Dcn Tom Lindell

My brothers and sisters,

What good fortune as today’s Eucharistic lectionary offers the classic parable of the Good Samaritan. Interestingly, this passage from Luke has no parallel in the other Gospels. I have heard that the substance of this parable and that of the Prodigal Son are sufficient to describe the essence of Christianity. (I might add the parable of the Sower.)

Luke provides a segue to the parable via a lawyer (not a well-respected profession back then), who has already been testing Jesus. This time he is proving his malevolent intent by asking him another inappropriate question, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus responds by telling a parable about a Good Samaritan, which is an oxymoron to those who heard him tell the story.

Samaritans were despised by Jews because they were a separate sect from traditional Judaism and thus considered outcasts. This separation occurred during the reign of Solomon who divided the kingdom into the Southern kingdom of Judah in Jerusalem and the Northern kingdom Israel whose capitol was Samaria. This enmity continued over the centuries.

Jewish New Testament scholar’s exegesis of this parable was most helpful in filling in the nuisances of the story: Amy-Jill Levine, “The Good Samaritan,” in Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables Of A Controversial Rabbi, Harper Collins, NY, 2014, pp. 71-106. Levine asks: “What happens when we strip away two thousand years of usually benevolent and well-intended domestication and hear the parable as a first-century short story by a Jew spoken to other Jews?”

A man traveling “down” to Jericho (an 18-mile rocky, robber infested road, referred to in Jesus’ time as the “bloody pass” with a 2,500 ft. drop in elevation) was beaten and robbed and left for dead. Two passed him by, a priest (a hereditary title, not a cleric) and a Levite (A Hebrew member of the tribe of Levi, who assisted the priests at Temple worship). Only the outcast Samaritan attended to him and brought him to an inn where he left him in the charge of the in-keeper and generously offered to pay for his upkeep, thus insuring long-term care.

Then Jesus asked the lawyer which of these three was a neighbor to the man. Without mentioning the Samaritan, he had to admit “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus responds, “Go and do likewise,” implying that the effectual work of God is in OUR hands.

—Dcn Tom