My Enemy, the Good Samaritan

Boundaries: we all have them. Some are very visible and public, like national borderlines. Others are more personal, rooted in a wounded heart trying to protect itself against further hurt. In either case, those boundaries help us to answer the lawyer's question to Jesus: "Who is my neighbor?" While most of us have heard the call to be good Samaritans from today's parable, the fundamental question that Jesus answers today is not how to be a Good Samaritan, but who is my neighbor.

And so, "a man was going down" between Jericho and Jerusalem. Any man, or woman, Jesus doesn't say what kind of person. It could be anyone, you or me. And he fell into the hands of robbers; who took everything he had, even the clothes on his body; beat him to an inch of his life; and left him by the side of the road, naked, to die.

And so along came a priest, perhaps on his way to Jerusalem to perform his worship duties at the Temple. Generally speaking, this road between Jerusalem and Jericho was only traveled by Jews. Surely the priest knew his duty to love his neighbor as himself. And even the lawyer would agree that a fellow Jew fell inside his boundary. But as a priest, he had to avoid contact with the dead, or else he would be considered ritually unclean and unable to perform his priestly service. From a distance, he couldn't tell if his neighbor was already dead; but it was probably more prudent not to take the chance. The same went for the Levite, the acolytes of the day.

But now along comes a Samaritan merchant, with enough wine and oil to sell, apparently on a business trip. Samaritans and Jews hated each other. There were very clear boundaries between Samaria to the north and Judea to the south. They wouldn't even travel through each other's territory if they could avoid it. Ironically, the national boundary was very clear because the religious boundary was less so. The Samaritans claimed to be descended from the northern tribes of Israel, who had been decimated centuries earlier by the Assyrians. They claimed to be more faithful followers of the LORD, the God of the Jews, than the Jews themselves. They had their own temple, which the Jews had once destroyed. The Samaritans had once spread human bones inside the Jerusalem temple, thus forcing the cancellation that year of the observance of Passover in the Temple.

Jesus himself had encountered Samaritan hostility when one of their villages wouldn't receive him because he set his face toward Jerusalem. He knew that he was throwing a bomb into his discussion with the lawyer. But throw it he did. And consider the Samaritan in our story. He knows that he is on a road mostly traveled by Jews. He can assume that the half-dead man beside the road is his enemy. Why delay his important business for an enemy?

Yet, out of a compassion that respects no human boundary, this Samaritan treats his enemy as his neighbor. He uses wine, which he might have sold, as a disinfectant for the man's wounds. He uses oil, which he might have sold, to soothe his burning body. He takes on the packs he had put on his donkey, so that the wounded man who can't walk can rest. He takes the man to an inn and pays for his care and lodging. And in case the wounded man's care costs more than what the Samaritan gives the innkeeper; he promises to pay the man's debt so that the innkeeper won't claim him as an indebted slave.

What a boundary Jesus has tried to break. "Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers," Jesus asks the lawyer. Put yourself in the place of that half-dead man, Jesus prods him, and ask yourself who your neighbor is. The poor lawyer can't answer the question directly. He can't even bring himself to say the word, "Samaritan." All he can implicitly admit is that the face of the neighbor he sees bending down over him is the face of one showing mercy. And while he can't say it, he knows that is the face of his enemy shattering the boundaries between them.

Who is your neighbor? Jesus doesn't answer the lawyer's question directly. He told a story and tossed the question back to the lawyer. I can't answer that question for all of you. Only you know your boundaries. But I can tell you this. Put yourself in the place of that naked, bleeding man by the side of the road. Then think of the person whom you could never imagine offering you help. Then, imagining yourself as the person who fell into the hands of robbers, look for the face of your enemy bending down to help you. I hope you can answer, more directly than the lawyer could, Jesus's question: Who is your neighbor?