Brainwaves

BRAINWAVES

NEW BOOK PROVIDES NEW LOOK AT THE GOOD SAMARITAN

EMERSON POWERY REIMAGINES PARABLE FROM MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW IN WRITING EXERCISE

The parable of the good Samaritan in Luke 10 is one of the most well-known Bible stories. Emerson Powery, professor of biblical studies and assistant dean of the School of Arts, Culture and Society at Messiah, chose to explore it when he was asked to help write one of 12 books about key biblical passages in a series by Stephen Chapman, professor of Old Testament at Duke Divinity School.

“The Good Samaritan: Luke 10 for the Life of the Church” by Powery is the second in the series. He opens the book by defining what the church is.

“My local church doesn’t represent everyone’s [experience]. I wanted to speak to two things in that chapter: to define the church out of which I speak and to define how people read scripture. Each would read this parable differently because of different perspectives that they bring, so that’s the way in,” he explained.

He then looks at four figures–St. Augustine, Howard Thurman, a community from Nicaragua called the Solentiname community and Harriet Jacobs–to think about different perspectives and the history of the church and how this parable has affected different places.

Powery also explains that the audience for the book is an informed church, one that understands it’s not as simple as reading a scripture passage and applying it.

“In light of our present moment, for which I write, I defined it as ‘Samaritan lives matter’ because it’s caught up in Jesus telling this story and the fact that he doesn’t choose a common Jew and he chooses a Samaritan,” said Powery.

One thing that sets the book apart is that Powery wrote retellings of the good Samaritan from a character that he’s imagining in the story.

“As an example, I have a Jewish female telling the story, and she’s in love with the Samaritan. She retells the story and thinks about how sometimes imagination can help us rethink our lives, because Jesus’ parable is a made-up story. I try not to lose that sense of Jesus’ attempt to imagine the world differently,” he said.

In the book, he discusses the importance of the imagination for the contemporary church. He explains that the telling of a parable is an imaginative exercise, one which will provoke people, as Jesus does.

“Rewriting the story over and over again from different characters forced me to think about the story again in a different way,” he said. “I’ve actually incorporated 5-minute freewrites into my Bible classes, imagining a character in a story and then retelling it. I did it so we can talk about interpretation, and it went much better than I was expecting.”

The freewrites have become a necessary part of his classroom. “The stories that we tell matter. The words that we use in telling those stories matter. People who become the central characters and the heroes of our stories matter,” he said.

— Molly McKim ’23 and Anna Seip In his new book, Emerson Powery, professor of biblical studies, examines the parable of the good Samaritan.

COURTESY OF BAKER PUBLISHING GROUP AND THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

“REWRITING THE STORY OVER AND OVER AGAIN FROM DIFFERENT CHARACTERS FORCED ME TO THINK ABOUT THE STORY AGAIN IN A DIFFERENT WAY.”

— Emerson Powery, professor of biblical studies and assistant dean of the School of Arts, Culture and Society