Sermon on Luke 10:25-37

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the most well-known. Many folks who aren’t generally familiar with the Bible would still recognize a story about a good-hearted person who helped someone who was injured. We even have Good Samaritan laws to protect people who help strangers in emergencies.

But this story has become so familiar that it’s lost a lot of its meaning. The word “Samaritan” has come to mean someone who helps a stranger, but that’s very different from what Jesus’ audience would have understood.

Jewish people in the first century thought of Samaritans as their enemies. Samaritans were descended from the Israelites who had been left behind when the Assyrians conquered Israel around 720 BCE and took many of the Israelites into captivity.

Over the generations, these left-behind Israelites married with other local people groups. They also came to believe that God was properly worshiped on Mount Gerizim instead of the Temple in Jerusalem. So, when the exiled Israelites returned home, they had issues with the lineage and theology of the Samaritans.

So by Jesus’ time, these two people groups had quite a few hundred years to build up bad feelings about each other. In the Gospel of John, we even get the parenthetical comment in the story of the Samaritan woman at the well that: “(Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.).” A “Good Samaritan” would have sounded like an oxymoron.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan was shocking to its first audience in a way that we just don’t have access to.

That’s significant for understanding that this parable wasn’t just about encouraging us to help strangers. Jesus told this parable in response to the law expert’s question about “who is my neighbor?”

If we take the narrator’s word that this religious leader was trying to test Jesus, it seems like his motive in asking “who is my neighbor” had to do with setting a boundary of who was he supposed to love and who he was off the hook for. Like he was expecting the answer to be: your neighbors are those literally next doorto you or within a mile of your house, and you don’t need to worry about anyone else. Sure, Jesus, I’m supposed to love my neighbor, but who am I justified in not loving?

And so Jesus tells this story about someone who was mugged and left for dead on the side of the road.

First a priest and then a Levite walk by and see the guy in desperate need of help. These would have been trusted and esteemed leaders in the community. They would have been seen as good guys, the people you’d expect to be helpful. Maybe like a mayor or a fire fighter or a school principal.

But they didn’t help. They ignored the man and passed him by. Incidentally, if you’ve ever heard the excuse that helping the man would have made the priest and the Levite unclean, and so that’s why they didn’t help, Jewish New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine disagrees with that interpretation. She says, “Neither [Jesus nor Luke] gives the priest or Levite an excuse. Nor would any excuse be acceptable.”

These two respected community leaders aren’t given justification by the text. They’re simply fallible human beings who don’t always do the right thing—just like all of us.

And then, a third person walks by. Someone you don’t like. Someone who belongs to a group of people you don’t trust. Someone you’d expect to look the other way or maybe even give him a kick for an extra measure of meanness. People like him are bad news, selfish, violent, hateful, and whatever other stereotypes we humans like to pin on each other.

But wait! He does stop to help. That can’t be right! But he does, and not only does he give him first aid, but he takes him to an inn where he can be tended to further. He pays the innkeeper two full days’ wages and promises more so that this guy will be well taken care of. He goes to great effort and expense to care for this stranger who probably hated him.

So, who was a good neighbor? The esteemed community leaders who should have cared for their people? Or this guy who you probably wouldn’t want to see walking down a dark alley?

As with many of Jesus’ parables, this one is surprising. It turns our assumptions on their heads.

Jesus used this parable to break down any barriers in our minds about who might not be our neighbor. Jesus used this shocking story to show us that we owe compassion not just to the people immediately around us or who are like us or who might show gratitude for our good deeds, but we owe compassion to the people we hate, distrust, and have prejudices against.

We might not understand the conflict between Jewish people and Samaritans in the first century, but we can fill in the blanks for ourselves.

If you were mugged, who would it be hard to accept help from?

Who would it surprise you to receive generosity from?

The answer might be different for each of us, and I invite you to spend time this week answering this question: who are your Samaritans?

It’s uncomfortable work. We don’t like to imagine that we have prejudices or biases. We want to imagine that we are loving to all people. But I encourage you to sit with this question for long enough that you get beyond your initial inclination to say that no one is a Samaritan for you. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you who you would be surprised to receive generosity from.

Because beyond our rational minds, we all have those natural instincts to categorize people and look for threats—instincts that kept our ancestors safe in the wilderness. But these ancient survival skills don’t always serve us today. They can cut us off from our neighbors and make us see threats that aren’t there.

Maybe you’ve done enough work that you have truly overcome all your biases. But “who are your Samaritans?” is a question that has the potential to unsettle most of us if we really spend time with it.

We can’t change what we’re not aware of. Let this parable unsettle you. Let it regain some of its original shock value instead of being just a nice story about someone helping a stranger. Let God show you what it truly means to love your neighbor.

This isn’t about checking off enough boxes to get us into heaven.This isn’t about the law expert’s testing question to see what’s required to inherit eternal life.God already loves you, and you are part of the family of God forever.

Loving our neighbors—truly all of them—is about living the Beloved Community now. Jesus is inviting us into a way of life that treats every life as sacred, erases all our human hierarchies that keep us separated from each other, and fosters love, joy, and peace.

Feel God’s unending love for you and love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.

And let God’s love shine forth from you wherever you go and to everyone, everyone, everyone you meet.

That’s how earth becomes as it is in heaven.