Jesus Debates with a Lawyer; The Good Samaritan
For most of the time Christ kept out of the way of Jesus, because he could rely on the words of his informant. He knew his spy was trustworthy, because occasionally he checked the man’s report by asking others what Jesus had said here, or done there, and found always that his informant was strictly accurate.
But when Christ heard that Jesus was going to preach in this town or that, he sometimes attended to hear for himself, always remaining inconspicuous at the back of the assembly. On one occasion when he did this, he heard Jesus questioned by a lawyer. Men of the law often tried their skill against Jesus, but Jesus was able to deal with most of them, though he frequently did so by what Christ thought were unfair means. Telling a story, as he so often did, introduced extra-legal elements into the discourse: persuading people by manipulating their emotions was all very well to gain a debating point, but it left the question of law unanswered.
This time the lawyer said to him, ‘Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’
Christ listened closely as Jesus responded: ‘You’re a lawyer, are you? Well, tell me what the law says.’
‘You must love the Lord God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind. And you must love your neighbour as you love yourself.’
‘That’s it,’ said Jesus, ‘you’ve got it. You know the law. Do that, and you’ll live.’
But the man was a lawyer, after all, and he wanted to show that he had a question for everything. So he said, ‘Ah, but tell me this: who is my neighbour?’
So Jesus told this story:
‘Once there was a man, a Jew like yourself, going along the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. And in the middle of his journey he was set on by a band of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, stole everything he had, and left him there by the roadside half-dead.
‘Well, dangerous as it is, it’s a busy road, and soon afterwards, along came a priest. He took one look at the man covered in blood at the roadside, and decided to look the other way and go on without stopping. Then along came a temple official, and he too decided not to get involved; he passed by as quickly as he could.
‘But the next to come along was a Samaritan. He saw the wounded man, and he stopped to help. He poured wine on his wounds to disinfect them, and oil to soothe them, and he helped the man up on to his own donkey and took him to an inn. He gave the innkeeper money to look after him, and said, “If you need to spend more than this, keep an account, and I’ll pay it next time I’m passing.”
‘So here’s a question for you, in answer to your question of me: which of these three men, the priest, the official, and the Samaritan, was a neighbour to the man who was robbed on the Jericho road?’
The lawyer could only answer, ‘The one who helped him.’
‘That’s all you need to know,’ said Jesus. ‘Off you go, and do the same thing.’
Christ knew as he wrote it down that, for all its unfairness, people would remember that story much longer than they’d remember a legal definition.
Mary and Martha
One day Jesus and some of his followers were invited to eat with two sisters, one called Mary and the other called Martha. Christ’s informant told him what happened that evening. Jesus had been speaking, and Mary was sitting among the people listening to him, while Martha was busy preparing the meal.
At one point Martha came in to rebuke Mary: ‘You let the bread burn! Look! I ask you to be careful with it, and you just forget all about it! How can I do three or four things at once?’
Mary said, ‘The bread is not as important as this. I’m listening to the master’s words. He’s only here for one night. We can eat bread any time.’
‘Master, what do you think?’ said Martha. ‘Shouldn’t she help me, if I’ve asked her to? There are a lot of us here tonight. I can’t do it all on my own.’
Jesus said, ‘Mary, you can hear my words again, because there are others here to remember them. But once you’ve burnt the bread, no one can eat it. Go and help your sister.’
When Christ heard about this, he knew it would be another of those sayings of Jesus that would be better as truth than as history.
Christ and the Prostitute
On the few occasions when Christ came close to Jesus, he did his best to avoid contact with him, but from time to time someone would ask him who he was, what he was doing, whether he was one of Jesus’s followers, and so on. He managed to deal with questions of this kind quite easily by adopting a manner of mild courtesy and friendliness, and by making himself inconspicuous. In truth, he attracted little attention and kept to himself, but like any other man he sometimes longed for company.
Once, in a town Jesus had not visited before and where his followers were little known, Christ got into conversation with a woman. She was one of the prostitutes Jesus made welcome, but she had not gone in to dinner with the rest of them. When she saw Christ on his own, she said, ‘Would you like to come to my house?’
Knowing what sort of woman she was, and realising that no one would see them, he agreed. He followed her to her house, and went in after her, and waited while she looked in the inner room to see that her children were asleep.
When she lit the lamp and looked at him she was startled, and said, ‘Master, forgive me! The street was dark, and I couldn’t see your face.’
‘I’m not Jesus,’ said Christ. ‘I’m his brother.’
‘You look so like him. Have you come to me for business?’
He could say nothing, but she understood, and invited him to lie on the bed with her. The business was concluded rapidly, and afterwards Christ felt moved to explain why he had accepted her invitation.
‘My brother maintains that sinners will be forgiven more readily than those who are righteous,’ he said. ‘I have not sinned very much; perhaps I have not sinned enough to earn the forgiveness of God.’
‘You came to me not because I tempted you, then, but out of piety? I wouldn’t earn much if that was the case with every man.’
‘Of course I was tempted. Otherwise I would not have been able to lie with you.’
‘Will you tell your brother about this?’
‘I don’t talk much to my brother. He has never listened to me.’
‘You sound bitter.’
‘I don’t feel bitter. I love my brother. He has a great task, and I wish I could serve him better than I do. If I sound downcast, it’s perhaps because I’m conscious of the depth of my failure to be like him.’
‘Do you want to be like him?’
‘More than anything. He does things out of passion, and I do them out of calculation. I can see further than he can; I can see the consequences of things he doesn’t think twice about. But he acts with the whole of himself at every moment, and I’m always holding something back out of caution, or prudence, or because I want to watch and record rather than participate.’
‘If you let go of your caution, you might be carried away by passion as he is.’
‘No,’ said Christ. ‘There are some who live by every rule and cling tightly to their rectitude because they fear being swept away by a tempest of passion, and there are others who cling to the rules because they fear that there is no passion there at all, and that if they let go they would simply remain where they are, foolish and unmoved; and they could bear that least of all. Living a life of iron control lets them pretend to themselves that only by the mightiest effort of will can they hold great passions at bay. I am one of those. I know it, and I can do nothing about it.’