Week 41 ——— Good Samaritan, Bad Questions
Luke 10:25-37 

Jesus’ disciples will be on their two-month mission for a few more weeks. So, we continue to examine some of his teachings. Today, we discuss his most well-known parable, The Good Samaritan.

We talked about parables back in August when we discussed the parable of the four soils.  To review, remember, that was a parable about parables.  As you read the gospels, one-third of Jesus’s teaching is in parables. “Why parables, Jesus? Why don’t you just say what you mean?”

A parable is an ordinary life story told to make a point or teach a lesson.  One definition says a parable is “an allusive narrative which is told for an ulterior motive.  The well-known situation in the story disarms the listener, who is then hit with the lesson.  Soren Kierkegaard (a Danish theologian) said it this way: Parables are a form of indirect communication intended to deceive the hearer into the truth.

It is a way to tell a truth to someone who otherwise might not listen.  We see this in the parable of Nathan in 2 Samuel 12.  David has committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered her husband.  But David is king and accountable to no one but God.  So Nathan tells David the story of a poor man with only one lamb.  Then, a wealthy man with many herds of sheep takes the poor man’s lamb from him, leaving him with nothing.  The king then becomes angry and says this wealthy man deserves to die. Nathan responds, “You are that man!”  Nathan told a story with an ulterior motive, and it worked.

So when you read a parable, you have to be on the lookout for what truth Jesus’ is trying to convey that someone may not want to hear.  And usually, there is a reason Jesus tells a parable.  There is a background story.   So, let’s start with the background story for the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Luke 10:25-29   And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”   He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”   And he answered, “You shall 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 your neighbor as yourself.”   And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

It is a lawyer who comes to Jesus.  This is an expert not in civil law but in Scripture, in the Mosiac Law.  They are typically priests who are not currently functioning in the temple.   He asks Jesus a question, 

“Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

How would you answer that question?   Here is the standard answer I get:

1. Confess that you are a sinner
2. Repent of your sins.
3. Accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior

Don’t forget that this is not how Jesus answered the question. Jesus frequently answers with a question (actually, two questions). 

What is written in the Law, and how do you follow it?

1. What is in the law?  (He is asking the expert in the law.)
2. How do you read it?     How do you understand it?    There is a difference between reading and understanding.  My son, Andrew, has a degree in Math and a PhD in Economics.  Now, I can read papers he has written, but understanding them is another thing.  But there is an even more significant difference here.  In Hebrew, understanding is not just a mental process.  To understand is to do.

And he answered, “You shall 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 your neighbor as yourself.”

Now, we have heard this answer before.  In the week Jesus will be crucified, scribes come and ask Jesus what the greatest commandment is, and Jesus gives this answer.   He is quoting Deuteronomy 6:4  and Leviticus 19:18.

And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

And Jesus says, “Great answer!”  So it seems the lawyer and Jesus agree, but then we get to verse 29.

Luke 10:29   But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 

Why does he need to justify himself?  Didn’t they just agree with each other?   As we read, we see they are not on the same page.  The lawyer has the correct answer, but he has the wrong question.  Why are they not in agreement?  The answer is in the tense of the Greek verb, to do.  The Lawyer asks, ‘What shall I do?’  That verb tense suggests a single limited action — What one thing can I do once and be done?

Amy Jill Levine, in her book Short Stories by Jesus: “The lawyer is thinking of something to check off his to-do list: recite a prayer, offer a sacrifice, drop off a box of macaroni for a food drive, put a 20 in the collection plate. If he is efficient, he can inherit eternal life before lunch.”¹

The lawyer asks, “What one thing can I do right now to ensure I have eternal life?

The lawyer’s question seeks a “one and done” answer.  It is a bad question, so Jesus changed it for him.  Jesus says, “Do this, and you will live.”  That “do” Jesus uses is a different tense in Greek.  Whereas the Lawyer’s question is what is the one thing I can do, Jesus’s comment is, ‘Keep doing these things.’  Continually do these things.  Jesus’ imperative “do” focuses not on a single action but on a continuing relationship.

Whereas the lawyer asked about “eternal life,” Jesus reframes what is at stake by urging, “Do this and live.”   The lawyer wants to make sure he will be there in Jesus’ kingdom to come.  But Jesus says if you keep doing those two commandments, you will experience the fullness of life starting right now.  Abundant life with Jesus is forever, but it is not just the length of life but the quality of life you live.  

So, there is a big difference in what the lawyer and Jesus are saying.

We make the same mistake.  Again, if someone goes to any seminary campus and stops a preacher student on the sidewalk and asks,  What is the one thing I can do today to have eternal life?  He gets the answer: Confess your sins and Repent.  Accept Jesus as your lord and savior.  Get baptized.  Check the box. You are done.  You have punched your ticket.  You have your “Get out of Hell Free” card.  

