Kirkepiscatoid

Last Sunday, when I saw the Gospel reading, I was thinking...."Oh, man...not the Good Samaritan again!"

I confess to being generally nonplussed when the "Classic Gospel Stories" roll around to their turn in the lectionary. Mostly because it's hard for me to think of them in any terms other than the classic story you heard in Sunday School for the first time as a child. It's like trying to think of the Exodus without Charlton Heston. I cut any priest some slack when having to do one of those texts for the sermon b/c they probably have the same issues. How many things can you do differently on a text that's been done to death?

At least one thing I can think about in that story that's a little off the beaten path, is the innkeeper. When I was in college here at Truman State, I was a night desk clerk here at the old Oak Tree Inn. (it’s now that antique mall at the bottom of the hill on 63 south down by the Highway 11 turnoff.) For those of you who give directions in Kirksville in classic townie fashion (in terms of businesses that no longer exist or have moved...."Turn left where the old Hy-Vee used to be") it was "the old Holiday Inn" before it was the Oak Tree Inn.

Ok, as I'm hearing the story of the Good Samaritan for the umpteenth time I am imagining working there at the Oak Tree one Friday night from 7 p.m. To 7 a.m. I'm imagining what would have happened had some dude walked in with a guy who had the snot beat out of him and said, “Give him a room, here’s some money, keep him till he’s well, when I come back to town I’ll give you what I owe you.” I would have been going, “OH NO you don’t! That guy looks like he’s half dead already! You go take him to the ER! Don’t you be throwin’ money at me! Get the hell out of here before I call the cops! I don’t know you and I sure as hell ain’t takin’ your idea of credit! For all I know, you’re the one who beat him up!”

So I always wonder what was it that made the innkeeper even take the guy in??????? The only thing I can think of is “times were different back then” and the Good Samaritan was dealing with the owner/manager, not the dumbass college kid weekend desk clerk who needs to keep the job. Rank has its privileges, you know....