Two Vessels

What do you see when you look at the picture above?

If you are like most people you probably just recognize two old broken down vehicles.

But there is something special about both of these vehicles. This picture was actually taken at an exhibit at the Houston Holocaust Museum.  In the picture we see two vessels: a train car and a boat.  They are two vehicles that are normally understood to be used for different purposes but these differences are only even more exaggerated when you understand the history of this specific train car and this specific ship.

The train car to the left is on display because it was used during World War II by the Nazi’s to transport victims of the holocaust to concentration camps, often leading to their tragic end. 

The vehicle to the right is a fishing boat that was used during the fall of 1943 by the people of Denmark to ferry the majority of their over 7000 Jewish neighbors to safety in Sweden, far from the threat of Nazi violence.

Two different vehicles.

Two radically different purposes.

In Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan three pedestrians approach the man left for dead on the side of the road: two religious leaders and a Samaritan.  Now to the average hearer in our times we would not notice much difference between the people who approached the man left for dead that day.  We would simply see this as a story where some people made right choices and others made wrong ones. Sadly not even the piety of the two less than sympathetic travelers would probably be a shock to most people today. 

But Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan was meant to create a sense of dissonance with its original hearers.  It was meant to create a ringing in their heads as they tried to understand how the hero in the story could be the enemy in their lives.  For the original hearers of Jesus’ story the picture that Jesus was creating would have given them a vision of two stark contrasting figures.  The great irony of the story is that the person who should have left the man for dead is actually the one who risks their own life and limb to restore the stranger to health. 

The great challenge of Jesus’ story continues to remind us that there are differences and then there are differences.  The original hearers of Jesus’ story would have seen the differences between the characters based on their religious or ethnic identities.  Jesus wanted to teach us to see a deeper difference based on their willingness to serve others.                                                                           

May we be the kinds of people who are slow to making judgments because of the differences we see on the appearances of others, and may we be the kinds of people who are patient enough to know that the differences that we make are differences worth making.