Tag: Good Samaritan

The Backstory to the Parable of the Good Samaritan – A Lesson for These Times

“Who is my neighbor?”

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The Parable of the Good Samaritan has a backstory in Hebrew Scripture I previously didn’t know, and it relates to our present times. Specifically, it relates to the issue of immigration.

The context of the parable is a question put to Jesus by an expert in the law: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus turned the question back on the expert, asking, “What is written in the law? … How do you read it?”

It’s interesting that Jesus does this. Maybe he wanted the legal expert to think it through for himself, rather than repeat what others have told him.

The expert 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 affirmed his response, and said, “Do this and you will live.”

But, the expert in the law wasn’t satisfied with that answer. He asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” This is where the backstory begins. To understand the backstory, we need to know where in Scripture the law expert was pulling his answers from and what he (and Jews of his time) likely thought about them.

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Current Lessons in the Parable of the Good Samaritan: Focusing on the Weightier Matters of the Law

We often fail to help people in need because we are focused on the good things we are doing

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I have been involved in the faith-based legal aid organization, Administer Justice, in different capacities for about 12 years. I am an attorney. AJ is an organization founded by an attorney, Bruce Strom, who left his lucrative law practice to provide pro bono (free) legal services for people who can’t afford a lawyer. AJ helps churches run Gospel Justice Centers.

Bruce’s book, Gospel Justice, describes his calling and the journey he began over 20 years ago. Gospel Justice follows the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan and what it means to love your neighbor as God commands. Implicit in the parable is the question: who is my neighbor?

I have learned recently, that parables were common in the rabbinical tradition of the time, and the set up of a priest, a Levite and a third person was a common parable structure. It is the equivalent to the modern set up for a joke: a priest, an Irishman, and a Scotsman walk into a bar…..

According to Marty Solomon of the BEMA Podcast, the third person (the one through whom the lesson is learned) was often a Pharisee in the rabbinical Jewish tradition of the First Century. Jesus turned the tables by making the third person a Samaritan.

Samaritans had Hebrew DNA. They were ancestors of the Israelites who were left behind during the exile. They had intermarried and changed their religious practices to accommodate their mixed marriages and life without the Temple. The Jewish remnant that returned to rebuild the Temple saw them as mongrels who abandoned the faith. For Centuries, Samaritans were despised by the Jews who rebuilt the Temple and carried on the traditions of the Mosaic Law.

The priests and Levites represent good, religious people and the devotion to traditional values. They represent respectable, hard-working people who have faithfully kept those traditional values through hundreds of years of faithful adherence in difficult times.

When the priest and Levite in the parable pass by the anonymous, injured man on the road, we react with modern sensibilities that are honed by two millennia of Christian thought, tradition, and conditioning to judge them. First Century Pharisees, however, would have viewed the situation differently.

The injured man had no identify. They might have wondered who he was. (Raising the question: who is my neighbor?) Pharisees and Sadducees may have disagreed on whether aid should be offered to Gentiles, but they would have agreed that the mongrel Samaritans did not merit their aid.

They also would have recognized that the priest and the Levite had good reasons to pass over to the other side of the road and keep going. Among other things, priests were forbidden to touch a corpse. (Lev. 21:1–3) Touching a corpse, or even being in the same space as a corpse meant impurity, and they needed to maintain purity to perform their duties.

The rules that governed these things were complex and nuanced. (See Introduction to the Jewish Rules of Purity and Impurity) Becoming impure meant that a priest could not attend to his ritual duties without going through a time of ritual cleansing. The risk that the injured man might be dead was no small consideration to them.

Perhaps, this seems like being generous to them, but their lives revolved around the rituals handed down centuries ago in the Torah. They were sacred, and their identity and their purpose in life revolved around maintaining those rituals, which they had done since the time of Moses, the great, great grandson of Levi.

If we think times and people are different now, they are, but less so than we might be tempted to think. Most modern Americans (even religious ones) do not practice ritual like First Century Jewish leaders did. We are less religiously ritualistic, perhaps, than ever before. Yet, we are no different, really, in our devotion to our own values and doctrines.

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Who is My Neighbor? And Who is a Neighbor to Me? The Discomfort of Grace.

Grace is exercised among people who are not like you, who challenge you, who are uncomfortable to be around.

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I have often touted the Unbelievable Podcast on Christian Premiere Radio in the UK, and I do it again here. I recommended the episode on Philip Yancey live Q&A on faith, doubt and the future of the US church: Saturday 19 March 2022. Much was discussed in the episode that I could write about, but one thing stands out above the rest to me this morning. Philip Yancey said,

“It’s easy to find a church, to gravitate toward a church, where people look like you, and smell like you, and vote like you.”

Most of us go to churches like that. It’s a human tendency to gravitate toward people with whom we have the most connections, to settle in with people with whom we have the most in common, to spend time with people most like us, but Yancey says,

“That’s not the way to exercise grace. Grace is exercised among people who are not like you, who challenge you, who are uncomfortable to be around, people who are immoral. That’s where to exercise grace.”

Such a radical statement challenges most of us, I think. I am guilty of settling into churches where I feel most comfortable, but what if God wants me to engage in a church, or in groups, or with people with whom I feel uncomfortable? Would I be open to that possibility?

Jesus often urged people to love their neighbors. When I think of my neighbors, I think of the people in my neighborhood who I know and spend time with. If you are like me, you probably think immediately of your neighbors you know, but what about your neighbors you don’t know?

