Luke 10:25-37
July 13, 2025
OK, so, by a show of hands, how many folks have heard of the story of the Good Samaritan? I thought so. According to BibleSociety.org, it’s the third best known Bible story after the Birth of Jesus and Noah’s Ark. And so, this parable of the Good Samaritan is a story that is widely known, not only by Christians, but by a significant secular audience as well. And there is a problem with this. The problem being that the entire impact of the parable’s original intent has been lost. What do we think of when I say the phrase “Good Samaritan”? Do we think of the Good Sam Club and all of the do-gooders that belong to it? Do we think of a person who does the right thing, even when others don’t? Is our focus on the parable the idea of someone doing good or doing the right thing? If so, then we have missed Jesus’ point entirely.
There is a series of 12 ancient books which are purportedly the testaments of the 12 sons of Jacob. In reality, these books probably date to the Maccabean period from somewhere between 167 and 63 BCE some 1700 years after the time of the guys who supposedly wrote them. But we do know that these books date to at least a hundred years or so before the time of Jesus, because several of these books are included among the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the Testament of Levi… and understanding that Shechem was the capital of Samaria, Chapter 7 verse 2 says, “For from this day forward, Shechem shall be called “City of the Senseless,” because as one might scoff at a fool, so we scoffed at them”.
You see, the Jews despised the Samaritans and among the Samaritans, the feeling was mutual. Without getting into a big, long, history lesson (and y’all know how much I love history) Many Israelites had been unhappy with King Solomon’s reign because of oppressive taxes and also because some of Solomon’s many wives were not Jewish and Solomon joined in the worship of their foreign gods. And so, when Solomon’s servant Jeroboam rebelled against Soloman many Israelites followed him, and this support intensified after Solomon’s death when his son Rehoboam ascended the throne. As a result of this rebellion, Isreal ended up splitting into two nations. The southern nation of Judah with their two tribes was ruled from Jerusalem by the rightful king Rehoboam, and the northern kingdom with their 10 tribes, retained the name Israel, and was ruled by Jeroboam… and his capital city was, you guessed it, Shechem; the capital city of the northern kingdom of Israel, which would eventually become known as Samaria.
The northern kingdom was defeated in a war with Assyria. The Assyrians, in a brilliant strategy designed to prevent insurrection, forcibly relocated most of the inhabitants of Israel to locations throughout the Assyrian kingdom and forcibly relocated other conquered peoples to Israel. When you hear the term “Diaspora” it is to this relocation that it refers. When you hear about the ten lost tribes of Israel, that refers to those who were relocated. After about 150 or so years of intermarrying, the original Jewish people who had remained in Israel were no longer really Jewish, even though there remained a Jewish styled worship at the temple on Mount Gerizim. The Jews living in the southern kingdom of Judah considered these people to be Gentiles, to be unclean, and further, the Jews regarded their worship as being blasphemous.
Still trying to keep this very long story short, about 150 years after the fall of the northern kingdom, the southern kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonian empire and the inhabitants of Judah were also carried off into captivity, but 70 years later, Babylon was in turn defeated by the Persians and their very enlightened king Cyrus. Cyrus had great tolerance for the customs and religions of the people that he had conquered, and it was Cyrus who not only permitted the exiled people of Judah to return to Jerusalem, but he actually funded the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls and the rebuilding of the temple.
After all of this, the people of the northern kingdom, with their temple in Shechem, and the Jews, with their temple in Jerusalem, both considered themselves to be the true people of Yahweh, and each considered the other to be interlopers. And so, the two groups were constantly at odds with one another with the end result that there was great animosity between the two nations, and this animosity had been brewing for almost 600 years by the time that Jesus came along. There was a deep-seated bigotry felt by both the Samaritans and the Jews and there was a tenacious refusal to even accept one another on a human level.
And it is with this in mind that we enter into today’s story. A Teacher of the Law asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life”? Jesus asked him “What does the Law say”? and the scribe answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus replied that he had answered correctly, but the scribe wasn’t done yet. Our text tells us that the scribe “wanted to justify himself” and so he asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor”?
He should have quit while he was ahead! And so, Jesus tells the famous parable where the Jewish Rabbi and the Jewish Scribe pass an injured Jewish man lying in the road without helping him. Cousar, Gaventa, McCann, and Newsome tell us that, “Their decision to pass by on the other side would not have been a surprise to, nor would it likely have been condemned by, Jesus’ hearers.” [1] In the context of the time, it’s important to remember that the injured man was probably beaten and bloodied and if either of those two touched the man it would have made them ritually unclean, excluding them from their temple duties. So, they both had their reasons for not stopping. 2000 some years later it may be difficult for us to comprehend a mindset that would prefer ritual cleanliness to compassionate help for someone in need, but to the priest and to the scribe it made perfectly good sense. But for Jesus, the mere fact that this made sense to them was a big problem. And so, Jesus picked the most hated person that anyone at that time could possibly have imagined and made that person the hero of His story. It was a despised Samaritan who had compassion, bandaging the man’s wounds, placing the man on his own donkey, taking him to an inn, and paying the innkeeper out of his own pocket to ensure that the man would be cared for.
