So who is neighbor?

From Safari…

Who is your Samaritan? To Jesus’ fellow Jews, a Samaritan was a despicable Person. As we

hear this familiar gospel story we miss that important fact. Because we have lifted up the

hero of Jesus' road-rescue story by naming hospitals and laws after the Good Samaritan, we have lost touch with the fact that the relationships between first-century Jews and Samaritans were generally characterized by that special hostility found among close relatives who feel themselves betrayed by the other. Missing that note, we also miss much of the punch of the parable.

Luke set the stage for this parable, when he wrote in chapter nine that the Samaritans “would not receive him” as Jesus and his disciples headed south through Samaritan territory to Jerusalem. Any Samaritan knew that the proper place for authentic Israelite worship was Mount Gerizim and that Galilean Jews on pilgrimage to Jerusalem were heretics busy

doing the wrong thing—people out of place. The parable begins with an attempt to trap Jesus. A scholar of the law asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answers with a question, asking the scholar how he reads the Torah. The scholar gives a good summary ----love God with all your being and love your neighbor as yourself. Embarrassed that Jesus has exposed him as knowing the answer to his own question, this scholar, asks Jesus to define “neighbor.” The implication is that once you define “neighbor,” you know the designated “neighborhood,” and then you also know whom you can hate, or at least neglect. Jesu pushes the notion of neighbor even more, a man is assaulted and robbed in a setting that would have been familiar with Jesus’ audience. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a likely place for highway robbery.

When we hear about those who pass by without helping the victim, we easily dismiss them as heartless religious officials. However, among the purity regulations that constrained the lives of Temple officials was a rule saying that touching (even coming within six feet) a corpse rendered one unclean. The narrative, then, allows us to understand the by-passers’ behavior as “playing it safe” in the presence of what seemed to be a corpse rather than cold neglect of a robbery victim.

The original listeners would not have been surprised. By contrast, the action of the Samaritan traveler is astounding. This man has every excuse in the world to mind his own business and to keep on moving. A Samaritan in Judea, on the wrong “turf,” he is himself an automatic target for hostility. If he is caught near the victim, he would be considered a likely suspect in the aggression. Yet he is “moved with compassion at the sight” and proceeds to place himself at risk by administering first aid and taking the victim to an inn to see that he is properly cared for. So who is neighbor? Anyone who is in need!