The Parable of the So-Called “Good” Samaritan

It often comes as a surprise to people when it is pointed out that something as familiar, popular, and beloved as the Christmas story, the story of Jesus’ birth, can only be found in two of the four Gospel accounts of his life and ministry. In fact, we have so conflated in our minds and telling of the Christmas story, a comparison of the two accounts we do possess in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke hold further surprises for most of us. Matthew is the only Gospel which gives mention to the star, the wisemen from the East, and the jealous rage of King Herod. Luke, meanwhile, alone tells us about the shepherds tending their flocks, the angels who entertained them, and the manger scene where they found the newborn child. The Parable of the “Good” Samaritan, perhaps the most familiar of all the parables of Jesus, may similarly confound us for only having been remembered or worthy of inclusion by the writer of the Gospel of Luke. Sometimes, popular familiarity breeds assumptions which can be misleading and simply are not true.

In the case of the parable of the so-called “Good” Samaritan, we can assume too much that is misleading and simply not true about this story of Jesus just because of what we have popularly been calling it for centuries. It is, as some have aptly claimed, the great mis-named parable. There were a lot of things about Samaritans that would have entered the minds of the original folk who listened to this story of Jesus and none of it would have been associated with anything understood as “good”.

About six hundred years before the time of Jesus, the armies of the Babylonian Empire swept into the land of Judah, demolishing the Great Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem which was the center and focus of Jewish life. The Babylonians further exiled to their own land the largely urbanized and societal elites of the Jewish people leaving behind the less cultured and educated of the people of the land. The exiled Jewish community in Babylon did a remarkable job of preserving their culture and heritage in the hope of one day returning to their homeland to reestablish themselves. Some seventy years later, they were given leave to return to their former lands. However, upon their return, they were confronted with the folk who had never been exiled. To claim that these folk were an interesting breed would be an understatement. Though still somewhat recognizable as Jews, they had intermarried with others who were not Jewish. They were genuine half-breeds. In that mix of race and culture, their practice and understanding of their Jewish being had evolved and changed in ways which were entirely unacceptable to the returning exiles. These were or would become the Samaritans. Few things in life were more despicable to Jews than Samaritans. Before we are too quick to attribute mere malice to Jewish attitudes toward Samaritans, the feelings of Samaritans toward Jews were equally malicious. It might not be far off the mark to suggest that a good deal of what continues to divide people in the Middle East today can be traced to this rift between the Samaritans and the Jews.

In the Gospel of Luke, the story involving the Samaritan is preceded by a question posed to Jesus by a lawyer. In Matthew and Mark there are similar exchanges between Jesus and religious authorities, but neither of them lead to the telling of this story involving a Samaritan. There is, in Luke, something very particular which prompts this story.

Lawyers, in Jewish circles, were those who specialized in providing interpretations of Jewish Law, as written in scripture, for what one was expected to “do” in order to fulfill that Law and win favor with God and people. Thus, the question posed by the lawyer inquires what one must “do” to obtain the “life of the ages”. (“Zoe aeon” often misleadingly translated as “eternal life” or “everlasting life” is better understood as life in all its fullness in the here and now, but that is another story for another time.)

Jesus, as he was often prone to do, answers the lawyer’s question with a question. “You’re the trusted interpreter of the Law,” Jesus asks, “What do you read there in regard to your query?” The lawyer answers, as Jesus does in other contexts, by giving the great summary of the Law and the Prophets. “We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our mind, and all our physical strength; and we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.” Jesus, not surprisingly, praises the lawyer’s answer and claims if we do that, we shall indeed have the life we seek.

However, not exactly satisfied with the finality of Jesus’ concluding statement, in an almost outright parody of our popular caricatures of lawyers, the lawyer - upon cross examination - asks a further question. Seeking a technical loophole he asks, “Who is my neighbor that I should love them?” That question could just as easily be interpreted as asking, “Who is not my neighbor that I can be excused for not loving them?” It is this question which prompts the telling of Jesus’ parable involving the Samaritan.

“A certain person going downhill from Jerusalem to Jericho is victimized by muggers and is left half-dead by the side of the road…” If we were seated among the good law-abiding citizenship gathered with Jesus that day, there is one word which would have jumped out at us thus far in the telling that would have piqued our attention and initiated possible advice from the trusted interpreters of the Law. That word is “half-dead”. Jewish Law had some strong prohibitions in regard to having any kind of contact with the dead. Contact with a dead person was a source of defilement which required the offender to engage in certain acts of ritualized cleansing which occupied quite a bit of time. In the meantime, the offender was to be socialized ostracized, quarantined so as not to pass on the contagion to others.

“Soon thereafter,” the story continues, “a certain priest seeing the perhaps dead man, passed him by on the other side of the road.” Now, before we start condemning this priest for the callously cold-hearted human being that he appears to be, let us remember that as we sit there among others with our good law-abiding caps on, we would more likely be praising this man for avoiding the potential scourge of defiling himself which would, in turn, prevent him from further functioning as the good law-abiding citizen that he is as a priest with all his social responsibilities he exercises among the people. He passes by on the other side of the road for good reason and we would commend him for that!

“In like manner,” Jesus continues, “a Levite, another good law-abiding citizen by passes the possibly dead man on the opposite side of the road.” Again, sitting there in that crowd we would be instantly impressed by this man’s astute wisdom in avoiding a possible infraction against the law. We would probably even be nodding our heads approvingly about how Jesus’ story is highlighting the wisdom of doing the right thing even in extenuating circumstances.

“Next thing you know,” Jesus says, “a Samaritan appears.” The crowd around us begins to stir with snide boos and hisses as well as half-mumbled comments about this unwanted character. “Oh boy,” a half-serious joking voice can be heard, “if this man isn’t already dead, he’s gonna wish he was because if there is one thing worst than having contact with the dead, it’s having contact with a Samaritan.” Oh the unspeakable horror as Jesus continues to inform us that the Samaritan reaches out and touches the man, lifting him up to his own mule, delivering him into the care of an innkeeper, and promising to handle any cost to see the man through. Now we have a legal dilemma! This is a case worthy of a lawyer. What, pray tell, will happen next?

What happens next finds Jesus closing his story with a question directed back at the lawyer. It is a question which closes the loophole being sought in the lawyer’s question that prompted the story. Jesus asks, “Who acted the neighbor in our little story?” Unable even to have the word “Samaritan” cross the purity of his lips the lawyer answers, “I suppose the one who showed mercy to the man…”

Who is the neighbor that God would have us love as our own very selves? It is, according to this story of Jesus, the Samaritan or whoever we happen to despise for one reason or another at this time in our lives. Our neighbor is that other person, however we come to define people as other than us. For Christians, it is non-Christians. For those of us proud in our denominational loyalties, it is other denominations. For Americans, it is non-Americans. For those of us painted with a certain skin color, it is those shaded with another pigment. We could go on and on perpetually identifying the thus-far unacknowledged neighbor who we are called to love until we come to the God-given realization that everyone is our neighbor. We are called to love everyone as we love ourselves. It is just as simple…and as difficult as that.

If we were to see this exchange between Jesus and this lawyer as that of a legal argument, a legal argument about the very basic foundational way in which we can fulfill the entirety of what is written in the scriptures, in the Law and the Prophets, then Jesus’ thunderous conclusion reminds us that there are no loopholes available to us in figuring out who is not our neighbor that we can excuse ourselves from loving them. What a different world and life we would all live if we heeded these words. “Go. Do this,” Jesus promises us, “and you shall have the life you seek!”