St. Luke's Good Samaritan story is so well known that it has become part of our common culture. Almost everyone knows that a Good Samaritan is a compassionate and merciful person who helps others in need. In our litigious society, we even have Good Samaritan laws to protect professional people who respond to emergencies from lawsuits. But this parable is about more than compassion and mercy. It is about the second Great Commandment and about how we put it into practice.
The Great Commandment, found in Deuteronomy 6:4-5, is "you shall love the LORD, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.” We find the Second Great Commandment in Leviticus 19:18, "You must love your neighbor as yourself." If the scholar of the law in the Good Samaritan parable interpreted "your neighbor" the way most of the scribes and Pharisees of the day did, then it meant the upstanding citizens of Judea. Jesus' example of a Samaritan as the good neighbor must have scandalized the scholar, the disciples and anyone else who was listening. Jews despised Samaritans. They were, as far as the Jews were concerned, heretics, law breakers, thieves and half casts. The Samaritan should have been the villain of the story.
However, in the kingdom of God, everything is topsy turvy. Villains become heroes, outcasts become insiders, strangers become friends and sinners are welcomed. There is no exclusivity in the kingdom. Which brings us to the scholar’s question, “who is my neighbor?” According to Mosaic Law, neighbor had a very narrow definition – members in good standing of the 12 tribes of Israel. If we used this narrow definition, our neighbors would be people we could easily love, people like us, good law-abiding citizens of the United States of America. Jesus’ new law of the kingdom of God challenges us to expand our notion of neighbor. We must love everyone we encounter, everyone in Peachtree City, everyone in Georgia, everyone in the USA and everyone in the world. And we should love them not as we love ourselves but as Jesus loves us. At the last supper, Jesus told his disciples, “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for another” (John 13:34-35).
Love is the foundation on which all God’s commandments are built; love of God and love of one another. If we love as Jesus loves us, then all of us will be Good Samaritans, we will treat everyone with compassion and mercy. Remember that what Jesus said to the scholar, he says to each of us and he says to the world; “Go and do likewise.”
God most merciful,
you have established the great commandment of love
as the summary and the soul of the entire law.
Fill our hearts, then, with compassion and generosity
toward the sufferings of our sisters and brothers,
so that, like Christ,
we may become Good Samaritans where we live and work.
We ask you this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God for ever and ever.
AMEN.
