Saturday
Saturday
The Parable of the Good Samaritan
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Luke 10:27
This parable has been universally admired and variously interpreted. For example, many commentators ancient and modern, most famously Augustine, have regarded it as an allegory of our redemption. The good Samaritan is Jesus Christ our redeemer, who finds us half dead, dresses our wounds, commits us to the church (the inn), gives the innkeeper two silver coins (the sacraments), and promises to return. It’s ingenious, and we may at least see the good Samaritan as a picture of redeeming love. But we have no liberty to allegorize every detail of the story. Instead, the parable throws light on what “love your neighbor” means.
Firstly, this parable is an illustration of love. Negatively, Moses gave examples of how, if we truly love our neighbor, we will neither neglect the poor, nor exploit wage earners, nor harm the deaf or the blind, nor pervert justice, nor use false weights or measures in business, nor harbor a grudge, nor take revenge, for all these are incompatible with “love your neighbor” (Lev. 19:18). Positively, we are to seek our neighbor’s highest welfare.
Secondly, this parable gives us a definition of neighbor. Of all unlikely people, it was a Samaritan who came to the rescue of the robbers’ victim. Samaritans were hated by Jews as racial and religious half-castes. Yet here is a Samaritan doing for a Jew what no Jew would ever dream of doing for a Samaritan. True neighbor love is reciprocal. It defines both who our neighbors are whom we are to serve and what being a neighbor to them will mean.
Though there are almost no Samaritans left in the world today, there are many people we may be tempted to despise and reject. I am thinking of people of another race, color, or culture; homosexual persons who are victims of homophobia; or people of another faith, such as Muslims. Jesus’s parable challenges us to overcome all such racial, social, sexual, and religious prejudices. I am not suggesting that we compromise our Christian beliefs and morals, but rather that we do not allow these to impede our active love for our neighbor. This is what “go and do likewise” (v. 37) will mean for us.
For further reading: Luke 10:25–37