Even with the little history lesson that I just bored you with today, I think it is still difficult for us to realize just how repugnant this story would have appeared to a first century Jew. But I think I might be able to help us to understand. Because I have a modern… and true Good Samaritan story to tell that may help us to imagine just how shocking Jesus’ story was to His original audience.
In 1996 the Ku Klux Klan held a rally in Michigan. They chose Ann Arbor as the site for the rally, which was a curious choice, because Ann Arbor was known to be a very progressive and multi-cultural town. A large crowd of counter-protestors was gathered to protest the rally, but the police were doing a great job of keeping the opposing crowds on opposite sides of a specially built barrier. Then, a man wearing a confederate flag themed shirt with a visible Nazi SS tattoo entered the crowd on the counter-protestor side of the barrier. People began to chase the man, at first just to try to get him to leave, but then some people started shouting “kill the Nazi”. The man tried to run away, but he was soon knocked to the ground and people began hitting and kicking him. Keshia Thomas, an 18 year old, black, female, high school senior, saw this and fell on top of the man, shielding him from the attack and very likely saving his life.
This is a modern-day Good Samaritan story where Ms. Thomas risked her life and her personal safety for someone who probably never would have done the same for her and was in fact, there basically protesting against her and her people. And if we can imagine the mindset of the average white supremacist, how do we think they would have responded if Jesus told THEM the story where the hero, saving the life of a fellow white supremacist, was an18 year old, black, female, high school senior?
When the Jewish Teacher of the Law asked Jesus “Who is my neighbor” our text tells us that he was attempting to justify himself, and indeed, Jewish Scholars had debated for centuries the question of “Who is my neighbor”. Jewish interpretations varied with “neighbor” meaning anything from all who had Jewish blood to only faithful Jews. Gentiles were rarely, if ever, included in the “neighbor” category. And it is here where we find the true point of this story. Garland comments, “The [Scribe’s] question itself implies that there is such a thing as a non-neighbor. The parable says there is no such thing”. [2]
You have heard me speak from time to time about the Imago Dei, the image of God that dwells in each and every one of God’s beloved children. The simple truth is, it is completely impossible to love God if you don’t love those who bear His image. Among Christians, there is no such thing as a non-neighbor. Miller expands on this idea when he says, “If I am to manifest God in my dealings with my neighbor, I must first determine who my neighbor is. The lawyer thus suggests limits to love. There must be those to whom the obligation to love does not apply. This was an effort to evade the real issue by theoretical discussion. Furthermore, it focused attention on the worthiness of the object of love rather than on the condition of the heart [of those] who [are] to do the loving” [3]
The REAL message of the story of the Good Samaritan is that there is not one person on this planet from whom God exempts us of our responsibility to love. There is not one person on this planet who is not our neighbor. They don’t look like us? Still our neighbor. They don’t speak our language? Still our neighbor. They’re our political opposite? Still our neighbor. They don’t love like we do? Still our neighbor. They don’t believe what we believe or worship the way we worship, or they don’t worship at all? Still our neighbor. Because every single one of these people bears the Imago Dei, the image of the living God, it is our responsibility to love them. Not to judge them, not to tell them how to live their lives, not to expect them to adapt to our culture or our customs or our beliefs, or our morality, but just to be a neighbor to them, just to love them.
For the man in the confederate flag shirt at that KKK rally, Ms. Thomas was a neighbor. At the time she didn’t see his politics or think about his motive for being at the rally. The only thing she saw was a person in trouble and in need of help. Asked about the incident later, Ms. Thomas said, “When people are in a crowd, they are more likely to do things they would never do as an individual. Someone had to step out of the pack and say, ‘This isn’t right.” And so, Ms. Thomas did exactly that, she decided to be a neighbor. Turning to Garland again, “When Samaritans help Jews, and Jews abandon their prejudice and embrace their enemies, the Kingdom of God is in their midst.” [4] And when we abandon our prejudices and choose to be a neighbor to others, then the Kingdom of God is in our midst also.
[1] Cousar, Gaventa, McCann, & Newsome, A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV – Year C, Pg. 427
[2] David E. Garland, Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Luke, Pg. 448
[3] Donald G. Miller, The Layman’s Bible Commentary: Luke, Pg. 104
[4] David E. Garland, Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Luke, Pg. 449
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