Luke 10:25-37

In seminary, I learned that while myths and fables “build worlds,” in other words, create a framework for why the world around us makes sense, parables “explode worlds.” A parable is supposed to turn our current understanding of the way things work on its head. We’re not supposed to read it, nod agreeably, and walk away comforted.

What is it about the well-known and well-loved parable of the Good Samaritan that explodes worlds? A man asks Jesus “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” He’s saying, “Show me the path to the life of God.” Jesus knows the man is a lawyer, so he asks, “What’s written in the Law?” The lawyer gives Jesus an A+ answer, quoting Deuteronomy and Leviticus: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus congratulates him for giving the correct answer. “Do this, and you will live,” he says. But the man isn’t satisfied. He wants specifics. “Just who, exactly, is my neighbor?” When you think about it, that’s the same as asking “Who is not my neighbor?” This lawyer wants to know where to draw the line.

Jesus tells the parable of two important people who walk past a bloodied man by the side of the road, followed by the Samaritan, who stops to help him. Then he asks, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of bandits?” Our clue about how the parable explodes worlds is when the lawyer answers Jesus’ question. He says, “The one who showed him mercy.” He can’t even make his lips form the words, “The Samaritan.” Samaria was the next province over from Judea. The Samaritans were ethnically related to Judeans and practiced a similar but not identical religion. By the time Jesus told this parable, they hated each others’ guts.

And yet Jesus chooses a Samaritan as the hero. The man who stopped to help could have been anybody, and the point could have been, “Anybody can be your neighbor.” That’s a nice, broad principle, and even if it doesn’t specifically say that a Samaritan can be a Judean’s neighbor, it includes it, right? Then we could call it the Parable of the Good Person. But this is a story intended to upset our categories of good and bad. It’s intended as a sharp rebuke to the lawyer’s question, “Just exactly who is my neighbor?”

Note that Jesus doesn’t answer that question. He doesn’t say, “Your neighbor is the faceless, nameless guy in the ditch.” He turns the question on its head, basically saying, “You want to know precisely how the Law defines the word ‘neighbor’? Never mind that. Here is how to be a neighbor.” When you’re being a neighbor, then the question, “Just who is my neighbor?” is irrelevant.

Who is the last person on earth you’d ever want to think of as a good guy? Whom do you have the hardest time imagining God working through? Think of a group of people that scares or angers you. That’s what the Samaritan represents. If that group or person makes you feel uncomfortable, you know you’re on the right track.

The Samaritan teaches us several important lessons. First, God comes where we least expect God to be, because God comes for all and to all. Second, “loving” looks like helping those in need. And third, the Samaritan, the one who acted as a neighbor, crossed a boundary. The hatred between Samaritans and Judeans went both ways, and yet this Samaritan stepped outside of his national and ethnic loyalty. He did not say, “I save my compassion for my own people.” He crossed a boundary that was a hard and fast line to Jesus’ listeners. When Jesus says, “Go and do likewise,” that boundary crossing is part of what he’s telling us to do.

“Anybody can be my neighbor” is an abstract feel-good idea. It doesn’t raise any of our specific prejudices. That’s why the church I served for many years hung a “Black Lives Matter” banner on the front of the church building. It wasn’t meant to say, “Black lives matter more than white lives” or “Black lives matter more than police lives,” any more than Jesus was trying to say that Samaritans are more important or better than Judeans. The point of saying “Black lives matter” is that Black lives are in danger and at the same time, unfortunately, the phrase “Black lives matter” still sticks in the throat of a lot of white Americans. Recently, the large yellow “Black Lives Matter” painted on the street one block from the White House was ordered removed.

When we say, “Lives matter” or “All lives matter,” we can think about generic people, who we just might picture as white. As William Sloan Coffin said, “To show compassion for an individual without showing concern for the structures of society that make him an object of compassion is to be sentimental rather than loving.” That’s why Jesus chose a Samaritan for this story: To preach love of neighbor, unity with neighbors, and togetherness with neighbors, even when that means challenging the structures of society that would tell us specific people are not our neighbors, not worthy of our love.

Do this, and live, says Jesus.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Deuteronomy 6:5
Leviticus 19:18
Debie Thomas, “Go and Do Likewise,” July 3, 2016, http://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1023-go-and-do-likewise
William Sloane Coffin, Credo (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2004)
Doug Muder, https://weeklysift.com/2015/11/02/samaritan-lives-matter/.