It's sometimes hard for us to graps the impact of this story because we are so familiar with it. It's a story that breaks down the barriers of religion and race and, therefore, has an exteme poignancy in the current situation in the Holy Land. Recently Time magazine printed an article about Bassam Kafisha, a Palestinian from Hebron, who discovered two Jewish settlers bleeding in an adjacent field to where he was working. They were Jewish settlers from the nearby Kiryat Arba and they had been attacked by a Palestinian assailant. Bassam did not hesitate to help these men, but after forty-five minutes no ambulance had arrived, so he lifted them into his own car and, driving towards a hospital in Hebron, he flagged down an Israeli military vehicle. The parallel is strikingly similar, and when he was asked why he had done it, he pointed out, 'At such a time you forget about politics, and you see these men as heads of families, as sons, as relatives' (Lisa Beyer, 'Dispatches', from Time magazine, 23 January 1995). For a Jew this would be comparable to the story of the Good Samaritan because a Palestinian would be of another religion--Muslim or Christian--and of another race and they too are a despised people, just as the Samaritans were.
As I write, my wife and children are ice skating in downtown Paris with Fadma, a North African Christian. We're privileged and challenged in Paris to live a multicultural area with Jews, Black Africans, North Africans, eastern Europeans, mediterranean Europeans (Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, etc.), Asian, and even some French. Earlier today I passed two Jewish men dressed in suits and hats for Sabbath.
I saw the film "Gran Torino" at a matinee showing at a local cinema that often has films in VO (original language, in this case English) with French subtitles. Clint Eastwood, whose nearly 80, co-wrote, produced, and starred in this film. He plays Walt, a recently widowed, nominal Catholic of Polish descendance, an honored veteran from the Korean War in the 1950s, retired assembly line worker for Ford, and father of 2 sons who live in geographic proximity, but aren't really close. During his Korean War days, he experienced some horrible situations that continued to haunt him.
The film takes place in Detroit. I could relate to this, as I remember going to Detroit as a child to visit my grandparents, both of whom lived in neighborhoods that had experienced "white flight" to the suburbs. Detroit is a city that has experienced many social, racial, and economic changes these last 50 years. I lived there 1962-1968 as a young child.
Walt ends up having a Hmong family move next door to him. This family has a grandmother, a mother, and 2 teenagers. The Hmongs live in China, Laos, and Vietnam and fought alongside of the U.S. After the U.S. pulled out in the 1970s, many Hmong fled to the U.S. as refugees in order to not be killed by the communist forces. I understand that there are many Hmong in the Twin Cities of Minnesota.
As one who has lived outside my U.S. culture for 18 years now, I enjoyed seeing the cultural and intergenerational relationship develop between Walt and his 2 Hmong teenage neighbors Sue and her brother (name slips me temporarily). Walt unwittingly ends up being a good neighbor to both of them. While stubborn and verbally racist, he ends up being a father figure, protector, and mentor to both of them. He ends up being closer to them than he does his own sons and grandchildren. He even ends up sharing his Gran Torino with the boy.
In his older films, Clint Eastwood was the "Dirty Harry" figure who would blow away his enemies and the bad guys with his guns. You know, "Go ahead, make my day." In this film, his character sees the threats to his teenage protegés and understands that a different approach is necessary to save them.
Today we live in a global village where people from far away in the world might end up being our next door neighbors. Or we might end up just crossing them at the airport in passing. In any case, we are called to be good neighbors to whomever God brings across our paths, whether long-term or short-term. We are to offer them a cup of cold water in the name of Jesus. Sometimes this involves sacrifice. But this is where our Christian faith becomes real.
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