The Subversive Kingdom — A Sermon on Luke 10:25-42
Scripture: Luke 10:25-42
Date: 2019-07-28
Peace to you all — peace is so important today.
Today’s topic is “The Subversive Kingdom,” from Luke 10:25-42 — the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan and the story of Martha and Mary. Read separately, these texts are positive: the Samaritan teaches hospitality; Martha and Mary teach choosing the better part. Nothing especially subversive about them.
Yet when read together — as many New Testament scholars suggest — the texts take on a different flavour. The narrative of Martha and Mary is, in fact, a continuation of the Good Samaritan story. Both begin with a negative figure (I will explain), both end in acceptance, and both are unique to Luke’s Gospel.
The Good Samaritan Parable
The parable opens with a lawyer testing Jesus: “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus turns the question back: “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” The lawyer answers: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and your neighbour as yourself.” Jesus says: “You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live.” The lawyer, wanting to justify himself, asks: “And who is my neighbour?”
Then the parable: a man — likely a Jew — goes down to Jericho and falls among robbers. He is beaten and left half-dead. A priest and a Levite pass by; both cross the road. The priest may have been on duty at the temple, or worried about purity laws (it would have been wrong to touch a corpse before officiating in the temple). Some commentators argue that with 18,000 priests divided into 24 shifts, they could surely have spared themselves — and that the parable rebukes anyone who would prioritise religious status over human need.
Then a Samaritan comes along. He sees the wounded man, has compassion, pours on oil and wine, bandages the wounds, places the man on his own animal, takes him to an inn, and pays for his care. The next day he gives the innkeeper two denarii: “Look after him; whatever more you spend, I will repay when I return.”
The Samaritan-Jewish Relationship
In Luke, Samaritans appear several times. From the Jewish perspective, the historical background goes back to 722 BCE when the Northern Kingdom fell to Assyria. The Israelites who remained intermarried with foreigners; their descendants were called Samaritans. To Jews, they were Gentiles. Jews would not eat bread baked by Samaritans, would not accept wheat passing through Samaritan territory, would not buy livestock slaughtered by Samaritans.
From the Samaritan perspective, however, the hatred was mutual. In the brief period of Jewish self-rule under the Hasmonean dynasty (around the 100s BCE), the Jewish high priest John Hyrcanus destroyed the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim around 112-111 BCE, declaring Jerusalem the only legitimate site of worship. Samaritans did not see it that way. Every Jew going up to Jerusalem remembered this historical humiliation.
That is why, in John 4, when Jesus meets the Samaritan woman, she is so concerned about the location of worship.
The Subversion
The contrast between the Samaritan and the religious leaders in the parable is stark. The deepest provocation: how could a Jew imagine needing help from a Samaritan? Yet that is what the parable says. So when, at the end, Jesus asks the lawyer “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell among the robbers?” — the lawyer can only say, “The one who showed him mercy.” He cannot even say the word “Samaritan.”
What the parable says: a person you despise — or who has long despised you — may one day become your help. Or in reverse: one day we may need to save them.
The Martha and Mary Story
In the next scene, Jesus and his disciples are walking toward Jerusalem. They pass through a village where a woman named Martha invites Jesus into her home. While Martha is busy with serving, her sister Mary sits at Jesus’s feet listening. When Martha asks Jesus to send Mary to help, Jesus instead praises Mary’s choice — “the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
The traditional reading is: listening to God’s word is the most important thing. Newer character-typology readings compare Martha and Mary’s personalities. But if we read this alongside the Samaritan parable, we get a subversive reading: in that culture, women were property. A woman’s role was domestic; her independence and identity were defined by her relationships to men. Mary sitting at Jesus’s feet — the posture of a disciple — was the posture of a man’s place in the household of God.
The Subversive Kingdom of God
Both stories were ultimately addressed to Luke’s reader: “most excellent Theophilus.” We do not know exactly who Theophilus was — only that he was a Roman official. Roman officials were generally wealthy: their positions were inherited or purchased (recall the story of Zacchaeus the tax collector). This “most excellent Theophilus” was also evidently a wealthy man who had a serious interest in the gospel and some knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures.
The story was meant to teach Theophilus: wealth, power, hierarchy — the very things Rome valued and prided itself on — would be broken in God’s Kingdom. In the Kingdom of God, all are equal.