But Jesus tells him there is no one-and-done answer.  The key to living an abundant life is living the way God wants us to live.  It is continually following God step by step. It is about a relationship.

The lawyer realizes that Jesus changed his question on two crucial points.   So, his follow-up question is an attempt to clarify.  “Who is my neighbor?”  But if you ask, “Who is my neighbor?” you ask, “Who is not my neighbor?”  If you ask, “Who am I supposed to love?” you are also asking, “Who do I not have to love? Who is undeserving of my love?  Who can I mark off my list?”

So when Jesus hears that the expert doesn’t understand, he says, “I’m going to need to tell a story.”

Luke 10:30-37  Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.   Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.   So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.   But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.   He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.

And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’   Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”  He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

First, see how Jesus described the man who falls victim to the robbers.  He is “A man” (generic, no identifier).  There were two ways to identify someone in Jesus’ day:  by how they dressed and by their speech (their language  or accent.)  In the story, Jesus removes both.  So this could be anybody in need.  It could be a Jew, it could be a Roman. There is no way to tell.  There is no way to see if this man fits into a category of people that you would consider helping.  And this is very important.

Then, a priest and a Levite pass by. Priests and Levites were both groups of people descended from Levi. Priests made the sacrifices in the temple at the altar and the incense altar. Levites also worked in the temple, but they were guards, craftsmen, singers, or performed some other supporting function.

They pass by on “the other side.”  Now, Jesus’ audience knew something you don’t know.  They knew the path from Jerusalem to Jericho. It is a journey you don’t take alone, as thieves and bandits hide on the trail.   You have heard it called the ‘Jericho Road,’ but it is nothing like a road.  I have seen it.  It is a path, and there is no “other side.”  They probably snickered when Jesus said, “the other side.”  

Why were the priest and the Levite not willing to help? I have heard people talk about their worries about uncleanness, but this was not a problem with uncleanness. A statute in the Mishna says, “A priest may contract uncleanness because of a neglected corpse.”

The Talmud states,  “As long as there are no other people to look after the burial of a corpse, the duty is incumbent on the first Jew that passes by, without exception, to perform the burial” (Nazir 43b; Jerusalem Talmud, Nazir 56a). Judaism still takes this mandate seriously. That is why Jews stood vigil at Ground Zero until every corpse was recovered. Burying the dead is one of the most important commandments in Judaism, for it is one of the few acts that cannot be repaid by the person who benefits from it.

Similarly, there is the law of Pikuach Nefesh —  saving a life.  You can break almost any command in the Scripture to save a life (laws of ritual purity, Sabbath rest rules, or food rules.)  Saving a life overrules most other commandments.  They can’t tell if he is dead or alive, but either way, God’s law commands them to help him.  But they pass by, struggling to climb over rocks off the trail to avoid helping him.

Let me reference another story from Amy Jill Levine’s book Short Stories by Jesus. This book is an excellent resource for understanding Jesus’ parables.

The best explanation she said she had heard for the refusal of the priest and the Levite to come to the aid of the man in the ditch comes from Martin Luther King Jr.  The last sermon he preached on the Sunday before he was assassinated was about the Good Samaritan.  “I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible these men were afraid. . . . And so the first question that the priest [and] the Levite asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ . . . But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’” In that sermon, King announced that he was going to Memphis to support the sanitation workers who were being treated as less than human by the city of Memphis.  King said, “I can not ask, “What will happen to me if I go to Memphis?’  I have to ask, “If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” King then went to Memphis, where on Wednesday, he gave his “I Have a Dream speech,” and the following day, he was assassinated. There are bandits on the road.  But our decisions in this life must not be made out of fear, but out of love.²

Jesus continues, “But a Samaritan….”  Suddenly, his listeners are shocked!  It was like saying a dirty word.

We discussed the Samaritans when we talked about Jesus meeting the woman at the well in Samaria.  Simply put, the Samaritans were the people from the Northern Kingdom of Israel who were rejected by the Jews in Judea.  They were not allowed to participate in rebuilding the temple, so they built their own temple on Mt Gerazim.  There were conflicts between the Samaritans and the Jews to the point that in Jesus’ day, they were bitter enemies.  Jesus chooses an enemy to be the hero of his story.  And this makes his point. Neighbor means all, even enemies.

Luke 10:35-37  Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”  He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

The lawyer can’t even bring himself to say the word ‘Samaritan’ (a curse word).  He did not have a category for a ‘good’ Samaritan. It would be like a modern-day Israelite saying ‘the good Hamas member’ or you saying ‘the good Taliban’ or ‘the good Nazi.’ Jesus’ point is, ‘If we can’t love those we disagree with, then we don’t have a clue what it means to follow me.’

