The Parable of the Good Samaritan

Today as we continue through Jesus’ parables of grace, we come to the magnificent story of the Good Samaritan, one of Jesus’ most famous parables. But just because we know it well does not mean it has nothing to teach us. So let’s take a closer look.

Text

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is found in the second half of Luke 10:

[10.25] Just then a lawyer stood up to test him [Jesus], saying: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit the life of the coming age?” [26] And he said to him: “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” [27] And in answer he said: “ ‘You will love the LORD your God from your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole strength and with your whole mind;’ and ‘your neighbour as yourself.’” [28] And he said: “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.”

[29] But wanting to justify himself, he said to Jesus: “And who is my neighbour?” [30] And in answer Jesus said: “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and was attacked by robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half-dead. [31] Now it just so happened that a certain priest was travelling down that road, and seeing him, he passed him by on the other side. [32] In the same way, a Levite too, coming upon that place, saw him and passed by on the other side. [33] But a certain Samaritan was traveling and came upon him and when he saw him, he felt deeply for him. [34] He went up to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. He put him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and managed his care. [35] The next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, and said: ‘See to his needs; and when I come back, I will pay you back whatever more you spend.’ [36] Which of these three, in your opinion, was a neighbour to the man who fell among robbers? [37] And he said, “The one who showed mercy to him.” And Jesus said to him, “Now you go and do likewise.” (Luke 10.25-37)

Experience

My experience with this story is a bit different because I have a default interpretation of it that I refer to often: namely that the story tells us our neighbour is the person we’d least like it to be. This means I feel I have some skin in the game. I wonder whether this study will reveal anything that will challenge my working interpretation. To that end, I’d like to know more about the context of the story and how it addresses the question of neighbourliness.

Encounter

In Luke’s narrative, we meet Jesus and an unspecified ‘lawyer,’ who is said to want to ‘test’ Jesus and ‘justify’ himself.

In the parable, we have four main characters, a (presumably Jewish) man beset by robbers, a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan man, all of whom deserve our attention if we are to understand the story.

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Literary Context

The interaction with the lawyer comes at a break in Luke’s narrative, making it less connected to what has preceded it than most of the parables.

Conflict between Jesus and religious experts drives a lot of the narrative in the Gospels. This interaction is one of the more positive ones, but even here it’s set up as a “test” (10.25). The lawyer asks Jesus a question that is both the kind of question people of faith like to ponder and also one whose answer will say a lot about where Jesus stands in the religious debates of the day (Bailey (2008) 286).* Jesus puts question back to the lawyer, who gives a standard summary of the Law, highlighting the love of God (Deuteronomy 6.5) and love of neighbour (Leviticus 19.18) (Spencer 279; Levine). Jesus himself uses this summary in Matthew 22.38f (cf. Mark 12.30f), and it was found in earlier Jewish sources such as the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (Fagenblat). But when Jesus approves of his response, the lawyer asks a further question that gets right to the heart of things: “Who then is my neighbour?”

Neighbourliness

Lest we misunderstand Jesus’ answer, we have to understand the question and the kinds of presuppositions and ideas the lawyer may have had in asking it.

First-century Judea — and especially the areas north of Jerusalem where Jesus ministered — was incredibly diverse: to the old mix of Jewish and Phoenician settlements, there were also Samaritan villages, Greek cities, and now Roman colonies such as Caesarea. The question, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ was therefore very relevant (Green 429; Bailey (2008) 292).

At a basic level, the term ‘neighbour’ (rea’) in Hebrew referred to anyone one might commonly encounter in everyday life; this could include anyone from a close friend to a fellow citizen (Fagenblat). In the Torah, the term defines the legal boundaries of the community: the neighbour is someone to whom you have legal responsibilities, and who also has the same responsibilities towards you (Fagenblat).

But this didn’t mean that Jews saw themselves as only having responsibilities to their legal neighbours. For the very chapter that commands the love of neighbour concludes by saying: “The resident alien who lives among you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love the alien as yourself” (Leviticus 19:34). Likewise, leaders were commanded to judge fairly on behalf of resident aliens (Deuteronomy 1.16), and the protections such as Sabbath rest, gleaning rights, and against wage-theft also explicitly applied to them (5.14, 14.29, 24.14). Moreover, the commandment to love one’s neighbours was not understood as placing a limitation on one’s responsibilities, but as a general principle through which the whole Law was to be interpreted: “one should apply the [commandments] charitably, so that those ‘neighbours’ to whom the law applies will not suffer on account of stringent, unforgiving interpretations of it” (Fagenblat; cf., Spencer 281). That said, the existence of such protections implies that they were needed, that then just as today people sought loopholes that would allow them to oppress those with whom they did not identify as ‘neighbour’.

So on the whole, we can conclude that even if the lawyer’s question presupposes that some people are not his neighbour, that does not mean that he doesn’t think he had ethical responsibilities towards them (Fagenblat).

