...While the parable of the Good Samaritan definitely inspires us to notice hurting people's needs irregardless of their race or religion or condition, and to attend to them in love, costing us what it may; I think we miss the crucial point of what Jesus is teaching us if the only thing we glean from this story is that we need to become better people who love others more...
Of course loving people more is a great objective (and I know that I really need to do that better), but I believe that there is something deeper here than what is initially understood.
Every teaching of Jesus always has an objective, and every objective is always directed to someone specific. In this case, Jesus was sharing this parable to an expert of the law who was trying to justify himself (Luke 10:25-29); and I believe that this is the best clue that we have in understanding what Jesus is ultimately getting at in this specific story.
The two questions Jesus addresses in this story are as follows: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" and, "Who is my neighbor?".
...According to the characters in this parable, the answer to the second question is clear. It's everyone - including, but not limited to, my enemy (just like the Jews were to the Samaritans, and the Samaritans were to the Jews)... But how should I love my enemy? Well, surprisingly, the way the good Samaritan loved the man that fell into the hands of the robbers is how - by going way above and beyond any normal call of duty, and risking all my life and resources in giving others all the time and help they need at my own expense.
The beauty of Jesus' teaching in this parable is that when we consider the good Samaritan, his example is exactly what we need so we can know how to love others, and we're inspired to start doing so, even though we know that if we're honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we really don't come close to that standard. Maybe we want to, but we don't really want to have to...
In my mind I love the idea of being the hero in this story, I love the idea of being the good Samaritan.
But when I'm in a hurry walking down the sidewalk in Cucuta to get to an appointment at the mall and I see a single mother with her baby begging for money on the edge of the sidewalk; I honestly don't want to have to stop and talk to her and take her and her child to a hotel for them to stay at and then buy them food and share the gospel with the mother before I tell her I'll pick her up the next day to take her to a Bible study. I don't want to pray for her and think of a business option she can work at to sustain herself, and then be the one to subsidize the operation. I don't want to show up late to the appointment at the mall where I was supposed to talk to another fellow who has all kinds of needs both personally and for his family back in Venezuela as well, in every way you can possibly imagine.
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| Eating dinner last night with three Venezuelan Women who live off the mercy of others on the Cucuta streets Kailey, Irismar, and Fabiola; along with Keily's daughter Cristal and Irismar's son Fabian |
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| Eating with Venezuelan immigrant musician friends Isaac, Alexander, and Jose at the mall |
If I'm honest with myself, I'm usually like the priest or the Levite; even though I know I should be like the Samaritan.
But the ultimate question still remains: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"
Well, the logical answer to that question is to simply fulfill every single aspect of the law, down to the smallest detail of it, and to do so in the same way this Samaritan exemplified so beautifully for the man who had been robbed... a Samaritan who was part of a sect that implies he had terrible theology compared to the Jewish priest and the Levite, who both should have been the first ones to respond to God's overarching command to love their neighbor, as they both knew they should have, even without thinking twice about it.
But each of them did think twice about it, and a third and fourth time as well probably, just like I would have, until they convinced themselves that they shouldn't help the poor man who was dying there, as much as they knew that helping him was exactly what they should have done.
...When I'm walking down the street here in Cucuta, I know full well what loving my neighbor as myself looks like, but most of the time I love myself more than my neighbor, and in the few cases that I love my neighbor as much as I love myself - that usually only lasts like a good ten minuets at most, and then I'm back to loving myself again, without my neighbor included, and would rather just ignore my next neighbor altogether who might pop up somewhere down the road again, in the form of someone else. Perhaps maybe I should even move somewhere more high class, where I don't have to see anyone in need, so that then I wouldn't even have to think about helping others to begin with...
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| Other neighbors in Cucuta, in the form of someone else |
And that's exactly where we need to arrive if we're ever going to realize the need we have for grace.
We need to come to a point where we see how totally incapable we are of achieving salvation on our own, if we're ever going to then come to a place where we can receive the salvation we so desperately need from our terrible condition of sin. This realization comes when we understand who we are in light of a different character in this parable...
Though I wish I were the Samaritan, I usually act like the priest or Levite, and so consequently, who I'm most comparable to in this story is the man who fell among the robbers.
When I consider my life and understand that I don't always act like a good Samaritan by loving every single neighbor at every single moment in every single situation in my life; then there's nothing else that I can do other than recognize my own desperate need for a Savior to come and rescue me for every single sinful act of neglect towards every single neighbor that I could have loved but didn't.
If I don't realize I'm a hypocrite, then I am a hypocrite. If I don't realize that Jesus is essentially my good Samaritan that came to rescue me in the moment of my deepest need, then I'll only think about other people's needs and feel sorry for them and try to make myself feel good about who I am by helping them without realizing that I am the one who needs help, and there is only one who is good enough to help me and that is God (Luke 18:19). And that I both need him and need to point others to him, more than I need anything else.
The reason why Jesus told this parable to the expert of the law was to challenge him in his self-justification. It was to make him realize that he needed a Savior, the very one who was standing in front of him... The expert of the law didn't so much need a story to remind him of how to be kind to people, though the parable of the good Samaritan does so to a T. What both the expert of the law and everyone one of us needs to be reminded of is that there is only one in all of history who has loved us like that "perfect Samaritan", and though we should imitate him in his love, we actually aren't even close to loving like he loves... The expert of the law needed a story to remind him of how far he was from being that "Samaritan" in his own strength, just like we need this story to remind us of how far we are from perfection as well, and thus in faith cry out to Jesus for his all-sufficient grace, as if we see a good Samaritan approaching us there in the distance... a "good Samaritan" as it were, who is ultimately a personification of the good Jewish man Christ Jesus.
