A little talk about being neighborly, or in other words, who are you supposed to look after?
Luke 10:25-37; Colossians 1:1-14; Psalm 25:1-10; Deuteronomy 30:9-14
We’ve all heard this parable before. I’d almost say it’s one of the best known of Jesus’ parables, as the title character has found his way into all sorts of places in our culture. There are “Good Samaritans” that you hear about in the news; there are “Good Samaritan” laws and “Good Samaritan” hospitals; there is a “Good Samaritan” society, and you may have heard of something called “Samaritan’s Purse”. This guy is everywhere!
From Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, a “Good Samaritan” is “a person who helps other people and especially strangers when they have trouble”. So the message of this parable must be to help those in need when you come across them right? Well, sort of, but not really.
See, the whole parable kicks off when a lawyer asks Jesus a somewhat interesting question: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life.” Already we realize that something is wrong here; can you tell what it is? What must one do to inherit anything? Usually one’s inheritance has little to do with anything one does, but instead is a gift.
Maybe we’re just reading the question wrong – I can give him the benefit of the doubt – and it’s supposed to be “How does a person get eternal life?” So Jesus basically asks the man back, “What does the Bible say?” The man replied quite well, to be honest, and said, “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Jesus says, “You got it! Do that and you’ll live.”
If they guy had left it there, we’d have been fine. In fact, in the two other gospels where this exchange is recoded, he does. But he wanted to, as Luke says, “justify himself”; he asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” Ah! I get it now. He wants to know who he has to love as himself and who he can choose not to love. From the Sermon on the Mount, we know that it was a common teaching that one could “love your neighbor and hate your enemy”. The lawyer probably expected Jesus to answer along similar lines; boy, was he surprised!
Instead of answering directly, Jesus tells a parable. A man travels from Jerusalem to Jericho and in the process is robbed, beaten, and left for dead. A priest and Levite come across the man, and each, in turn, pass by on the other side of the road from the beaten man. They were the kind of people who should help a fellow Jew in need. They would be expected to be neighbor to the beaten man.
But then, along comes a Samaritan – the enemy of the Jews. Samaritans and Jews hated each other; a couple of weeks ago in Luke 9, James and John even asked Jesus if he was going to call fire down from heaven to destroy a Samaritan village that didn’t welcome them. This was the last person who would help a Jew, and no one would bat an eye at it. Remember, this was the enemy, and it was considered perfectly acceptable to hate your enemy. But instead, the Samaritan not only cleans and bandages the man’s wounds, but puts him up in an inn for two months to allow him to recover, and offers to pay for any additional expenses that might be accrued.
Then Jesus asks the lawyer, “Which of these three was the robbed man’s neighbor?” The lawyer, who at this point should have felt properly chasitsed, answered, “The one who helped him”. Jesus then paraphrases his previous answer to the lawyer, “God and do the same.”
This parable has less to do with taking care of those in need, but more to do with showing who followers of Jesus should be loving. It’s not enough to love your friends, but you also should love your enemies, like the Samaritan man did to the dying, Jewish man.
The thing is, Christians lately – true or not – have a reputation for loving their friends and hating their enemies. I conducted an informal poll this week on Facebook and Twitter, to find out who people see as the “enemies” of Christians, though I asked it as: “what group(s) of people are Christians most against?” The responses were actually fairly consistent, among responders who claim to be Christian and non-Christian: gays, Muslims, scientists, and anyone different from them. That. Is. Not. Good.
Did you know that some of the main criticisms levied at Pope Francis in his first year are, essentially, that he loves the “wrong” people? He washed the feet of 12 juvenile offenders on Maundy Thursday, and people were upset that 2 were women and 2 were Muslim. He’s spoken out about “global indifference” to the plight of illegal immigrants in Europe. All of this has made people mad, yet all he’s really saying and doing is what Jesus said to do in this Gospel text.
If we believe that we’re to “love the Lord your God with all your heart… soul… strength and… mind” and “love your neighbor as yourself”, then we need to be honest with ourselves as to who we view as our neighbor, and remember that even those who we consider our enemies are really our neighbors, because they are the ones God calls us to love as we love ourselves.