The Victim

The man who falls among thieves is not identified, though Jesus’ audience would have likely assumed he was a Jewish layperson. As such, he’d be the only person in the story with whom they might immediately identify (Scott 194; Just 454). The man goes ‘down’ from Jerusalem to Jericho; since Jerusalem roughly 900 m above Jericho (situated in the Dead Sea basin), this language of descent is literal (Nuechterlein Proper 10C).^ This difficult road was the most common way to get from Galilee to Jerusalem for those wanting to avoid Samaritan territory, and was therefore a notorious road for thieves (Nuechterlein). The man is attacked, stripped of any identifying markers of class or ethnicity, and left “half-dead.”

By beginning with the traveler, Jesus centers the victim. This contrasts with similar ancient Jewish stories, which focus on the one who comes to the aid of the victim (Nuechterlein; Scott 201; Bailey (2008) 294).

Priest and Levite

Both of the figures who pass by the injured man were part of Judaism’s hereditary religious classes (Green 430). Priests were upper class descendants of Aaron, while Levites were the descendants of Levi, and performed various assistant roles within the Temple (Bailey (2008) 292).

The story does not tell us their motivations for not stopping. Into this void Christians have often inserted concerns for ritual purity, associated with coming into contact with blood or a dead body. This aligns with the general thrust of Jesus’ teaching against the idea of ritual purity. But, it’s unlikely to be in mind here, as the Law and tradition both insisted that the duty to help those in need (including need of burial) outweighed any such concerns (Spencer 282; Nuectherlein; Scott 196; Green 430). Additionally, both men are said to be traveling from Jerusalem, meaning ritual uncleanliness would not immediately interfere with their responsibilities  (Bailey (2008) 292).

So it makes most sense to see their motivations purely in a lack of empathy and concern for the man, who their ‘neighbour’ under the law. That they were ‘professionally religious’ only means that they should know better.

The Samaritan

The best way to think of Samaritans is as ‘non-Jewish Israelites’; they are descended from those left behind in the Exile (which primarily involved the ruling classes) and which therefore were not party to the drastic religious changes the Exile brought to Judaism (Fagenblat; Specner 266). Among other differences, they maintained local altars instead of centralizing sacrifice in the Jerusalem Temple, and recognized only the Torah (and their own version of it) as Scripture.

By Jesus’ day:

Jews and Samaritans effectively regarded each other as enemies, with tensions exacerbated by their distinctive appropriations of Israel’s heritage and their territorial proximity, forcing them to rub raw shoulders with one another. (Spencer 266; cf. Fagenblat)

As one Jewish proverb put it, “He who eats the bread of a Samaritan is like one who eats the flesh of swine” (Scott 197). Jewish travelers faced the risk of violent attacks if they traveled through Samaritan territory, and Luke recorded Jesus not being welcome in a Samaritan village in just the previous chapter (Spencer 267; Luke 9.51f).

The presence of the Samaritan in the story is as surprising narratively as it is culturally. In what has become a proverb of sorts among biblical scholars, the triad of ‘a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan’ would be as jarring to first-century ears as ‘a bishop, a priest, and a Frenchman’ would be to ours (Scott 198; Bailey (2008) 292).

But, their status as non-Jewish Israelites makes Samaritans a perfect test case for a discussion about who ‘counts’ as a ‘neighbour’. In the parable, the Samaritan shows he is a ‘neighbour’ by his active compassion, and sacrificial care for the stranger (Just 453; Green 425; Fagenblat).

Meaning

With all this in mind, it makes best sense to see the parable as a simple statement on the supremacy of compassion: Jesus equates the love of neighbour commanded in the Law with the love of enemy he proclaimed in the Sermon on the Mount (Spencer 283; Green 426). Such love is practical. The lawyer’s original question of what he must do to inherit eternal life is given a final answer in Jesus’ words ‘Go and do likewise’ (Green 425).

On a more philosophical level, this teaching is a big step towards the ‘anti-religion’ of Jesus. As Scott puts it, “the kingdom can no longer be marked off as religious; the map no longer has boundaries” (Scott 202; cf., Thurman). And this is where perhaps there is significance in the choice of the three characters who come upon the victim: The two men who involved in the ritual of the Temple are outdone by one who worships at the ‘wrong’ Temple, therefore:

the temple no longer divides the world into religious and nonreligious. So here the Samaritan is not converted. Gone is the apocalyptic vision of ultimate triumph over one’s enemies. The world with its sure arrangement of insiders and outsiders is no longer an adequate model for predicting the kingdom. (Scott 202)

Challenge

Subversion of First-Century Expectation

As we’ve seen, this parable is an exercise in subversion of expectation, from the centering of the victim, to the break-up of the expected pattern of priest-levite-layman, and most especially in the casting of a Samaritan as the hero of the story.

What wouldn’t have been ‘subversive’ is the message of care for those in need. This was a central teaching of the Torah and the message of many ancient Jewish stories.

Contemporary Challenges

This is both a story about the centrality of compassion in the life of faith and a rejection of religious tribalism. Both sides of this offer challenges to contemporary Christianity.