Jesus knew that people tend to favor those who are like them when he told the parable of the Good Samaritan. (Luke 25:30-35) In the parable, an unidentified man is attacked by robbers, stripped of his clothes, beaten and left for dead. (Luke 25:30) Three people come along and see him lying there: a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan.

The priest and the Levite were the people most like the man who asked the question that prompted the parable. He was an expert in the Law of Moses, a Jewish leader.

He actually began with a more esoteric question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus turned the question on him, asking “What is written in the Law?” (Luke 25:25-26)

When the man responded, “‘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 answered anti-climatically, “You have answered correctly…. Do this and you will live.”

That might have been the end of the conversation, but the expert in the law “wanted to justify himself”. Perhaps, he wanted affirmation that he was reading the law correctly. Perhaps, he wanted Jesus to acknowledge his deep moral thinking. Perhaps, he wanted to prove his expertise in the Law. Whatever he was thinking, he asked, “[W]ho is my neighbor?” (Luke 25:29)

The man may have wanted Jesus to engage him in a deep theological discussion, but Jesus deflected the attempt with the parable. The expert in the Law wanted to make it difficult and complicated, but Jesus kept it simple.

The man is specifically identified as an “expert in the Law”, and the initial question and follow up question read to me like he was wanting a deeper, philosophical conversation with Jesus. He didn’t really want a simple, straightforward answer. He wanted to debate, but Jesus wouldn’t go there with him.

I am also relatively certain that the answer Jesus gave him was not at all what he expected. It likely cut him to the quick – both he and and the wider audience who was listening in.

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Social Justice and Gospel Justice, Part I

Jesus and the early church focused on preaching the Gospel and doing justice

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alone sad child on a street

I am involved in a faith-based, legal aid organization that provides legal services and holistic help to people who live on the margins of our society. We call it “Gospel justice”, which is the title of a book written by Bruce Strom, the founder of the organization, Administer Justice. (See Gospel Justice)

I am aware of the skepticism with which Christians, and conservatives, generally, view “social justice”. While many Christians of the more liberal stripe (and liberals generally) embrace social justice, more conservative and orthodox Christians have learned to disassociate from social justice.

Labels, however, aren’t ultimately very helpful. We also have to be careful on this subject that we don’t mix politics and the faith to the determent of the Gospel. This is true on both sides of the political aisle. Our politics shouldn’t define our faith (though they should be informed by our faith).

Following Jesus takes us down a narrow road that doesn’t often follow the wide paths the world has beaten. Those wide paths angle left and right, but we want to follow Jesus down the narrow path he has made for us. These and other thoughts have inhabited my thinking for months as I have thought about writing on the topic of social justice. I guess it’s time I do that.

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Where Are You Going?

Where we are going is more about the journey than the destinations, and the journey is about who we are becoming.

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I read recently in the book, Gospel Justice, about the parable of the good Samaritan. The book focused on the priest who failed to cross the road to help an injured man. Bruce Strom offers a few possibilities about where the priest was going and why he was in too big of a hurry to help the injured man.

As I reflect back on what Bruce wrote, I can imagine God asking the question to the priest that hangs in the air: where are you going?

Where are you going?

God might ask that question not because He doesn’t know. God knows our every move and the words we are about to speak even before we say them. God might ask that question because He wants us to stop and think about it.

Where are you going?

Most people would have an answer of course. My 20-year-old might say that she is going to take a semester off of college to work, not knowing what college will look like in the fall with the virus outbreak still ongoing. My 25-year-old might say he is taking a year off before starting grad school. My 27-year-old might say that he is working, saving enough money for a security deposit, and the first and last months of rent for an apartment that he will need if he gets the job as a grad assistant that he has applied for.

My 30-year-old might say he is going into his second year of seminary. My 33-year-old might say he is going to keep mulching and working from home until the stay-at-home order is lifted and he can go back to work. My 34-year-old might say that he is going to patent a UV light that kills the coronavirus.

We might have longer term answers, too. I joke that I am going to work until I am 80 to pay off the college debt I incurred for my kids. I think about the possibility of retirement, as remote as it seems.

The priest in the parable might have been going home or going to church or going to visit a friend. He might have even being going to help someone in need. The priest might have had a good destination in mind, but the parable is clearly meant to contrast the priest to the “Good Samaritan”.

Of course, “good” and “Samaritan” were two words that Jews in first century Judea would not have put together. Samaritans were heretics and second-class citizens in the Jewish world at that time.

And of course, Jesus chose a Samaritan to drive home the point that the Good Samaritan, not the priest, did the “right” thing in that parable. He did the better thing. He stopped to help the injured man on the side of the road.

It didn’t matter where the priest was going, ultimately; he passed up the divine opportunity to help the man right in front of him.

If God was asking the priest, “Where are you going?” I don’t think he would be looking for the immediate answer. If the priest said he was going to the temple to perform his priestly duties, I think God might have asked him again, “Where are you going?”

We all have places to go, things to do, people to see. We all have goals and aspirations. I imagine God asking this question, not about the destinations, goals and aspirations we have planned, but about the journey: what direction are you moving in?

When two of my sons were wrestling, I would sometimes say to them (and myself): “It’s not about the winning and losing; it’s about the journey.”

The ultimate question about the journey of life is this: Who are you becoming?

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