By Christian Bergmann
For most of my journey of faith, I have assumed I knew what the Parable of the Good Samaritan meant. This is probably because I have spent years listening to sermons treating it as a kind of ‘social justice’ parable: it’s basic thrust is love everyone, right? Especially the broken? Recently, when I paid more attention to the text, I realised that actually the answer is yes and no. Yes, the parable is about compassion; but no, the conclusion is not what I thought. There was a twist at the end I had not paid enough attention to. This has acute relevance for us in a time of social isolation, as we ask ourselves the question: “Who is my neighbour?”
The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-38) follows on the heels of Jesus being questioned by a scholar about the interpretation of the law. The man asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (10:25). Jesus affirms his response: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself” (v.27). The man then asks, “Who is my neighbour?” (v.29).
Now, this question was a technical one for the Jewish people. There was debate in ancient Israel about the meaning of Leviticus 19:18, which says this: “You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord”. There was a question about whether to interpret this inclusively or exclusively. Does ‘your people’ refer to specifically the people of Israel, or can it include others? So, the question “who is my neighbour?” is essentially code for: “who shall I love?”
Reading this passage from the lens of our current cultural context, we might say that the most obvious answer is the victim. He, of course, is the neighbour in the scenario Jesus lays out. That’s because we tend to think of the neighbour as the one receiving love, not necessarily giving love. After all, that is implied in the command “love your neighbour as yourself”. That makes it seem as though the category of neighbour is one in which people are receiving love. Besides, this parable is the parable par excellence on being compassionate. So what’s the problem?
Well, what follows, I think, is what the Catholic biblical scholar Brant Pitre refers to as a ‘parabolic twist’. Jesus sets us up to expect one thing and then hands us another.
We know the story: a man sets out from Jerusalem to Jericho, is beat up by robbers and left by the roadside. A priest passes by and does nothing. A Levite passes by and does nothing. A Samaritan passes by (and remember, there was fierce hostility between the Jews and Samaritans) and, “moved with compassion”, helped him (v.33). At the end of this parable, after describing the way in which the Samaritan cares for the victim, Jesus asks, “Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbour to the robber’s victim?” (v.36). The answer was this: “The one who treated him with mercy” (v.37). A lightbulb went on for me when I re-read this passage.
Remember, the original question put to Jesus was this: “and who is my neighbour?” (v.29). If this is code for, “Who should I love?” then Jesus didn’t really answer the question. Instead, he answers the question by inverting what we mean by the term ‘neighbour’. This is the twist: the neighbour, as it turns out, is not the one receiving the care, but the one giving it. And this is incredible. What you might say, to use Catholic jargon, is that neighbourliness is a kind of vocation; it’s not a category of persons who receive love, but a calling to be someone who gives love. You are only truly a neighbour when you are giving, not simply when receiving.
Whilst the rift between Samaritans and Jews was very real, the way in which Jesus challenged the cultural prejudice was by including Samaritans in the vocation to love; by elevating them to the same level, by including them in the mission and moral imperatives of Israel. This is not a ‘love everyone’ parable; this is a ‘everyone is called to be a neighbour by God, even those you hate’ parable, which is very different.
So, during quarantine, let’s pray that we can rediscover what it truly means to be a neighbour: not merely receiving the love of another, but actively giving it in whatever way we can.