The Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth is a large, modern structure, erected over the ruins of the little stone house where Mary is said to have received her visit from Gabriel. Every Saturday night, the church holds a candlelight service in celebration of this proclamation. The symbolism is profound, for when Jesus was conceived, a Light came into this dark world.

As the High Priest Zechariah prophesied:

… the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.

I had the opportunity to attend such a service this summer. People from all over the world were there, and we sang songs of worship in many languages. The liturgy was led by guitar, mostly modernized, simple, repetitive — some of the songs consisted of just a word or two repeated over and over. Still, the melodies were delightful in a ‘round-the-campfire sort of way.

It was a merry, festive celebration. Everyone was happy, everyone was singing as the procession of candles entered the church, passed the Sacred Grotto, and continued on out the doors.

A View From a Rock

I was one of the first to leave the church. As the crowd flooded out behind me, some of them still singing (those one-line songs really stick in your head), I noticed a man sitting on the ground in front of the church. He was holding out his hands in petition to the people passing by.

I only had a few coins left, and had been planning not to take any money out of the ATM in Nazareth, the better to stick to my budget. I didn’t want to give the man anything. Still, I felt guilty just passing him by — I have heard enough of those preachers’ stories, like the one about the seminarian on the way to give a lecture on the Good Samaritan who was running late and passed by someone who had collapsed on the side of the road.

I didn’t want that to be me. (Remember — you never know when a preacher might be lurking in the bushes, waiting to make a story out of you.) But I couldn’t work myself up to give anything yet.

So I stalled. I settled down on an ancient marble stone near the gates of the church for some good old-fashioned judging. I watched as the churchgoers flooded out, and in perfect coordination, almost as if they had planned it out ahead of time, crossed over to the other side of the street, to avoid passing close to the beggar. The man — either a cripple or pretending to be one — scooted on his butt across the ground to get closer, calling out to them in Arabic. Hundreds passed by, but I only saw one person — an American tourist, by the looks of him — stop and give him a coin.

What to Do?

Another man passed me on the way to his car and paused. I must have looked odd, just sitting there on a rock while everyone was going home.

“Hello!” he said in English. “How do you like Nazareth?” He seemed to be a local.

“It’s very nice,” I told him.

“Do you need anything?” he said.

No, thank you, I didn’t.

“Well, have a good visit. Oh, and one more thing — don’t stay here. It isn’t safe.” He got in his car. “I’m honest!” he added defensively, as if he expected me to judge him for dissing his hometown.

He drove away, and I sat there awhile longer on my rock. Gradually, the last of the churchgoers trickled away. Now that I had judged everybody, there was really no way I could pass by on the other side. There goes my budget, I thought.

But what to do? It didn’t seem right to give him the smallest coin I had, as if it would assuage my guilty conscience. I could give him more, but I knew that just handing people money, though easy, is not always very useful in the long run. I had read When Helping Hurts! Better to find out more about situation.

Who is That Guy?

A group of three thuggish-looking locals were hanging out by the side of the road a few meters away — waiting to rob me? I remembered the local man’s warning. I decided to go talk to them before the area became completely abandoned. There were still one or two people in view, so there was little to no chance they would try anything yet.

I approached them. “As-salamu alaykum,” I said — Peace be upon you, the standard Arabic greeting. I gestured at the beggar. “Do you know what the deal with him is?”

“He’s sick!” one of them said, in Arabic. “He needs help. He needs an ambulance!”

I wasn’t convinced that an ambulance was exactly what he needed, but anyway had no phone service there, and thus no way to call an ambulance. For that matter, I didn’t even know what the emergency number was in this country. “So… who’s going to help him?” I asked.

The man shrugged and chewed on his lip. My question was too profound. He was no philosopher.

The security guard came out of the church last of all and began locking up the gates. I walked up and greeted him.

“Who’s that guy?” I asked him in Arabic.

He told me that the man was always sitting there.

“Don’t go near him,” he warned me. “He has a skin disease.”

And just like that, I had been dropped out of real life and into one of those preacher’s stories.

I Dropped All My Change — Should I Have Done More?

I was angry. Where was the light of the world, now? Aren’t we supposed to represent Jesus until he returns? In disgust, I walked over to the leper and dropped all my change — the equivalent of a few dollars — into his hand. I allowed my hand to brush against his as I did so, just to spite the security guard. (That would show him!)

