Who Is My Nighbor

 

The Parable of The Good Samaritan is one of the most beloved gospel stories in the Bible. The story (Luke 10:25-37) tells of a man who is savagely beaten and robbed in going from Jerusalem to Jericho and given up for dead in a ditch. A priest and a Levite pass by without helping him. But a Samaritan stops and cares for him, taking him to an inn where the Samaritan pays for his care. The parable’s overarching theme teaches that enemies can have compassion for enemies; compassion has no boundaries, and that judging people on the basis of their religion, ethnicity or gender orientation can leave us dying in a ditch. 



So who were the Samaritans, really? We are told that they were not simply outcasts. They were the despised enemies of the Jews. So in this parable in which Jesus’ audience would have expected a Jew to be the hero of the story, they were likely shocked to hear that it was a Samaritan instead. Only by understanding this pivotal paradox does the powerful message of the parable come through for them then and for us today. 



Scripture scholar James Martin defines a parable as a “metaphor or a simile drawn from nature or common life arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application in order to tease it into active thought.” He goes on to explain that parables are poetic explanations of spiritual concepts impossible to comprehend fully. For example the reign of God is far too rich to be encompassed by any one definition, no matter how theologically accurate. In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, a man from a hated ethnic group was ultimately revealed to Jewish listeners as the good guy who cares for the stranger. As with this parable, many run counter to the expectations of the audience and therefore are counter intuitive to “conventional wisdom.” (Martin, Jesus, p200).



 The lesson in this parable springs from an answer to a question posed to Jesus by a lawyer, likely an expert in the Mosaic Law. The lawyer’s question was, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus takes this opportunity to define what His disciples’ relationship should be to their neighbors and in typical fashion, Jesus answers the question with a question. “He asks ‘What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?’" By referring to the Law, Jesus refers to the authority, both accepted as truth, the Old Testament. In essence, He is asking the lawyer, what does Scripture say about this and how does he interpret it? In so doing Jesus avoids being “trapped” and allows the lawyer to evaluate his answer instead of the lawyer evaluating Jesus' answer. 

The lawyer answers correctly and Jesus acknowledges that he has given an orthodox answer, but doesn’t stop there. He tells him that this kind of love requires more than an emotional feeling; he would need to “practice what he preached.” As an educated man the lawyer realized that he could not possibly keep this law, nor would he have necessarily wanted to. There would always be people in his life that he could not love. Thus, in an effort to limit the law’s command by limiting its parameters, he asks the question “who is my neighbor?” The word “neighbor” in the Greek means “someone who is near,” and in the Hebrew it means “someone that you have an association with.” This allows for a limited interpretation of neighbor as fellow Jew and would have excluded Samaritans, Romans, and other foreigners. 

Jesus uses the parable of the Good Samaritan to correct the lawyer’s limited definition of “neighbor” and corresponding duty to his neighbor. By ending the encounter in this manner, Jesus wants us to follow the Samaritan’s example in our own lives in that we are to show compassion and love for those we encounter in our everyday activities. We are to love others regardless of our differences. As for reaching out to help, the criterion is "need." If we can satisfy the need, then we are to give generously and freely, without any expectation of return. This is a seemingly impossible obligation for the lawyer, and often for us. Of course, we may not be able to always follow the law because by our humanity we tend to be self centered and often unwilling to leave our comfort zone "get involved."

Thus, the lessons of the Parable of the Good Samaritan are three-fold: (1) we are to set aside our prejudice and show love and compassion for others. (2) Our neighbor is anyone we encounter; we are all creatures of the creator and we are to love all of mankind as Jesus has taught. (3) Keeping the law in its entirety with the intent to save ourselves is an impossible task; we need help, and Jesus is all too eager to be there for us.