Today is Thanksgiving Sunday here in Canada. It’s a weekend to remember what we’re thankful for. Gratitude is worth contemplating and celebrating. It’s important that we recognize our fortunes… but not the kind of fortune tied to wealth or notoriety. It’s about celebrating the simple things… health, family, a roof, a warm bed… simple things that many people don’t have.
Good neighbours are things to be thankful for. Not everyone can say they have good neighbours. One of the things I’m very thankful for is that you’ve all been such good neighbours to me and my family. In a time of need, I know (first-hand) that you are all kind and willing to step up for each other, and that’s a blessing not everyone has.
Today we’re going to look at the parable of the Good Samaritan… a parable we’re probably all familiar with. But, I think we might discover some new things about this story that you may not have noticed before. Let’s find out…
Many of Jesus’ parables are social commentary highlighting things like racism and hypocrisy. Good Samaritan is certainly one of those parables. It’s a story that encourages its listener (or reader) to be counter-cultural… to go against society’s norms of acceptance! It’s meant to be a bit shocking.
Let’s set the stage because context is important. The story only shows up in Luke’s account of Jesus’ life, and it occurs just after He’s sent seventy of his followers out to reach the people. He says to them:
Luke 10:16
“Whoever listens to you listens to Me; whoever rejects you rejects Me; and whoever rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me.”
Then we read that they all come back to Him amazed by their great success. Jesus can now go into these places and people will have heard of Him… they have an idea what He’s about and so the ministry grows and Jesus’ reputation grows. Jesus’ followers are excited. They’re starting to really believe that Jesus is the One who will stand in opposition to Rome and will rescue the people. And, of course, as Jesus’ reputation grows that means that the opposition to Jesus is also growing.
The first ‘opposer’ after this big missionary event is an expert in Jewish law…
Luke 10:25
One day an expert in the law (the Torah) stood up to test Him. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus rarely gives a direct answer, instead He turns the question back to him:
Luke 10:26
“What is written in the Law?” Jesus replied. “How do you read it?”
Essentially he’s saying, “You’re the ‘expert’, you tell me!”
Luke 10:27
He answered, “‘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 neighbour as yourself.’”
This man is quoting the shema… the very famous Jewish prayer found in Deuteronomy 6 and he finishes it with a tag from Leviticus 19, “Love your neighbour as yourself”.
Luke 10:28
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus said. “Do this and you will live.”
End of the story. Done and dusted. Easy peasy, right?! Not quite…
Luke 10:29
But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”
The lawyer is changing the question. At first it is, how do I inherit eternal life… Now: how can I do the least to get what I want? If I have to be good to a neighbour to receive eternal life, can you qualify who that is (so I can do the minimum)?
Instead of a direct answer, Jesus tells a story. Here we go, it’s parable time:
Luke 10:30a
Jesus took up this question and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.”
Immediately people can envision this story. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a famous road. It was a road with a bad reputation. It was a narrow road in a valley with caves along it… caves where robbers could easily hide. You didn’t take this road on your own. That would be asking for trouble! You go as a group or you don’t go at all. So already the listener is probably thinking along the lines of, “this guy’s kind of dug his own grave”. There’s probably already a little bit of victim shaming going on here. Notice, too, that we know nothing about this man. We’re not given his name. He’s stripped so there are no identifying markings to give us a hint about his ethnicity or his trade. Was he Jewish? We don’t know. Was he a Samaritan? We don’t know. Was he a Gentile? We don’t know. Jesus does this on purpose. This man is human. Full stop. It doesn’t matter what his ethnicity is… how you react to this man should be the same regardless of race, class, religion. So the text tells us that…
Luke 10:30
“They stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.”
Let’s take a moment to think about this guy. He’s been stripped naked; arguably that’s sexual assault. He’s been beaten; that’s physical assault. He’s been abandoned, left for dead; that’s psychological abuse. This is pretty horrific stuff.
Luke 10:31-32
“Now by chance a priest was going down the same road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So too, when a Levite came to that spot and saw him, he passed by on the other side.”
These are religious leaders. People look up to them, so when leaders in authority treat their flock in this way, it’s essentially spiritual abuse. Now their argument would be that touching bodily fluids, like blood, would make them spiritually unclean, but that is just using your religion as an excuse for bad behaviour… which, sadly, is a rather common reaction, even today.
Luke 10:33
“But a Samaritan on a journey came upon him, and when he saw him, he had compassion.”
“But a Samaritan”... this was this shocking twist. The lawyer doesn’t want to hear a story where the Samaritan is the hero. Why? Who were the Samaritans?
700 years earlier the Assyrians destroyed Israel, they conquered the land and removed half of the Jews and brought in people from other nationalities that they had conquered.
Those people intermarried with the Jews that were left behind. This community of Samaritans built their own temple on Mount Gerizim and followed the Torah only (the first 5 books of the Bible). To the Jews in Jesus’ day, Samaritans were compromised half-breeds who were worshipping incorrectly in the wrong temple. Jews and Samaritans had no love for each other… even though DNA linked them together.
And so Jesus looks straight at this Jewish teacher of the law and makes the Samaritan the good guy…
Luke 10:33
“But a Samaritan on a journey came upon him, and when he saw him, he had compassion.”
The Greek word for compassion is a doozy. It’s splangkh-NEE-zomai and it’s almost exclusively used by Jesus. This is the same word he used in the parable of the Prodigal Son. When the father saw the son he felt splangkh-NEE-zomai. Jesus, Himself, also felt this same type of compassion when he saw the widow whose only son had died and when he saw the blind or the hungry, he felt splangkh-NEE-zomai.
