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Learning from the Samaritan
The Good Samaritan or ‘Good-sam’ institutions around the globe have monumentalized the hero of Jesus’ story we read in today’s Gospel. Relations between the Jews and the Samaritans were always strained. Jesus ben Sirach (ca. 180 B.C.) referred to the Samaritans as "the foolish people that dwell in Shechem" (Sir 50:26). There is a tradition that 300 priests and 300 rabbis once gathered in the temple court in Jerusalem to curse the Samaritans with all the curses in the Law of Moses. When the Jews wanted to curse Jesus Christ, they called him demon-possessed and a Samaritan in one breath (John 8:48). To Jesus’ fellow Jews, a Samaritan was a despicable creature. Missing this note, we might miss much of the punch of the parable. Samaritans had their temple in Mount Gerizim and so they gave trouble to anyone traveling through their lands to visit Jerusalem. Luke had already alluded to that animosity in chapter nine when he wrote that the Samaritans “would not receive him” as Jesus and his disciples headed south through Samaritan territory to Jerusalem. Luke in his typical literary style initiates the story with a testing debate from a scholar of Torah to tarnish Jesus’ image as a popular teacher. He asks the Big Question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus turns the tables on him by asking him the teaching of the Torah in which he was well versed. The lawyer responds with a nice summary of Jesus’ own Torah-linked teaching, joining love of God (Dt 6) with love of neighbor (Lev 19:18). Embarrassed that Jesus has exposed him as knowing the answer to his own question, this teacher, in true forensic fashion, asks Jesus to define “neighbor.” Designating the neighbor would give justification as whom one should love and whom one could hate.
Instead of responding with the requested definition, Jesus tells a story with details carefully chosen. A man is assaulted and robbed in a setting that would have been familiar and plausible to first-century Palestinians. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho - desolate and full of twists and turns - is still a likely place for highway robbery. Stripped, beaten, and left behind for dead, the man lies on the road helpless, and his survival would depend on the magnanimity of other travelers. In an era when there was no ambulance service and highway-patrol, human kindness was the only rescue. The first two characters of Jesus’ story to come upon the hapless victim are persons high on a societal scale. The Priest and Levite were respectable persons who had all the means to help but would have been bound by ritual purity laws to enlist their services. The original listeners would have comprehended that and would have even excused them.
By contrast, the action of the Samaritan traveler is astounding. This man has every excuse in the world to mind his own business and to keep on moving. A Samaritan in Judea is on dangerous territory and could himself be subject to derision and harm and his acts of kindness could be misconstrued. Yet he is “moved with compassion at the sight” and proceeds to place himself at risk by administering first aid and taking the victim to an inn to see that he is properly cared for.
In answer to the lawyer's quest for a self-serving definition of neighbor, Jesus defines neighbor as one who is in need, that is anyone regardless of race, color or social status. When our nation is seething under a host of issues stemming from identity politics and policies, this parable is challenging us to view humans from the perspective of the creator. “Neighborliness is not a quality in other people, it is simply their claim on ourselves. We have literally no time to sit down and ask ourselves whether so-and-so is our neighbor or not. We must get into action and obey; we must behave like a neighbor to him” (D. Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship).
Jesus combines love of God and love of neighbor and wants us to understand that combination with a unique and radical seriousness. There can be no love of God that does not express itself in love of neighbor. Conversely, there is no authentic love of neighbor that does not spring from love of God, for otherwise, it is a refined, subtle form of self-love. “One Nation under God” is a clarion call that should prompt every citizen to live the commitment to compassion: move with compassion to action. Fr Tom Kunnel, C.O