The Good Samaritan- Who is my neighbour?
Today we are looking at the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The phrase “Good Samaritan” has entered into our language, and is used by people who don’t know it comes from the Bible. We have “Good Samaritan” laws that protect bystanders from liability who help people in trouble. “Good Samaritan” is a familiar phrase, but there is a lot that is in this parable that might not be so familiar. I thought we could spend some time walking through the parable and unpacking it a bit today.
Jesus tells this parable in response to the questioning of an expert in the law. This expert starts by asking about how a person can inherit eternal life. This expert in the law answers Jesus’ question about how he understands the law by giving the two commandments that summarize the law-
“You shall 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 your neighbour as yourself.”
These are commandments that are found in Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, 34. Jesus tells him that he has answered correctly and that this is the way to eternal life.
This expert in the law wanted to justify himself, perhaps by narrowly defining who his “neighbour” is. He is supposed to love his neighbour, but maybe he can define “neighbour” in such a way that it encircles those he already cares about and keeps out those he doesn’t care about. This is a very human thing to do. Maybe he can define his “neighbours” as his family and friends, and those whose politics he agrees with, and those who are of the same religion, and those of the same nationality. So then he has no obligation to love those who are outside his personal relationships, and he can exclude those who have different politics, and exclude those of different religious beliefs and different nationalities.
We have a tendency to do this as human beings. We can twist the words of Scripture to fit what we already think, or to allow us to do what we want to do. The Danish Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once said,
“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?”I don’t think I would go as far as Kierkegaard, but there is a bit of truth here. And we see this “scholarly” tendency in the expert of the law who is having a conversation with Jesus as he tries to define the word “neighbour” in such a way that he might be justified. He doesn’t want to define it in such a way that he is obligated to love people he would prefer not to love.
“Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”[1]
Rather than give the man a definition of “neighbour”, Jesus tells a story. The story is about a Jewish man who is travelling the 25km journey from Jerusalem to Jericho. It is a dangerous road, and he falls victim to violent robbers who rob him and beat him nearly to death. Without his clothes and belongings and have been beaten so badly it would be hard to identify what type of a person he was- it wouldn’t be clear if he was rich or poor, a government official or a farmer, Jewish or Greek.
A prestigious priest comes down the road on his animal, but rides by and passes on the other side of the road, keeping his distance from the beaten man. Why might a priest not help this man? This would be shocking to the original listeners. Priests are supposed to be examples of goodness to the community. In fact, they were under legal obligation to help. Even if the man was dead, the priest is under a legal obligation to give the dead Jewish man a respectful burial.
It is quite possible that he was on his way to Jerusalem to serve as a priest at the temple. Or, he may have been on his way home after serving at the temple. … Perhaps he is concerned about stopping on a dangerous road. Maybe the robbers are still hiding close by. Maybe it’s a trap. … Maybe he is worried about being made ritually unclean by touching a dead body. He would be in a state of being unclean for a number of days while he is quarantined, and he would be unable to take part in the community or help lead worship. He would have to return to Jerusalem for a week long process of ritual purification. During this time he couldn’t eat from the tithes that were offered. … If the man wasn’t dead, but he died while he was caring for him, he would have to tear his valuable clothing as an obligatory sign of grief. … It is a complicated thing for the priest to stop and help. It seems he chooses to preserve his ritual purity at the expense of disobeying God’s law of love.
Another man comes down the road. This time it is a Levite. All priests are from the tribe of Levi, but not all Levites are qualified to be priests. Priests had to meet certain qualifications. Other people from the tribe of Levi might act as assistants to the priests. … The tribe of Levi had a certain responsibility to serve the tribes of Israel as religious leaders and they also had certain political duties as well. The original hearers would have probably assumed that the Levite would have been on the road to Jerusalem because of responsibilities they had at the Temple. Levites would also be assumed to be good pious people who would help a fellow Jew in need of help. … Even if the man in the ditch was dead, they too would be under legal obligation to bury the exposed body of a fellow Jew. … Like the priest, the Levite might have the same concerns about becoming ritually unclean by coming into contact with a dead body. It would have put him into a kind of quarantine and prevented him from his duties. Preserving ritual purity seems to take precedence over God’s law of love.
Now what would be expected would be for a fellow Jewish Lay person to pass by. As Anglicans we have bishops, priests, deacons, and laypeople who make up the church. If we told the story in an Anglican setting we might say that at this point in the story all the clergy have passed by the man, so the next expected traveler would be a layperson. But instead Jesus says that it is a Samaritan. This would have been a shock to the original listeners. They might have expected the Samaritan to finish the man off. But, in Jesus’ parable, it is the Samaritan who takes pity on the man and helps him. This would have been scandalous and shocking. The message would be that a Samaritan is showing up a priest and a Levite in showing kindness.
The Samaritans and Jews were enemies. To the Jews, the Samaritans were heretics and weren’t really part of the tribes of Israel. They were the decedents of peoples the Assyrian Empire moved into the area to colonize the land (2 Kings 17:24-41). They picked up a bit of the religion of Israel, but mixed this with the pagan practices of their varied homelands. They focused their worshipped through Mount Gerizim (Deuteronomy 11:29; 27:12) rather than the Temple in Jerusalem. They only recognized the first 5 books of the Bible. That means no Job, no prophets, no Psalms, no king David, no Elijah, no Daniel in the lion’s den, no Jonah being swallowed by a whale, etc. …
The Samaritans believed that the Jewish people returned from exile in Babylon having been heavily influenced by Babylonian thought and religion, and therefore they were polluted. Samaritans saw themselves as the remnant of Israel that maintained the pure religion that God gave to them through Moses. …
As outsiders it is easy to look at both groups and see the similarities, but they would have been viciously aware of their differences and this often broke out in violence between the two groups. Just to give an example of how much these two groups clashed- around 6 or 7 AD, Some Samaritans scattered bones in the Jerusalem Temple during Passover[2]. This is a kind of religious terrorism that would defile the Temple. Also, in 52 AD, Samaritans massacred a group of Galilean pilgrims[3] at a place called En-gannim. Jews often avoided going through Samaria on the way to Jerusalem, even though it was shorter. Jesus didn’t seem to avoid Samaria the way many of his fellow Jews did.
Returning to the parable, to the utter shock of the listeners, the Samaritan is the one who helped the beaten-up and left-for-dead Jew who lay dying in the ditch. He put the man on his donkey and took him to an inn to care for him. The Samaritan went out of his way, in an area that was probably dangerous for him to be in, and used his own money to pay the inn keeper to care for the man while he is away. This could be a very uncomfortable situation for him to arrive in a Jewish village as a Samaritan with a Jewish man who has been beaten and robbed.
Jesus asks, “which of the three was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the Law replies, "The one who had mercy on him." He couldn’t bring himself to say, “The Samaritan”. … The question asked in the context of the parable becomes “to whom must I become a neighbour?” And the implied answer is, “to anyone who is in need”. Rather than restrict the term “neighbour”, as the expert in the Law seemed to want to do, Jesus expands the definition to say that a neighbour is anyone who needs your help.
So, the challenge set before us is, will we use God’s revelation, the teachings of Jesus, the sacraments of the Church, to give us a sense of purity to set us apart from the nasty world? Will we use those teaching to isolate ourselves? Or will these things help us to extend ourselves into the world to offer compassionate help to those who need it, regardless of whether they are the kinds of people we want to love? Will we offer our help to those we consider our enemy, or will we restrict our definition of love? … Who is God calling you to love, that you would rather not love?
AMEN
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