In Greek splangkna means guts or internal organs… so when you had compassion you felt it deep inside of you. It was a physical reaction to seeing someone in need. When you have this kind of compassion you can’t stand on the sidelines, it moves you to do something.
And so the Samaritan, like Jesus, felt a deep compassion (like a gut punch) for the broken man on the road and he did something about it…
Luke 10:34-35
“He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Take care of him,’ he said, ‘and on my return I will repay you for any additional expense.’”
This is the end of the parable. Then Jesus turns to the teacher of the law and says…
Luke 10:36-37
“Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
“The one who showed him mercy,” replied the expert in the law.
Then Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
The answer to Jesus’ question, “Who was the neighbour”, was “The Samaritan”, but notice the Jewish man of law couldn’t bring himself to say the word. He doesn’t say “the Samaritan”, instead he says, “The one who showed mercy”. He couldn’t summon the words to give credit to his enemy… which means he’s missed the point. He’s still taking shots at the man that he sees as his subordinate.
And this “expert in the law”, this Bible scholar, should have known better, because here’s the thing. Jesus is pulling this parable from a story in the Old Testament.
Jesus takes the elements of this parable from an event that happened in about 730 BC (just before Assyria came and conquered Samaria). It was during a time of civil war between Israel in the North and Judah in the South. Israel defeats Judah in a terrible battle. Israel’s capital is Samaria so after the battle, the victors drag their Judean captives back to Samaria, but a prophet there, named Oded, warns them that if they enslave these conquered people of Judah, God’s anger will turn on them. The leaders in Samaria actually listen and heed the prophet’s advice. So when the warriors get to the city gates with the spoils of war, including thousands of captives, the city officials stop them and would not accept the plunder… and then we read this:
2 Chronicles 28:14-15
So the armed men left the captives and the plunder before the leaders and all the assembly. Then the men (of Samaria)… took charge of the captives, and provided, from the plunder, clothing for the naked. They clothed them, gave them sandals and food and drink, anointed their wounds, and put all the feeble on donkeys. So they brought them to Jericho, the City of Palms, (back) to their (Judean) brothers. Then they returned to Samaria.
They didn’t ask for any payment, they just brought them back home, clothed, fed and bandaged. There are good Samaritans in the Old Testament! When Jesus tells his parable to the expert in Jewish law, that “Bible expert” would absolutely recognize this Old Testament story within it. He knew where this parable was coming from, and yet he still couldn’t summon the words to give the Samaritan credit.
So… when it comes to the Parable of the Good Samaritan, I think there’s another question we need to ask. The question is, who are we in the story?
We know who we’re not supposed to be, right? We’re not supposed to be like the cold religious elite who think more of their own reputation than the well-being of others.
We’ve been trained to think that we’re supposed to be like the Samaritan, right? And yes, I think we are, because we’re supposed to reflect God’s character, and that’s exactly what the Samaritan is doing. He’s doing what God would do. He sees the afflicted and He comes to where they are, really looks right at them and feels great compassion for them. He binds their wounds, heals their affliction, and then anoints them with oil and nourishes them with wine.
He lifts them up and places them on his donkey; he gives up his ride and then walks alongside them to a place of safety. He would then pay for their life (did you notice that?)… and afterwards he promises to return to cover any debt owed.
Are you seeing it?! Who are we in the story? In many ways, we’re the one laying on the road. In John’s Gospel Jesus says this…
John 15:20
“‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecute me, they will also persecute you.”
As Jesus is telling this parable He also knows he’s about to be the one stripped and beaten and left for dead. And the religious elite (just like the men in the parable) will look the other way.
Jesus understands our suffering as humans because He’s been in the midst of it. He is the neighbour lying in the street. That’s why He says, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me,” (Matt 25:40). Jesus knows the crucifixion is coming. He will ride into Jerusalem on a donkey; He will be anointed; He will be lifted up onto the cross; He will be offered sour wine. The elements of His story are in this story. In John’s Gospel Jesus says:
John 16:32-33
“Look, an hour is coming and has already come when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and you will leave Me all alone. Yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take courage; I have overcome the world!”
We should feel for the downtrodden, because we understand what it’s like to be stepped on, forgotten, misunderstood, depressed, financially overwhelmed, experiencing physical pain… you name it.
Yes, we are supposed to be like the Samaritan because we’re supposed to reflect God’s character, but first and foremost we need to recognize that we’re the man lying in the road… awaiting rescue.
Here’s the thing… we think the parable is answering the second question (who is my neighbour?) but it’s also answering the first question (what must I do to inherit eternal life?).
What must you do? You must allow yourself to be rescued by the rescuer… it’s that simple. Open your heart to being rescued. Hand over your life to the Rescuer. Give yourself permission to not be 100% in control of your life… because that’s a rat-race that sets you up for failure and it’s a rat-race you don’t have to be in. Set yourself free, and allow yourself to be rescued.
And once you’ve been rescued THEN you must become a rescuer yourself because that’s what it means to be a Christian. That’s what it means to be a “little Christ” (aka a Christian)… To be a ‘Christ’ or in Hebrew a ‘Messiah’ is to be “an Anointed One”. We have been anointed by God’s Spirit! Literally we are to be the Anointed Ones who rescues those in need… the poor, the outcast, the orphan, the refugee, the widow, the poor. Christianity wasn’t meant to be a religion of rules; it’s a social movement about rescue and redemption.
But know this: you can’t rescue anyone if you’re still laying on the road.
What must I do to inherit eternal life? Let yourself be rescued by the Rescuer. God wants to save you! Don’t let anything, or anyone, stand in the way.
