It is a little the same with the words of scripture. We hear certain passages with which we have been familiar all our lives yet we do not hear them because we are almost too familiar with them and presume to know them and understand them. Today’s Gospel is a classic example. Of all the parables of Jesus the Good Samaritan is the most well known and the most loved. It is so well known that the phrase Good Samaritan is part of our language. To call someone a good Samaritan means that he or she is good neighbor; a person who is kind to others.

But it is helpful to look afresh at this much-loved passage and to see what more we can find in it to illuminate it and to stretch our imaginations and our response. To start with the very phrase Good Samaritan (not a phrase Jesus uses) would have been an oxymoron to a first-century Jew. No Samaritan could be good because they were all heretics. And what held for a pious Jew in the time of Jesus still is effective today. In journeying from south to north from Jerusalem to the Galilee today an orthodox Jew would normally take the longer route around ancient Samaria to avoid pollution. It so happens that most of this area is in the Palestinian West Bank which makes the detour all the more politically dramatic. Ancient hatreds die hard in the Middle East.

To say that the Good Samaritan is about being a good neighbor is not half of it. From the outset the parable is about blatant racism. That lawyer did not ask Jesus a polite question. It was certainly couched in the language of conventional piety. “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” But he said it to “test” Jesus, to catch him out. The same word is used of the Devil in the passage about the Temptations of Jesus. He was your classic trial lawyer with an easy flow of language, adopting a concerned manner with the person being cross-examined in the witness box, and then pouncing at the right moment with a rapier like question which throws the witness off their guard. That is why most of us love court-room dramas on TV. That is why “Inherit the Wind” remains a popular play. Seeing Christopher Plummer and Brian Denehy in action recently in that court room drama was sheer delight. The question the lawyer asks is the same one asked of Jesus by the rich young man. To both Jesus gives the classic answer from the Hebrew Scriptures, the “Shema” from Deuteronomy, “you shall love the Lord your God etc” plus a quote from Leviticus about loving your neighbor as yourself. “Do this” says Jesus “and you shall live”. But the unnamed lawyer is not content with that standard and pious response. He wants to catch Jesus out so he has his follow-up question ready. “And who is my neighbor?” That may sound innocent enough to our ears today. But in the context of first-century Judaism it has specific implications. The lawyer was out to test Jesus’ orthodoxy. For the lawyer it was quite clear who his neighbor was: it was any other law-abiding Jew. This was not a general question at all. It was a boundary question. He was pushing Jesus to be quite specific; he was determined to sniff out any heresy in this Galilean so-called prophet.

But Jesus was ready for him with a brilliant parable, one that still sparkles with contemporary as well as universal relevance.

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho.” In other words he was a journeyer like Jesus who as we heard several weeks ago “set his face towards Jerusalem” on a journey that would take him to the Cross. Even today that road is one fraught with danger as it winds it way steeply up to Jerusalem through the Judean Wilderness. And it was even more dangerous back then. The man who is attacked is left “half dead”. The first two passers by are the priest and the Levite who of all people are upholders of the Law, protectors of the purity of their religion, people well-versed in “boundary issues”. And so pure are they that the last thing they can do is contaminate themselves with a body that could be dead. The dramatic point is made that the priest and the Levite are so religious are they that they are of no earthly use as we say. Their religion has become a barrier between them and others. That boundary issue is not limited to any age or any particular religion. Every religious group has the potential of defining itself against others. In this case it is Jew over against Samaritan; for the apostolic church it was Jew and Gentile; for the Western Church from the 16th century onwards it was Catholic and Protestant; in Islam at present it is the struggle between fundamentalist and more moderate forces as demonstrated in the battle at the Red Mosque in Islamabad this week; for us today it is often expressed in terms relating to liberal or conservative responses to issues of the day from the ordination of women to how we deal with the ordination of openly gay people or the blessing of same sex unions in the church. Our own church and our Anglican Communion struggle with such boundary issues. Unless you respond in such a way to such an issue you are not one of us; we are out of communion with you.

By dramatic contrast to these two inhibited religious figures comes the despised Samaritan. His response is so immediate and appropriate. “When he saw him he was moved with pity”. The Greek echoes a word used elsewhere with relation to Jesus who is moved with pity by the widow of Nain for example; or to translate it differently is “filled with compassion”. The Samaritan’s heart overflows with God’s loving compassion. And this compassion is not just a warm, fuzzy feeling, but his response is once risk-taking (he went to him); it is practical (he bandaged his wounds etc); and ongoing (brought him to an inn, and took care of him). And he even went the second mile as we say and provided for longer- term care. What is so striking here is that in the compassionate action of the Samaritan we see a good man certainly and one who did the right thing. But much more than that we see in the Samaritan a foretaste of what is to occur in the ministry of Jesus. For the Samaritan models the very compassion we see in the person and work of Jesus. This is God’s love at work; a love that is risk-taking, that is not inhibited by barriers of any sort, a love that is healing and one that is ongoing and lasting.

So Jesus says to the lawyer, which of these three was neighbor to the man who fell among thieves? And he answers in the only way possible: “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus has turned the tables on the clever lawyer. When we think of who is my neighbor we tend to think of our neighbor as the one in need, the one I can help. Jesus reminds us in this great parable that the neighbor is the one who lets the generous, loving, indiscriminate love of God to flow freely through him or her.

So to the lawyer and indeed to all of us Jesus says: “Go and do likewise.” Amen

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