I was stuck in a slow moving grocery store line today when a special issue Time magazine caught my eye.  The title was the 100 Most Influential People Who Never Lived .  I had plenty of time, so I grabbed the magazine and read through the table of contents to see who made the list.  

There were the obvious choices:  Santa Claus, Uncle Sam,Barbie, King Arthur and Rosie the Riveter.  There were plenty of logicalselections from literature:  Romeo & Juliet, Huckleberry Finn and Jim,Big Brother, Robinson Crusoe, Ebenezer Scrooge and Oliver Twist, to name a few.I was surprised by the choices of the Marlboro man, Hiawatha and Betty Crocker(who knew she wasn't real?) I must say, I was disappointed that the editorsignored their own criteria when they chose two non-humans: Superman and Mr.Spock.

 I disagreed at first with the choice of Heathcliff Huxtablefrom the Cosby Show, until I read thewrite up.  It reminded me that, after the LA riots, Mayor Tom Bradley toldthe citizens of LA to 'Stay inside and watch the final episode of Cosby'. The article also stated that, according to many historians, Cosby'scharacter prepared the way for America to accept a black President.  Nowthat's influential.  

Like many lists of this sort, I was also disappointed by who was missing.  If Mary Richards made the list for paving 1970's America accepting the working woman, why not include Hawkeye Pierce for helping us accept the 70's sensitive man?  Where was Archie Bunker?  Sure his character didn’t bring social change as much as reflect an America that had already been changing dramatically for years, but I still think he deserved a shot in the top 100.  And Mario.  I remember that we were one of the first families in our neighborhood to get the game ‘Pong’.  After that initial head start, I sort of fell behind my peers in the gaming arena, but no one who was alive at the time can deny that Mario was huge in ushering in the video game phenomenon.

But there are two even more glaring omissions from this list.  First, Uncle Tom and Simon LeGree.  After all, how many fictional books have ever been credited for affecting social change the way Uncle Tom’s Cabin influenced northern thought- and subsequent outrage-  regarding slavery?  Great literature?  Not really. It’s certainly no Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but that’s not the point, is it?

The second huge oversight is CPR Annie.  These limbless mannequins are used to train professionals and nonprofessionals alike in the life saving procedure of CPR.  In the time it takes Barbie to say,“Math is hard!” Annie’s influence has saved another life. 

I was very pleased to see two biblical references on the list:  The prodigal son and his father and the Good Samaritan.  These two parables may be the best known of all Jesus’ parables.  The story of the prodigal is a common theme in literature and music, as well as life itself.  I have a routine I do based on this story in which I tell the story of a dancer in the first person.  I remember doing this routine at a Methodist church in Lewiston years ago.  After the service, the pastor told me that I had just told the story of one of the young men in her church, who was in fact a dancer, and had just returned home that weekend.  He was present in the service.  A divine appointment, indeed. (On an aside, this story is really about the ‘good’ son who stays home trying to impress the dad with his religious arrogance only to miss the entire point of grace.  Check out Timothy Keller’s the Prodigal God. )

It is the parable of the Good Samaritan, however, that I have been thinking about since seeing this magazine. The phrase ‘good Samaritan’ is used in every day speech to mean a person who does random acts of kindness.  But this story is so much more.  More than any other parable, perhaps, this one shows just what a radical Jesus was in His time.  Here He is, a Jewish rabbi,telling a ‘rich young ruler’ who was also clearly Hebrew (He followed all the commandments since his childhood) and Jesus tells a story that makes other Hebrew rabbis the self-centered villains and a Samaritan – an enemy, pagan race– is the hero; the one we are to love as we love ourselves.  We in middle class America don’t really get the whole idea of tribal tensions.  My family has caught a glimpse of this in Juarez, Quito and Crow Agency, but it was, in biblical times, so much bigger than this.  In many parts of the world it still is.  The idea of a rabbi speaking of a ‘good’Samaritan would have been either ridiculous or extremely offensive to this powerful Jewish ruler. 

And Jesus didn’t just preach this, He lived it.  He met a Samaritan woman at a well and preached grace and redemption.  Any good rabbi would have known to ignore her.  He socialized with lepers.  Except perhaps for those on death row, we have no modern equivalent for these people who were not allowed to interact with the rest of the human race. Ever.  And Jesus sought them out.  He chose followers like Simon the Zealot – a term for an insurrectionist – and Matthew - a tax collector for the Roman Empire –to work side by side… and it worked.  Jesus’was no warm, fuzzy self-help Gospel.  It was not a Gospel of comfort.  It was a message the likes of which had never been heard before. 

And this is where my mind had time to go while waiting in grocery line on a Sunday morning.