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The Story of the Samaritan
“Which one was neighbor unto him
that fell among the thieves?”
Luke 10:36
9/11 was the first time I ever heard the term “first responders.” These were the men and women who, when the twin towers fell, instead of running for their lives, ran towards the disaster, to help pull survivors from the rubble.
The Samaritan in the parable was a first-responder. St. Augustine interprets the parable allegorically: the Samaritan is Jesus Christ; the man fallen among thieves is the world; the oil and wine poured into the man’s wounds are the sacraments. I have to say, with respect, that such an interpretation misses what the parable has to tell us in the 21st century.
The Samaritan wasn’t out to save the world. He just happened to be at the right place at the right time, and he is called the “good” Samaritan because he did the right thing. In this age of compassion fatigue, doing the right thing at the right time is all that any of us can be expected to do.
The word “good” does not occur in the story because, for the Jews to whom Jesus told it, no Samaritan was “good.” The Samaritans were heretics, since they were descendants of the pagans who were settled on the land to replace the Israelites taken into exile by the Assyrians, following the fall of the Northern Kingdom in 721 B.C.
Jesus was sympathetic to the Samaritans, deigning to speak to the Samaritan woman at the well and acknowledging the Samaritan leper, who was the only one of the 10 to come back and thank Jesus for curing him. But in this Jesus was an exception. He recognized the worth of an individual without regard for the person’s ethnicity. He praises a Roman centurion with the words, “I have not found such great faith in Israel” (Luke 7:9).
But Jesus shows he is very much a Jew by the way in which he replies to the lawyer’s question, with another question! The lawyer asked, “Who is my neighbor?”. Jesus replies, after telling the story, “Who was neighbor to him who fell among thieves?” Jesus wasn’t interested in who holds the “right” opinions (“orthodoxy”); he asks the lawyer, in effect, “Who did the right thing?” (orthopraxy).
The Samaritans worshiped God on Mt. Gerazim; the Jews worshiped God on Mt. Zion. Such differences in religious traditions are inconsequential; the important thing is to do the right thing. That is what the Samaritan did, and that is what we are called to do.
September 18, 2011
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