Religious Tribalism

Because of the heavy weight of antisemitism in Christian history, we have once again to reiterate that this parable was not rejecting the Jewish Law, but was describing how one’s Judaism and observance of the Law was to be lived out. Tribalism is not a ‘Jewish problem’ but a human problem, and there is a long history of it being just as active among Christians as anyone else. But Jesus has here redefined ‘neighbour’, just as he has elsewhere redefined what it means to be ‘mother’ or ‘brother’, and a ‘son of Abraham’ as anyone who does the will of God (Matthew 12.46ff; Luke 3.8 (cf. Romans 9.7).

Because of its anti-tribalist message, this has been a key text for Girardian thinkers. This philosophical tradition takes the tendency to define ‘us’ and ‘them’ as the essential driver for human culture and, by extension, sin. In this way, traditional ‘religion’ acts to further promote sin and division by focusing attention on these boundaries of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘in’ and ‘out’, ‘pure’ and ‘impure’ (Nuectherlein; Green 432). This is a big reason why the faith of Jesus can be thought of as an anti-religion: he tears down these boundaries: all are welcome; there is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ only sinful but beloved humanity, and the only purity that matters is what comes out from our hearts. Jesus gathers, welcomes, and unites; so anything or anyone that pushes away, rejects, or divides is not of him. This stands as a huge challenge in our present world, where so many people who claim a Christian identity are promoting the exact kind of narrowness and divisiveness that Jesus himself opposed at every turn.

‘Works’ and Grace

Another longstanding tension within Christianity has been in how we talk about the relationship between our salvation by God’s grace and the need to live that out in real and practical ways. Because this parable focuses on action (”Go and do likewise”), some commentators have felt the need to clarify how it relates to the question of grace. Kenneth Bailey questions the premise of the lawyer’s original question, asking, “What can anyone do to inherit anything? Inheritance, by its very nature, is a gift” (Bailey (2008) 286). And Robert Farrar Capon warns against reading the parable as promoting “a sensible if slightly heroic career of successful care-giving based on the performance of right-handed good works.” We might ask ourselves, then, where is grace in this parable?

Honestly, it’s everywhere. The simplest way we can express the paradox of Christian teaching on ‘works and grace’ is that we are saved by grace but will be judged on our works (e.g., Matthew 7.21; for “faith without works is barren” (James 2.20)). This is not contradictory because, in God’s pay-it-forward economy, the genuine reception of God’s grace will naturally bear good fruit in showing grace to others. So in this parable, the Samaritan is not ‘earning’ his salvation through his compassion, but revealing it.

But we also see the Gospel in his selflessness, to the extent that Capon calls the parable “a veritable paean to lostness, outcastness, and even, in a certain sense, death.” The beaten man has lost any markers of identity, wealth, or health, left ‘half-dead’ on the side of the road in the wilderness. The Samaritan, who is to Jewish eyes lost and outcast, ‘dies to self’, setting aside his religious and ethnic prejudices, to say nothing of his plans, putting himself in danger by stopping, and using significant resources to see to the man’s needs (Capon; Spencer 282).

Such Christlike costly love is rare and goes against the natural grain of our human tendencies towards self-protection. We are too often happy in our comfortable social/religious bubbles (Capon). If it is to exist at all, and not devolve into a self-important saviour complex, it must be grounded in the receipt of God’s grace, and thereby our recognition that we are in need of it. Jesus’ answer to the lawyer’s question can be read as saying, ‘there’s nothing you can do to save yourself, for you are half-dead’:

You need someone to love you, show mercy to you, heal you, pay for you, give you lodging, revive you. I am the one you despise because I associate with sinners, but in fact I am the one who fulfills the Law, who embodies the Torah, and who brings God’s mercy. I am your neighbor and will give you the gifts of mercy, healing, life. As I live in you, you will have life and will do mercy—not motivated by laws and definitions, but animated by my love. (Just 454; cf. Scott 192; Bailey (2008) 287)

In this way, we can see Jesus in both the humble, self-offering Samaritan and the beaten victim with whom we are to identify and show compassion. As Capon puts it:

And therefore if there is any ministering to be imitated in the Good Samaritan’s example, it is the ministry to Jesus in his passion, as that passion is to be found in the least of his brethren namely, in the hungry, the thirsty, the outcast, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned in whom he dwells and through whom he invites us to be come his neighbours in death and resurrection. (Capon; cf. Matthew 25.31-46)

Therefore, the kind of compassion and action enjoined by the parable is less about works than it is co-suffering in the passion of the world (Capon).

Expand

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is the ultimate in ‘expanding’ Bible stories. It shatters the boundaries (natural or artificual) between people, and radically unifies the love of neighbour with the love of enemy. Indeed, our neighbour is the person we’d least want it to be, the one we are most tempted to despise and dismiss. And we are as much in need of their grace as they are of ours.

Summary & Conclusions

When asked the question of ‘Who is my neighbour?’, that is to say, ‘Who is it to whom I live in the reciprocal good-faith relationships of the Law?’, Jesus answered by telling a story in which a beaten man is ignored by two official representatives of the community of neighbourliness, but attended to by someone outside of that community. In telling us this story, Jesus erases all religious divisions between us: To love one’s neighbour is to love one’s enemy, because one’s enemy is one’s neighbour. Once again, this is not in contravention of the Law of Moses, but represents the way Jesus taught his followers to live out that Law.

 

* For full references, please see the series bibliography.