every nation, whoever fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34–35). The criterion is in place, then, but the actual separation is to come at the end rather than at the beginning. God can still tell the difference between his friends and his foes, but he chooses not to act on the difference, and he commands those who would ally themselves with him to abstain from hostile action just as he abstains. He stops short, in other words, of giving himself the commandment Thou shalt not covet the Devil’s worshipers. In the long run, there is to be no sympathy for the Devil. Those who will not serve God will eventually be destroyed. But all the intermediate steps against evildoers—all the interventions that might accomplish the timely defeat of an Egypt or a Babylonia or a Rome—are dispensed with.
When acclaiming Jesus at the start of his career, John the Baptist used the same metaphor
—harvest as a last judgment—that Jesus uses in this parable. John said: “The winnowing-fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the grain into his barn. The chaff, however, he will burn in an eternal fire” (Luke 3:17). Jesus agrees with John about himself, but a question arises: How near is the harvest? At some moments in his preaching, Jesus, like John, implies that the harvest is at hand. At other moments, and the telling of the weeds-and-grain parable is one such moment, he implies that the grain has barely sprouted and the harvest is far in the future. However slow it may be in coming, the fact that weeds and grain are now to be allowed to grow up side by side, unchecked by the action of God or anyone acting in the name of God, resolves the crisis in the life of God.
HIS NEW PROMISE: VICTORY OVER DEATH
In God’s new regime as Jesus has preached it, the rule of fidelity to God in worship is secondary to the rule of kindness to strangers. That change, hinted at in the parable of the good Samaritan, was spelled out more explicitly in another Galilean parable that, like that of the weeds and grain, summons up a vision of how the Son of Man will finally judge his human creatures:
When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then will he seat himself on the glory throne. With all the nations gathered round him, he will separate people from one another just as a shepherd separates sheep from goats. The sheep he will place on his right hand, and on his left the goats. Then the King [note how interchangeable are “shepherd,” “Son of Man,” and “King”] will say to those on his right, “O blessed of my Father, come, take as your inheritance the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was a stranger and you took me in, naked and you clothed me, sick and you tended me, a prisoner and you visited me.” Then the just will say to him in reply, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you to eat, or thirsty and gave you to drink, a stranger and took you in, or naked and clothed you? When was it that we knew you to be sick or in prison and visited you?” And the King will answer, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for the least of these my brethren, you did it for me.” Then will he say to those on his left, “Depart from me, and be damned to the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his minions. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and your door was closed, naked and you left me so, sick and in prison and you came not to my aid.” Then they in turn will ask, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty, a stranger or naked, sick or in prison, and did not come to your aid?” Then he will answer, “Truly I tell you, whatever you failed to do for the least of these my brethren, you failed to do for me.” Then will they depart to eternal punishment, but the just to eternal life. (Matt. 25:31–46)
“I was a stranger and you took me in.” The kindness that defines the new covenant is kindness to strangers—like that of the Samaritan to the stranger whom he found wounded and naked and in need of food and drink. Those who perform this act bind themselves to God and will be rewarded at the Last Judgment. They themselves do not recognize as they perform it that it is a covenant act. They see it only as a human act. God, however, who makes no mention of the duty of worship, sees it as something more—something, indeed, rather mysteriously more—and it is his view that matters.
What the divine king says to the company of those who, during the entire course of human history, have been defined by their kindness to strangers is “Take as your inheritance the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world” (italics added). What inheritance was prepared for all mankind at the foundation of the world? What else but Earth itself, the open garden that Earth was before the Creator chose to confine the first couple in an enclosed garden? The king harks back to the moment when Earth was turned over to its human trustees, the moment when God said:
“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion.…” And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. (RSV; Gen. 1:26–28, 31)
The path back to that original kingdom, the kingdom prepared since the foundation of the world, lies, paradoxically, through anonymous and nondiscriminatory kindness. The just are not to segregate themselves from the sinners. They are not to attempt to distinguish the deserving poor from the undeserving or an innocent waylaid stranger from a wounded bandit who got what was coming to him. God can make these distinctions, and he will do so, at the end of time. But God’s people are not to make them in the interim, no matter how long the interim lasts.
