In Luke’s telling of “The Good Samaritan,” an interesting and subtle dynamic has gone mostly unremarked. The narrative begins with an overconfident, almost recklessly eager lawyer scheming to draw Jesus into an argument. The lawyer reckons that he can lure Jesus into making statements that will deny the Law by which Israel lives.

He intends to deprive Jesus of credibility in the eyes of the people. If he is more than minimally successful, he might cause Jesus to put himself in jeopardy with the authorities. The lawyer, however, underestimates Jesus’ legal and rhetorical skills.

Jesus deflects the challenge. He exploits his inquisitor’s ego, inviting him to answer his own question. The lawyer takes the bait and disadvantages himself. Jesus now becomes the one with authority to validate any answer given, and the lawyer goes from being an expert to being a student (disciple?). This inversion is the embarrassment that prompts the lawyer to try and justify himself.

His attempt to save face comes in the form of another question, which presumes again that Jesus’ answer will conform to an established pattern of rabbinical argument. This has to be the presumption, because the only hope of “justification” open to the lawyer is an argument in which he can show himself Jesus’ superior. Having been “aced” on the initial exchange, he plans to volley his way back into contention in the court of public opinion.

Once again, he underestimates his adversary.

For the second time Jesus refuses the invitation to argue. Instead of offering a definition or definitions that would be open to legal nitpicking, Jesus tells a story.

This move from argument to storytelling is a paradigm clash. So far as I can tell, there is no other instance quite like it in the Gospels. The move has received attention from W.G. Kirkwood who notes, “one can readily question the validity of each successive, general claim in the development of an argument or explanation and thus defend against its eventual conclusion …” It is much more difficult, however, “to dispute the highly particular events set forth in a parable,” especially if it should happen to be a fiction relating a non‑necessary sequence of unique events (Kirkwood, 68).

The shift from argument to storytelling alters the mode of inquiry in the ongoing dialogue. Argument of the sort called for by the lawyer springs from the careful analysis of texts and the application of texts to situations arising in everyday experience. In order to argue well, there must be distance between oneself and the issue being considered. This distance permits the inquirer to discern the essence of the situation and to analyze and evaluate all relevant principles.
When all facts and precedents are in hand, they can be sifted by accepted canons of reason and a qualified expert can then make recommendations to guide the lives of ordinary people.

Unlike argument, storytelling works to reduce the distance between auditors and the issue under consideration. Storytelling invites auditors to identify with one or more characters in a story, and this identification can evoke a “fleeting experience of a given mood or state of awareness” with which the listener is unfamiliar. This mood or awareness can convey a sense of newness, which, though unexpected and sometimes unnerving, can be refreshing. But the mood or awareness is insufficient in itself to effect a permanent change in a person. It remains “for the listener to come to fully possess that state of mind through sustained acts of discipline” (Kirkwood, 66).

Jesus knows that people cannot be won by rational arguments for new ways of living. No matter how well‑crafted, arguments lack the power to touch human hearts. If we are to see as God sees and live as God would have us live, we must dwell, however temporarily, in the kingdom that has come near to us. The only way this can happen is to find oneself in a story.

Argument is the province of experts who must be carefully trained and credentialed. It is a newer and in some ways more powerful communication paradigm. Storytelling is and always has been the discourse of ordinary people. It is, as Walter Fisher has shown, inherently rational and democratic.

When Jesus tells of the unfortunate traveler and those who shared the road with him, the lawyer’s professional credentials cease to have meaning and he is only one more person in the crowd.

There is also a certain ethos that comes into play every time one hears a story. It springs from the listening context in which stories are first heard. These stories are told by parents and other beloved authority figures. Thereafter, the mantle of their authority descends invisibly on other storytellers, and auditors are turned inescapably toward childhood.

In refusing the invitation to argue, Jesus places the lawyer and all his hearers in the role of children and learners. And like a good teacher checking the comprehension of the class, Jesus asks his inquisitor at story’s end to say which of the travelers became neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of thugs. The lawyer knows the answer, but cannot bring himself to say “Samaritan.”1 He cannot or will not allow himself to identify with one so despised, and failing this, he spurns the opportunity to convert his new awareness into new possibilities for himself and the world in which he dwells.

Luke uses the lawyer’s failure to challenge his own auditors. We chuckle as the lawyer gets his comeuppance and watch silently as he refuses the invitation to new life. But his opportunity is also our opportunity, and his failure cautions us to think twice before refusing Jesus’ invitation.

Endnotes

1.  Clarence Jordan is unsurpassed in understanding and conveying the lawyer’s dilemma in The Cottonpatch Version of Luke and Acts.

Now if you had been the man held up by the gangsters, which of these three—the white preacher, the white song leader, or the black man—would you consider to have been your neighbor?

The teacher of the adult Bible class said, “Why, of course, the nig—I mean, er…well, er…the one who treated me kindly.”

Jesus said, “Well, then, you get going and start living like that!”

Works Consulted

Fisher, Walter R. Human Communication As Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1987.

Jordan, Clarence. The Cottonpatch Version of Luke and Acts. New York: Association Press, 1969.

Kirkwood, W.G. “Storytelling and Self-Confrontation: Parables as Communication Strategies.” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 69 (1983): 58–74.