Naked & Afraid

Disclaimer: Never have I ever seen even a fraction of an episode of Naked and Afraid on Discovery Network. Still, the title is paying high dollar rent in my mind this week.

In the ancient world, clothing wasn’t fashion. It was identity. In every culture, including the present, clothing speaks. It’s an underrated nonverbal communicator.  You can tell a lot about a person by the way they dress. Style communicates the interests and affiliations a person has, the community he or she comes from, and the status they hold. In antiquity, it also spoke directly to culture and ethnicity. Levites dressed like Levites. Priests dressed like priests. Israelites dressed like Israelites. Samaritans dressed like Samaritans.

So when Jesus offered a parabolic answer to a legal expert’s question in Luke 10, he included a crucial detail.

“In reply Jesus said: ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.’” Luke 10:30

We know this as the parable of the Good Samaritan when Jesus dared to craft a hero out of his audience’s worst nightmare. Notice how Jesus described the hit and run victim, battered, naked, and also unconscious.

It’s worth noting that another common way to determine a person’s status, culture, and ethnicity was his or her dialect. Again, not uncommon in our day, too. After all, people born and raised in South Carolina typically have a different drawl than those reared in say, Massachusetts. Jesus spares no detail and we can bet every inclusion is deliberate.

Here lies a beaten bloke, not a stitch of clothing and unable to speak. However, then, would passers-by determine who he was and if he was worth saving?

Lack of clothing didn’t just shroud his identity. It stoked fear. Enter the “afraid” part, found on repeat.

"A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.” Luke 10:31

“So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.” Luke 10:32

Fear is a really powerful motivator. Here, the religious elite, succumb to it in unison. Whether it was fear of contact contamination or culpability, neither could be bothered to pause and identify the victim, much less attend to his needs. 

The unconscious man was naked. 

The unconscionable men were afraid.

I often imagine myself to be the hero of this story. I wanna be the Samaritan who rides in for the rescue. I want to be the antihero who challenges popular perception. Let’s be honest, though. I’m pretty familiar with the overly tread "other side” of the road. But why?

Fear leaves a far louder and much longer message in our community today, particularly around those who dress and sound differently. The inflammatory, dehumanizing language directed at anyone who bears anything but anglo roots fuels giant assumptions about legal status and even bigger justifications for how they’re treated. 

I wonder how the man needed to look to warrant empathy from the priest?

I wonder what his tone, attire, and native roots needed to be in order to activate assistance from the Levite?

Sadly, moreover, where does someone need to come from to warrant Christlike care from you and me?

When we use looks to label neighbors and determine who’s worthy of love, we’re certainly not living like people who are, [pun intended] “clothed in compassion.” 

Immigration is a hotter topic than Naked and Afraid or anything else on Discovery Network could ever hope to be. I don’t know that I’ll ever know enough to confidently join the ranks of folk who don’t feel like knowledge should be a pre-requisite. I am listening and learning and choosing to speak up and out on what I do know and it’s this. Regardless of someone’s opinion on policy, piety is what’s at stake. 

Fear doesn’t just make people step to the other side of the road.

Fear keeps people on the wrong side of history.

Fear doesn’t just make people run away.

It teaches them to aggressively justify why they should.

Fear transforms a desperate neighbor who needs help into a diabolical criminal who deserves hate.

And fear-mongering isn’t just a political pistol in the hands of people clutching power. It’s overflowing in the arsenal of the Enemy who wants us to assume the worst about others so we can stomach the worst in ourselves.

So what’s a follower of Jesus to do? Start with the story and study up on the Samaritan. He was the neighbor. He made the sacrifice. He got his hands dirty. He went out of his way, enlisted others to help, and was willing to pay without knowing who the man was or how he got there. 

Jesus never tells us that the half-dead man deserved kindness. 

But our Savior spends his entire conclusion sharing how much the Samaritan displayed it. 

The legal expert asked Jesus who was his neighbor…and Jesus responded by teaching him how to be a good neighbor. What if that’s where we leaned more, too…not on who should and who shouldn’t get to be our neighbor but on how to be a better one altogether.

For the Samaritan, it didn’t matter at all that the victim was a naked outsider. 

For us, what should matter most is that the religious elite were too afraid to care.