Neighbors

On the Parable of the Good Samaritan

I have a number of ideas for posts that are still in what I will call the “very early” draft form, but none are ready to be published this week. So, below, I include a sermon I have written for this Sunday’s service (Year C Proper 10). As always, although this is a sermon on scripture from a Christian perspective, I hope that it may be of value to my non-Christian as well as Christian readers:

Just then a lawyer 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 justify himself, he 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 went away, 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 near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. 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." (Luke 10:25-37)

In Jesus’s famous parable of the Good Samaritan we hear about a “lawyer”—a scholar who studies and applies Torah, Jewish law—who has a question for Jesus. He agrees with Jesus—and many other rabbis—that the law that governs Jewish religious, civil, and ethical life can be summarized as “love God and love your neighbor.” But this lawyer sees a potential loophole. Who is my neighbor?

It’s obvious that this lawyer recognizes that he has to love some people, but he’d really like to restrict the number of people he has to care for, to keep it as small as possible. Surely, he seems to think, he can’t be expected to love everyone. That’d be ridiculous! So, if he has to love his neighbor, he needs to know who is—and, more importantly, who is not—his neighbor. That way he can make sure to only love those who deserve it, and not waste his effort on anyone else.

Now, Jesus does a classically Jesus thing. The lawyer has asked Jesus “who is my neighbor”, but Jesus doesn’t give a direct answer. Instead, he tells a story. Well, not a story exactly: a parable. A parable looks like a story but it’s really a religious lesson disguised as something much more fun.

Jesus tells us about 4 men. One man has been robbed and beaten up. He’s lying in a ditch by the side of the road. A priest walks by, sees the man, but does nothing to help. Then, a Levite comes by, sees the man and, likewise, does nothing to help. We should pause here and note that both the priest and the Levite are Jewish religious leaders. And—like the lawyer himself—they know the law. And Jewish law is unambiguous here: if someone is injured and needs help, an observant Jew must stop and help them—a principal known in Hebrew as pikuach nefesh. So these two religious leaders are big hypocrites (this may sound familiar to anyone familiar with Christian ministers!). They are rushing off to worship God at the temple, but they aren’t doing their basic spiritual duty to this poor man in the ditch.

But there’s one more important person in this story. A third man comes walking down the road, sees the man in the ditch, and he does stop to help, even dressing the man’s wounds and paying for him to stay at a local inn. This man has fulfilled the law, this man has acted as a good Jew should, loving God and loving his neighbor.

The only trouble is—he’s not Jewish! He’s a Samaritan! To make a complex history very short, Samaritans were people with both Jewish and Gentile ancestry. By the first century, Jews didn’t consider them Jewish, even though Samaritans considered themselves heirs to Judaism, and still kept their own version of Jewish law. But even though these two peoples were in so many ways very similar, they saw themselves as mortal enemies. Most Jews, in particular, saw the Samaritans as defectors from true Judaism, as collaborators with the various Gentile oppressors who had been subjugating Israel for centuries.

And this is precisely why Jesus has chosen a Samaritan to be the hero of this story. The very man who, supposedly, is the enemy of the Jewish faith is the only one in this story who actually upholds the teachings of that faith. Jesus finishes the parable, and then essentially responds to the lawyer’s original question with a question of his own: “"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."”

The lawyer is forced to admit that, at least in this scenario, it is the foreigner, the enemy, the defector, who is actually the true neighbor to the injured man. The fact that they don’t live next to each other, the fact that they are not members of the same nation, the fact that they practice (slightly) different spiritualities, the fact that the leaderships of their groups hate each other—none of this ends up mattering. The Samaritan chose to show kindness, and therefore reveals his true identity—in showing love, he affirms that he is the injured man’s neighbor, despite the (literal and figurative) distance between them.

I hope it’s not hard to see Jesus’s point. (Though Christians have often missed the main point, thinking Jesus was simply saying we should be nice and help people in need. But, again, this was already well-established in Jewish law. Arguing that one must help those in need was and is no Christian innovation.)¹ We humans often like to put up boundaries, fences, walls, and other various devices—literal and figurative—to convince ourselves that we are different from—and better than—those on the other side of the wall. In this short parable, Jesus shows how deceptive this is. He could just as easily have quoted from Genesis 1:27: “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” If every human being is made in God’s image, then who could possibly not be my neighbor?

Of course, this lesson still leaves a lot of questions unanswered. For one thing, what exactly does it mean to love my neighbor? Surely loving my neighbor is not the same thing as loving my spouse or my children. So we have to figure that out. And what do I do if my neighbor is actively trying to hurt me or someone else? That’s a difficult but important question. Jesus, I think, does have answers to these questions. But we should admit those aren’t given in this one particular parable. (We’ll have to keep reading scripture!)

But I hope that the basic point he makes here is clear. Mexicans are our neighbors. And Guatemalans too. Palestinians are our neighbors, and so are Israelis. Iranians are our neighbors, and North Koreans too. Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese, Syrians, Nigerians, Indians…all of them are made in God’s image, and so share in God’s infinite dignity and value.

That doesn’t mean we don’t have real differences and disagreements with many people from these countries. And it certainly doesn’t mean we can’t criticize some of the actions of their governments. But whatever our political views, whatever our opinions on foreign policy, the one thing we can’t do—if we want to take Jesus seriously—is deny any of these people their humanity. God loves every person on this planet, no exceptions. I hope we will be bold enough to “go and do likewise”.

1. This parenthetical was added as an edit on July 12, 2025.