But I didn’t get down and embrace him as St. Francis had done to that leper by the road in the story. Despite my petulance, I didn’t want to actually risk getting any skin diseases.

The man accepted the change. “‘Atini sigara!” he bellowed in Arabic. Give me a cigarette!

“I don’t have a cigarette,” I told him, also in Arabic.

He nodded with equanimity. Then: “Buy me a drink!”

“A drink?” I asked. He already seemed totally wasted.

“Water,” he clarified, perhaps sensing the judgment radiating from me. “Bring me water!”

“I don’t have any money to buy water,” I told him, a little grumpily. “I already gave you all my money.”

This answer seemed to make sense to the man, and he nodded in understanding. “Thank you, thank you!” he muttered cheerily.

“Uh… God bless you,” I said awkwardly, and reluctantly walked away. I couldn’t shake the feeling I was supposed to do something more. Should I have kissed his open sores? Told him to be healed in the name of Jesus? Some charismatic friends of mine would have at least tried that. At the very least, I could have sat down and prayed with him.

I took more money out of an ATM, and bought a bottle of water at a shop. When I got back to the spot he was gone. Not, I think, disappeared miraculously like Saint Francis’ angelic leper, but merely gone home to wherever he was sleeping.

Reflections on My Good Samaritan Encounter

As I walked back to where I was staying, defeated, I reflected on what I had just seen.

I grew up with a vague feeling, I think, that the beggars Jesus encountered were somehow fundamentally different from the panhandlers who harangue us in modern cities. It goes something like this: In ancient times, beggars were poor outcasts in dire straits. In the modern world, by contrast, they are entitled, obnoxious freeloaders who take no initiative to solve their own problems and are probably to blame for being in that situation in the first place.

But when you think about it… isn’t that exactly how they were perceived in Jesus’ day?

Are they entitled or ungrateful? Well, the leper I had met tonight was better in this regard than perhaps 90% of the lepers that Jesus dealt with — after all, this man thanked me, and I hadn’t even healed him. In one story, Jesus was disappointed that after healing 10 lepers, completely changing their lives, only one saw fit to come back and thank him.

Are panhandlers today obnoxious nuisances, disturbers of the peace? Well, that’s how they were seen in Jesus’ day. We can see this in how people reacted to Blind Bartimaeus. He was making a commotion, yelling incoherently. To stop and treat him like someone capable of discourse was breaking social norms then every bit as much as it would be today.

Are beggars today often in that situation because of their own bad choices? That was the received wisdom in Jesus’ day, too, albeit with an explanation that had less to do with economics or psychology and more to do with the idea something like karma. “Who sinned, this man or his parents…?” the disciples asked Jesus of the man born blind.

Real Life is Made of Parables

In all these ways and more, the people we encounter are the same as the people Jesus encountered. But there is one more way in which they are the same, the most surprising way of all: they are real. And even more surprising than that — we are real. We are surprised to encounter them in our own real lives. I know I am, at least.

What I mean is this. In our everyday experience, the people in the Gospels exist in a storybook, not in our real lives. It’s easy to forget that for Jesus, it was not a story, it was very real. All the rough textures, annoyances, distraction, context, and so forth that define real life were present.

Everybody thinks they would do the right thing in a parable. But we are not merely asked to do the right thing in parables. That would be easy! We are asked to do the right thing in real life. When the test comes, we don’t realize that real life is made of parables.

Maybe someone thinks he’s in the Tale of the Tourist Who Needs to Buy a Bus Card Before the Station Closes, and doesn’t realize that he’s actually in the Tale of the Leper at the Church Gates. Maybe someone thinks she’s in the Story of the Woman Who Is Very Late for Work, and never even notices that she’s stepped across some invisible threshold into the Story of the Crying Child.

That’s how life goes. It is woven of stories, and you never know when you will step into the next one. Sometimes, you can be in two at once. So we need to not just read the stories of Jesus, but meditate on them deeply, let them sink into our very bones, allow them to tear the veil between the noisy hubbub of “real life” and the spiritual tale we truly inhabit. I think that if I do that, then when the time comes to be like Jesus, I might be ready.

 

Peter Rowden is a friend of The Stream living in the Middle East.