(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Right Judgment”, originally shared on July 9, 2025. It was the 367th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan is
often used to shape Christian ministry for the poor and the helpless, but is
that what it’s about? Yes and No. Today, we’re going to find out why.
I took the
Senior Lifesaving Class from the Red Cross when I was a young teenager, and
among the many things I learned from my class’s experienced teacher, one stood
out. If you ever have the opportunity to save someone’s life, don’t expect them
to be grateful.
Even when attempting to save a drowning
person, they may panic and push you under to get a breath of air, if given the
opportunity. And, if you manage to save their life without losing your own,
they may be embarrassed and resentful. They may deny that they really needed
help.
Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, the
one in Luke 10:25-37 that will be read in the vast majority of churches
this coming Sunday, is a familiar one, but we know almost nothing about the
person who was saved, and less about how he felt about it.
I think that that’s intentional, because the
parable isn’t about him. And it’s not about the Good Samaritan, either. It’s
about you, and your story.
Literature is full of stories that take
place on the road. The parable of the Good Samaritan takes place on a dangerous
and notorious one, the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. But it’s about our
journey.
Remember the story of Joshua and the battle
of Jericho? It was fought when the Israelites returned to the land that God had
given them after hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt. Their land had been
occupied by others, and they had to take it back.
By the time of Jesus, many of hundreds of
years later, the road between Jerusalem and Jericho was known mainly for crime.
Lots of things can happen on the road to
someplace else.
Have you ever seen an RV with a sticker with
a red background showing the smiling cartoon head of a guy with a gold halo
over him and the words “Good Sam” underneath it? It’s the logo for the Good Sam
Club, which began as a group who said that they were willing to help fellow
RV’ers in need on the road. It takes its name from the parable of the Good
Samaritan. The parable begins with a lawyer, in Luke 10:25,
25Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what
must I do to inherit eternal life?”
He wasn’t a lawyer like we understand lawyers, but he was an expert in
the religious laws, the 613 commandments in the Old Testament, and all
the ways in which they were to be interpreted and kept. Jesus answers him,
starting with verse Luke 10:26,
26He said to him, “What
is written in the law? What do you read there?” 27He 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.”
That’s Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18.
Augustine, one of the great theologians of the Church and one of the
giants of Western literature, who lived from 354-430 A.D., expressed almost the
same when he said, “Love God and do what you will,” because loving God means
doing what pleases God, and the laws of God are given for human good.
Jesus, approving of the man’s answer, said in Luke 10:28,
28And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you
will live.”
If only the man had stopped while he was ahead. We see at verse 29,
29But wanting to justify
himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
This man didn’t want to stop at knowing how to collect his spiritual
inheritance. He wanted to believe that he had earned it himself.
The man only wanted to make sure he was keeping the letter of the law,
but in doing so he only showed concern for himself. He wasn’t thinking about
what to share with others.
He wanted to know what he had to do.
Jesus was about to teach him what he needed to be, starting with Luke
10:30,
30Jesus 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.
The road between Jerusalem and Jericho was winding, it was mostly what
we would call a dry gulch. It was a great place for robbers to hide and ambush
travelers and merchants.
I once walked inland from the west to Mt. Sinai in Israel when I studied
in Israel during college. My friend and I were on Thanksgiving vacation,
traveling north by bus in the Sinai Peninsula. We had taken our map at face
value and got off the bus at Dehab where the map showed a road to Mr. Sinai,
but found that there was actually no city and no road. We had to walk in over
the desert.
We met a Bedouin, a native of the desert who, with the 20 or 30 words we
knew in Arabic, agreed to guide us overnight.
At one point my friend quietly pointed out that, culturally, the Bedouin
believed that everything on the desert belonged to them. They might rob a
traveler of everything, including the clothes on their back, without remorse.
And their brother might find you on the desert and bring you to his village and
equip you with everything his brother had stolen and brought home, out of a
cultural hospitality, and see no contradiction.
As it turned out, he paced out trip across the desert, shared his water
when ours ran out, and probably saved our lives. But have you ever spent a
night wondering if you were about to be robbed?
The robbers in this story were a bit more brutal.
Have you ever been robbed at gunpoint? I have. It’s no fun. One of our
dogs had jumped our fence one night, many years ago, and I had gone out to
bring it back. We had indications that we lived near a crack-house and we think
the robbers might have been on their way there, desperate. One robber said that
he didn’t want to kill me, and I replied that that was good because I didn’t
want to be killed. He took my watch, wedding ring, and all my cash that Sally
passed through the back door. I think the other recognized me. He held back and
kept telling the other guy to leave. They were satisfied with what they got.
But it was traumatizing for us. It was a night when some help would have been
very welcome.
The first two possibilities for help for the victim in Jesus’ parable
were not at all helpful, starting at verse 31,
31Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he
passed by on the other side. 32So likewise a Levite, when he
came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
Two potential helpers appear. We see a priest of Aaron who served in the
Temple in Jerusalem and a Levite who served in a helping role in the Temple
such as being a musician, a Temple official, a guard, or as a craftsman. They
may have been concerned that victim was dead, knowing that if they touched a
dead body they would have been considered “unclean” and unable to carry out
their service until they completed a time-consuming cleansing ritual.