If kindness and generosity, even and especially to strangers, are the defining virtues of the new regime, the defining vices are violence and envy, even and perhaps especially toward family. When Jesus, during the Temple confrontation that we have already considered, refers to the Devil as “a murderer from the start” (John 8:44), he alludes to the first murder in the Bible, a murder that Satan sought.
Now Abel kept sheep and Cain tilled the soil. Time passed, and Cain brought the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fatty parts. And the Lord favored Abel and his offering over Cain and his. So Cain grew wrathful, and his face fell. The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you wrathful, and why has your face fallen? If you mean well, will you not be accepted? But if you do not mean well, Sin crouches, a demon at the door, craving you. And will you master him? Will you?”
Cain said to Abel his brother, “Let us go out into the field.” And when they were out in the field, Cain set upon his brother Abel and killed him. (Gen. 4:2–8)
Death entered the world when, led on by the serpent, Adam and Eve disobeyed the Lord, and the Lord cursed them with mortality. Murder entered the world when Cain slew Abel, but did the Devil not play a role here too? The text is obscure, but there seems to be a moment when God and Sin fight for mastery over Cain. Only a few modern translations personify Sin, the crouching thing that God exhorts Cain to resist, but a well-established Jewish tradition, to which Jesus alludes, made just that identification. “God created human beings to be immortal,” we read in the Book of Wisdom, which reflects this tradition:
He made them as an image of his own nature.
Death came into the world because of the Devil’s envy,
as those who are the Devil’s discover to their cost.
(Wis. 2:23–24)
And as Cain discovered to his cost. Those who continue to reason as Cain did, Wisdom says, “do not know the hidden things of God” (2:22, italics added).
The moment when Jesus identifies the Devil as an actor in the last act of his own life is a moment when his brothers threaten his life as Cain threatened Abel’s. Their motive, like Cain’s, is religious. Jesus’ offense, like Abel’s, is the appearance—in his case, the claim—of an intimacy with God greater than theirs. To kill for religion (Cain) or to rescue without regard for religion (the Good Samaritan)—in contemporary terms, these are the alternatives. The Devil’s domain is defined as one of life-wasting rivalry, especially over religion, and even within the family. The Lord’s domain is defined as one of life-saving forbearance, especially with regard to religion, and even beyond the family.
Why did Jesus speak in parables like these? He did so, according to Matthew, who quotes Psalm 78:2:
to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet:
I will speak to you in parables,
I will utter things hidden since the foundation of the world.
(Matt. 13:35, italics added)
What is it that has been hidden since the foundation of the world? Matthew sees fit to make this comment just b
efore Jesus explains the parable of the weeds and grain. The new revelation is one of anonymity, nondiscrimination, the repudiation of rivalry, and—by no means least—the nonresistance that follows inevitably on that repudiation.
But innocent people will die if they do not resist! They may even die as John the Baptist died, his capital punishment turned into an obscene amusement for his oppressors. Does God not realize this? He does indeed; but it is because he does that he becomes human, subjecting himself to a death he could have avoided, pointedly refusing to defend himself, in order to make it clear both that such is truly the new regime that he wishes to establish and that, accordingly, he will not and must not intervene as he would have under his old regime. Were any mere prophet to deliver such a message, he would be rejected as a false prophet. Indeed, at the Transfiguration, Peter rebuked Jesus for saying just such things. Jesus responded, “Out of my sight, Satan!” (Mark 8:33), because Peter, like Satan just after Jesus’ baptism, was tempting him to turn back. What Jesus was saying was scandalous, given everything that God had said up to this point in his long history; but the scandal was intentional, and he remains prepared to pay its price even as he demands that his followers do the same. God’s promise, hidden since he laid the foundation of the world, is that by paying the same price, he will lead the world back past the murderous envy that the Devil introduced when he led Cain to murder Abel, back past the mortality that God introduced into the world when the Devil led Adam and Eve to disobey him, back to the world in which God had “created human beings to be immortal”—back, in a word, to paradise.
