Luke 10:25-37
An expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” 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 given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”
But wanting to vindicate himself, the lawyer asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and took off, 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 while traveling came upon him, and when he saw him he was moved with compassion. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, treating them with oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him, and when I come back I will repay you whatever more you spend.’
Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
After all our discussions of how and why John’s gospel account seems to differ from the other three gospel accounts and how carefully we need to work to understand just what the writers are trying to convey with their particular style, I thought it would be interesting to check out just how complex any gospel can be – and not just John’s.
The one we’re looking at here today is from Luke and it is chock full of language and history that the writer probably assumed later readers would understand. Maybe we do, and maybe we don’t.
A lawyer one day asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. The answer wasn’t especially tricky, since it appears multiple times in scripture – In Deuteronomy, in Matthew, in Mark, and here, in Luke:
“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.”
Luke is the one who gives us this long story to explain just how that works. But first, a little history. After hearing the story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman last week it surely won’t surprise us to see how often the Israelites could insert their hatreds into their religious beliefs. (Listen to any news story today – it’s still there.)
This time, Jesus' target audience, the Jews, hated the Samaritans (who followed the Law of Moses) to such a degree that they had destroyed the Samaritans' holy site on Mount Gerizim about 100+ years before Jesus’ birth, because they believed they followed pagan beliefs. The Samaritans, in turn, hated the Jews and had more recently desecrated the Jewish Temple at Passover with human bones – human bones being “unclean.”
This belief, likewise, plays its role in our story today. The story comes around in response to the Lawyer’s question: “Who is my neighbor? – The one I’m supposed to love as I love myself?” There are five active characters in the story as Jesus tells it -- a traveler who is robbed, beaten, and left half dead alongside the road, a Jewish priest, a Levite, a Samaritan, and an inn keeper.
Because the nationality or ethnicity of the victim/traveler is never specified it is assumed he is Jewish. The priest and the Levite both serve in the Temple, the priest as intermediary between the people and God -- offering sacrifices and prayers, and acting as judges.
Levites were a lesser level of priests. They prepared the sacrifices and prepared the temple for public gatherings – serving as something like a sacristan or sexton. Both groups were bound by purity laws.
In Jewish culture, contact with a dead body was understood to be defiling. It is possible that both the priest and Levite assumed the man was dead and therefore passed him by -- avoiding him to keep themselves ritually clean.
It’s sort of a gray area because they didn’t know he was dead, they just assumed that as the easier choice, whereas the better choice would have been to check to see if he were indeed dead (which of course, he wasn’t). They both cared more for their own “purity” and sanctity than the chance he might be alive and in need of care.
Enter the Samaritan – the despised outsider – the true “neighbor” -- who apparently without hesitation tended to the injured man with his own hands and his own oil and wine – and provided for his further care – while knowing that he himself would most likely be ignored and rejected had the script been flipped.
While the Samaritan is indeed the hero of the story, my second favorite actor here is the inn keeper who took in the injured man and arranged his further care for partial payment and a promise from a stranger – a Samaritan at that – to pay the rest the next time he came through. That may be the part of the story I find the most astonishing.
But we know who Jesus means when he speaks of the one who is the “true neighbor.” It is interesting that in this question and answer between the lawyer and Jesus it is not Jesus who gives us the answer, although he certainly sets it up. It’s the lawyer who possibly hoped to “catch” Jesus who ends up answering his own question “Who is my neighbor?” ….. “The one who showed him mercy.”
May we all go and do likewise.
The one we’re looking at here today is from Luke and it is chock full of language and history that the writer probably assumed later readers would understand. Maybe we do, and maybe we don’t.
A lawyer one day asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. The answer wasn’t especially tricky, since it appears multiple times in scripture – In Deuteronomy, in Matthew, in Mark, and here, in Luke:
“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.”
Luke is the one who gives us this long story to explain just how that works. But first, a little history. After hearing the story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman last week it surely won’t surprise us to see how often the Israelites could insert their hatreds into their religious beliefs. (Listen to any news story today – it’s still there.)
This time, Jesus' target audience, the Jews, hated the Samaritans (who followed the Law of Moses) to such a degree that they had destroyed the Samaritans' holy site on Mount Gerizim about 100+ years before Jesus’ birth, because they believed they followed pagan beliefs. The Samaritans, in turn, hated the Jews and had more recently desecrated the Jewish Temple at Passover with human bones – human bones being “unclean.”
This belief, likewise, plays its role in our story today. The story comes around in response to the Lawyer’s question: “Who is my neighbor? – The one I’m supposed to love as I love myself?” There are five active characters in the story as Jesus tells it -- a traveler who is robbed, beaten, and left half dead alongside the road, a Jewish priest, a Levite, a Samaritan, and an inn keeper.
Because the nationality or ethnicity of the victim/traveler is never specified it is assumed he is Jewish. The priest and the Levite both serve in the Temple, the priest as intermediary between the people and God -- offering sacrifices and prayers, and acting as judges.
Levites were a lesser level of priests. They prepared the sacrifices and prepared the temple for public gatherings – serving as something like a sacristan or sexton. Both groups were bound by purity laws.
In Jewish culture, contact with a dead body was understood to be defiling. It is possible that both the priest and Levite assumed the man was dead and therefore passed him by -- avoiding him to keep themselves ritually clean.
It’s sort of a gray area because they didn’t know he was dead, they just assumed that as the easier choice, whereas the better choice would have been to check to see if he were indeed dead (which of course, he wasn’t). They both cared more for their own “purity” and sanctity than the chance he might be alive and in need of care.
Enter the Samaritan – the despised outsider – the true “neighbor” -- who apparently without hesitation tended to the injured man with his own hands and his own oil and wine – and provided for his further care – while knowing that he himself would most likely be ignored and rejected had the script been flipped.
While the Samaritan is indeed the hero of the story, my second favorite actor here is the inn keeper who took in the injured man and arranged his further care for partial payment and a promise from a stranger – a Samaritan at that – to pay the rest the next time he came through. That may be the part of the story I find the most astonishing.
But we know who Jesus means when he speaks of the one who is the “true neighbor.” It is interesting that in this question and answer between the lawyer and Jesus it is not Jesus who gives us the answer, although he certainly sets it up. It’s the lawyer who possibly hoped to “catch” Jesus who ends up answering his own question “Who is my neighbor?” ….. “The one who showed him mercy.”
May we all go and do likewise.
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