The parable of the dude who helped the dude — misunderstood throughout history.
Luke 10:25-37; Colossians 1:1-14; Psalm 25:1-10; Deuteronomy 30:9-14
It seems as though in our culture this parable has lost some of its edge. We’re used to holding up the Good Samaritan as someone to aspire to follow. There’s Good Samaritan laws in most places that encourage bystanders to help people in bad situations. Being called a “good Samaritan” is a good thing, as it means you helped someone out with no concern for youself.
Unfortunately this cultural acceptance has also distorted the thrust of the parable. If we were a 1st Century Jew, especially an expert in the law, we would have been triply offended by this parable. The first offense would be that the priest ignored the injured man. The second, that a Levite did the same. And the third, that a Samaritan would do what the priest and Levite did not.
It’s hard to come up with a people-group that is as hated as Samaritans today. By watching the news, it seems as though the closest equivalents are illegal immigrants or Muslims. But even that doesn’t really get the gist of it. The animosity between Jews and Samaritans started over 500 years before the time of Christ, when the Judean exiles in Babylon started to return to Jerusalem. When the exiles returned to Jerusalem, they found it already inhabited by Israelites (referring to the northern kingdom) who had mixed their culture and bloodlines with the Assyrians. They offered to help in the reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, but were rebuffed by the returning exiles because they weren’t Jewish enough.
This was the start of the hostilities, and over the years the rift grew larger between the two groups, especially once the Samaritans built a Temple on Mount Gerizim, where they believe Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac. That’s why, in John 4, the woman at the well told Jesus that she worshipped on a mountain not in Jerusalem. Yet the rift was not just because of the Temple – they had different Scriptures and different customs from the Jews, and claimed that theirs was right.
All of this came together over 500 years and led to an ever-deepening rift between the two peoples. So it was enough of a shock to the people that a Samaritan helped this injured man. Yet the Samaritan wasn’t even supposed to be there. The road to Jerusalem and Jericho was in Jewish territory, not Samaritan. Just by being a Samaritan travelling that road, it was highly likely that he would be attacked just because of where he was from.
The situation reminds me a little bit of the Minutemen at the US-Mexico border. They’re looking for people who are breaking the law by entering this country illegally. Now it’s a little different to the time of Jesus, because there wasn’t a civil law forbidding Samaritans to enter Jewish territory, it was all the same province of Judea. But there was definitely a cultural law, kind of an unspoken code, that Jews don’t go to Samaritan turf and vice versa. But the Samaritan, had he met the first century equivalent of the Minutemen, would likely have had a far worse fate than being reported to the immigration authorities.
And yet this Samaritan, unwanted and hated, stopped everything he was doing and took care of the injured man. And at the end of the parable, when Jesus asked the legal expert who the man’s neighbor was, he couldn’t even bring himself to admit it was a Samaritan who acted like a neighbor. And then imagine his surprise when Jesus instructed him to do what the Samaritan did! It would have flipped his whole idea of the state of the world upside down.
I’m going to invite you now to listen to the our gospel reading again, with a few of the terms changed to modernize it a bit and make it, hopefully, a little less familiar. Try to put yourself in the place of the lawyer coming up to Jesus and asking what to do.
One day a lawyer came up to Jesus and asked him, “Teacher, what do I have to do to have eternal life?” “You’ve read your Bible,” Jesus answered, “What does it say?” He answered, “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’; and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” “Good answer,” Jesus replied, “Do this and you will live.” But the man wanted to make sure he had it right, so he asked Jesus, “But who is my neighbor?”
Jesus replied with a parable: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, about seventeen miles. Along the way he was attacked, beaten, robbed, and the robbers left him on the side of the road to die. A pastor was going down the same road and saw the man, but went to the other side of the road trying to avoid him. A little while later another religious man passed by, someone with high standing in the church, but he avoided the injured man, too. Finally an illegal immigrant was going down the road, saw the man, and took care of him. He bandaged his wounds, and disinfected them. He put the injured man on his donkey and they rode to the next inn, where he paid the innkeeper to watch over and take care of the man. He even promised to reimburse any extra expenses if it wasn’t covered.”
Jesus then asked the man, “Which of these three people acted like a neighbor to the man who was robbed?” “The one who took care of him,” replied the lawyer. Jesus said, “Go and do likewise”.