Samaritans and Tired Clerks
by
Edward Gordon
Ever hear about the
traveler who got robbed, beaten and left for dead on the side of the road?
People from his own community saw him but crossed the street and walked on
by. Eventually, a foreigner found him and picked him up. He took him to an
inn, cleaned him up and told the clerk to charge all the traveler’s
expenses to his own account until he recovered. If the plot sounds
familiar, it should: it’s the story of the Good Samaritan.
Like most people, I want
to believe I’d act like the Good Samaritan, given the same circumstances,
but I’ve never actually encountered someone in that condition. Where I
live, it’s uncommon to find people half-dead on the side of the road. The
road to Jericho is thousands of miles from my home. Or is it?
If we put on our spiritual
spectacles and look around, most of the people we pass by on the road to
Jericho are the people standing in front of us everyday. Think about the
tired grocery clerk whose attitude is in the toilet after five hours of
working on a register or the harried waitress who isn’t as friendly as she
could be. What about the server at the fast food restaurant who mistook
your name for “next” and didn’t even smile when he said it? Perhaps these
are the people we unwittingly cross the road to avoid. Perhaps these are
the travelers who need us the most.
When Jesus described the
traveler in the parable of the Good Samaritan, he said he was robbed,
stripped, beaten and left for dead. But so are the tired grocery clerks
and the harried waitresses, and these people represent all of us in one
way or another.
Everyday we encounter
people robbed of their self-respect by menial jobs that offer little more
than food on the table. We meet people stripped of their dignity by petty
bosses who insist on being flattered and brown-nosed. We find people
beaten down by the fact that if they quit their jobs, their kids will lose
their health insurance. Aren’t these people left for dead in a gutter of
cynicism just as sure as the Samaritan’s traveler was left for dead on the
side of the road?
Loving humanity doesn’t
have to mean moving to India and taking over where Mother Teresa left off.
It’s not about going far out of our way to serve others. More often, Good
Samaritans are the ones who compliment the waitress’s hairstyle and leave
a better than average tip. They respectfully address the fast food worker
as “sir” or “ma’am” when they order their food. They might even write a
letter of praise to the store manager about the professionalism of a
particular cashier. Good Samaritans know that these little things become
huge acts of love to people who rarely experience such gestures in the
normal course of a day.
No doubt, loving a
stranger in such a way can be difficult, especially if we just endured
their negative attitude or if we’re having a hard day ourselves. To make
matters worse, we know full well that if we are kind to someone, they may
not be kind in return. But if they could return our kindness, would they
even need a Good Samaritan?
One thing to keep in mind
as you consider the story of the Good Samaritan: the Samaritan was never
thanked, not even once, not by anyone. He simply cared about the traveler
on the road to Jericho. He decided before he even approached him that such
a person mattered no matter what.
There’s a good chance
we’ll never see a traveler half-dead in the street. That’s why it’s easy
to say we’d act like the Good Samaritan in the same situation. What’s
harder to see is what we may not want to see: that the situation is all
around us—all the time—waiting for us to act.