This brings us back to another of Jesus’ messages from the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 5:43-45   “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’   But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 

We have discussed several of these “you have heard it said” statements in the past two weeks. Jesus takes an Old Testament teaching and explains God’s wisdom and heart behind it. While it is natural to hate your enemy, Jesus asks us to be like our heavenly Father, who loves all, regardless of their attitude toward him or his laws.

And Jesus concludes with the lawyer, “You go, and do likewise.”  This is the same tense of “do” Jesus used before.  You go and continually do what this Samaritan did.  Day after day, keep doing this, following the path God laid before you.  Again, it is not a one-and-done but a lifetime of being the kind of person God wants us to be.

Jesus didn’t make up this story out of thin air.  Last week, we discussed how Jesus’ story about making an offering when you are fighting with a brother came from Genesis 4, the Bible story of Cain and Abel.  This parable of the Good Samaritan is also straight out of the Old Testament.  Jesus knew the Scriptures.  He knew they contained the wisdom of the Father.  So, he retells these stories in parable form.  Let’s look at the Old Testament real-life story of loving your enemy that inspired the parable of the good Samaritan.

First, the background:
Solomon died in 931 BC, and the kingdom was divided into the northern section, called “Israel,” and the southern section, called “Judah.” Jerusalem is the capital of the south, and Samaria is the capital of the north. At times, they were allies; at times, they were enemies. In 2 Chronicles 28, they were enemies.

2 Chronicles 28:1-4   Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of Yehovah, as his father David had done, but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel. He even made metal images for the Baals, and he made offerings in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom and burned his sons as an offering, according to the abominations of the nations whom Yehovah drove out before the people of Israel.  And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.

In other words, this king of Judah, Ahaz, was evil.

2 Chronicles 28:5-7   Therefore Yehovah his God gave him into the hand of the king of Syria, who defeated him and took captive a great number of his people and brought them to Damascus. He was also given into the hand of the king of Israel, who struck him with great force.  For Pekah the son of Remaliah [king of Syria] killed 120,000 from Judah in one day, all of them men of valor, because they had forsaken Yehovah, the God of their fathers.  

Because the king of Judah was so wicked, God let the Syrian army attack and took many of them as slaves back to Syria. After Syria wipes out Judah, while they are defenseless, Pekah, the king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, decides it is a good time to attack Judah also.  They killed over 120 thousand in one day and took 200 thousand captive to become slaves.

2 Chronicles 28:8-11   The men of Israel took captive 200,000 of their relatives, women, sons, and daughters. They also took much spoil from them and brought the spoil to Samaria.   But a prophet of Yehovah was there, whose name was Oded, and he went out to meet the army that came to Samaria and said to them, “Behold, because Yehovah, the God of your fathers, was angry with Judah, he gave them into your hand, but you have killed them in a rage that has reached up to heaven.   And now you intend to subjugate the people of Judah and Jerusalem, male and female, as your slaves. Have you not sins of your own against Yehovah your God?   Now hear me, and send back the captives from your relatives whom you have taken, for the fierce wrath of Yehovah is upon you.”

The prophet Oded calls out the men of the Northern kingdom for their cruelty against their brothers from the South.   The prophet said God is about to pour his wrath on you for the way you treated your neighbors to the South.  So look at how they reacted:

2 Chronicles 28:15 And the men who have been mentioned by name rose and took the captives, and with the spoil they clothed all who were naked among them. They clothed them, gave them sandals, provided them with food and drink, and anointed them, and carrying all the feeble among them on donkeys, they brought them to their kinsfolk at Jericho, the city of palm trees. Then they returned to Samaria.

Look at the story’s details and notice they are the exact details of Jesus’s story. The Samaritan clothed the man who was naked. The Samaritan anointed him with oil and wine as a healing balm. The good Samaritan puts the man on his own donkey. He took him to Jericho. The people in 2 Chronicles were from Samaria, what will be the territory of the Samaritans.  This has all happened before.  Jesus takes an event from the Old Testament Scripture, an unusual story where the people at war choose to love their enemies.  Jesus sees the wisdom of God in this story and then uses it to teach a lesson from the law to the expert in the law. 

So the Lawyer asked, “Who is my neighbor?” But Jesus turned his question around again.  His parable doesn’t answer the question of what people fall into the neighbor category because Jesus says there is no category.  All people are neighbors.  All people are worthy of your love and help.  Even enemies should be shown love and care.

.The critical question in this passage is not, “Who is my neighbor?” but “Am I a neighbor?”   Am I treating everyone I pass by as worthy of love and care?  That person on the side of the road who needs help, do I look at them and consider whether they are worthy of you stopping to help them?  Do I categorize people as worthy or unworthy of my help?  It is not about who they are but about who I am.  Am I like my heavenly father who shows love to all?  

1. Levine, Amy-Jill. Short Stories by Jesus (p. 84). HarperOne. Kindle Edition. 
2. Ibid, (p. 102).