Or they might have passed by thinking that
“it’s not my job”, or they didn’t want to be late for work, or they were afraid
that someone would mistake them for the robber, or that they might get blood on
their clothes, or were afraid that they themselves would get robbed. Or who
knows? (Everyone has a good reason not to help.) But, they did not stop to
render aid.
Who did? We see in Luke 10:33,
33But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he
was moved with pity.
Let’s just take a pause here to think about who the Samaritans were and
how outrageous it would have seemed at the time for Jesus to make a Samaritan
the good guy in this story.
Samaritans were what was left of the mixture of local and foreign
peoples that followed the Assyrian Conquest of the 10 northern tribes of Israel
in 722 B.C. They were considered foreigners occupying territory in the middle
of Israel, between Galilee and Judea (where Jerusalem was), and bad influences
to boot! And the Samaritans felt the same about Israel. And what does the
Samaritan do in Jesus’ story? We see in verse 34,
34He 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.
Margaret Meade, the
anthropologist, was once asked what she thought was the first sign of human
civilization. She answered, “The first evidence of civilization is a healed
femur.” (a thighbone)
Evidence of a healed
thighbone means that someone had to set the bone and provide security, food and
water for the wounded while they healed, all at a personal expense to
themselves. Prior to that, if you broke a femur, you died.
Civilization begins when we
put the needs of others ahead of our own.
That is a very Christian
concept, perhaps at the beating heart of what it means to be a Christian. It is
rooted in the central event of the Christian faith. The cross. But it’s not the
end of the story.
The teaching continues in verse 35,
35The 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.’
A denarius was equal to a day’s wage for an unskilled laborer. Two
denarii were two days wages. That was his down payment. He offered to
contribute whatever it took to restore the wounded man. And now we are getting
to why the expert on the religious law needed to learn. He needed to hear the
answer to his question, at the beginning of this reading, about inheriting
eternal life.
Jesus asked, in verse 36,
36Which of these three,
do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the
robbers?” 37He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said
to him, “Go and do likewise.”
How does God’s mercy come? It’s freely
given. How does one receive an inheritance? It’s not because of what you do.
It’s entirely because of our relationship with the one from whom we
receive. It’s not about who you are, but about Whose you are.
A neighbor is anyone in need of what we can
give. It’s not our status or appearance in the world that matters. What counts
is that we who have been healed express our gratitude in love for others. We
who have received mercy show mercy.
In the parable of the Good Samaritan, it was
the one who was helpless who was restored. The good news is that all who repent
can receive their inheritance,
Living as a Christian requires sacrifice. It
requires concern for others, not only for ourselves, not for the sake of
appearances, but because it is a natural expression of the love and grace and
mercy we have first received from God.
The expert in the religious law was only
concerned with his personal salvation by his own works. He wanted to know what
to do.
He pushed Jesus a little further because the
man only wanted to justify himself.
The Good news, the gospel, is that God has
done that for us at the cross.
When Jesus was once pushed about healing, i.e.
doing work, on the Sabbath, while the law was at the same time being stretched
so that other “work” was permitted, Jesus called on us to judge with another
kind of judgment in John 7:24,
24 Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”
When we are transformed by the Holy Spirit,
when we become a new creation in our Baptism, when we are born again, the law
is within our hearts, Jesus says. We judge as we live, with right judgement,
from the inside out.
That is Jesus’ answer to the
religious lawyer. How do we inherit eternal life? By receiving it as a gift.
Our status in the eyes of the world is irrelevant.
The message of this parable is not just to
be nice to people. The message is to live the love that we have first received
on the cross, the love that has made us whole, restoring us to the living
relationship of faith in the one true living God for which we were created from
the beginning of human history and to share the hope of eternal life, not in
ourselves, but in Jesus Christ. We judge from who God has made us to be in
transformed lives. That is right judgement.
Near the end of the movie on Mrs. Rodgers,
“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”, Fred Rogers, who was a Presbyterian minister, is
speaking to a crowd and says,
“From the time you were very little, you've
had people who have smiled you into smiling, people who have talked you into
talking, sung you into singing, loved you into loving. So, on this extra
special day, let's take some time to think of those extra special people. Some
of them may be right here, some may be far away. Some may even be in heaven. No
matter where they are, deep down you know they've always wanted what was best
for you. They've always cared about you beyond measure and have encouraged you
to be true to the best within you. Let's just take a minute of silence to think
about those people now.”
Who has “loved you into being”? Who
made those people into who they were and are? God.
And we can be that kind of neighbor for
others who need us because God has first loved us into eternal being.
Was the man who was mugged on the road
between Jerusalem and Jericho grateful? Are any of us sufficiently grateful for
what God has given us? For what God has forgiven, for what God has restored in
us?
We can’t earn this inheritance. It is a gift
of the loving and gracious and merciful God.
Heaven is coming and it will be full of all
kinds of people.
What can we do for a broken world to make it
whole again? What has the cross given us and called, equipped and sent us to
do?
Declare the inbreaking of the already but
not yet fully here Kingdom of God by word and by deed by right judgment to
everyone in need who God places in front of you. That is, your neighbor.
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