The Good Samaritan - Revisited

The phrase "Good Samaritan" has become a part of our lexicon. Even people who know nothing about faith in Jesus or the Christian Bible have a general idea of the concept of a "Good Samaritan." (Good Samaritan Laws, etc.) If you don't know the actual story, that's good, in a way. It saves you from presuming the messages it contains, and therefore not hearing it in a fresh way.

Those of you who know the story, (see Luke, Chapter 10), know that it's a story of someone travelling on a dangerous road who gets robbed, beaten, and left for dead. To people of Jewish faith pass by him and don't stop to help, for a variety of reasons. A person known as a Samaritan stops to help. In its original context this story told by Jesus is scandalous. Jews and Samaritans hated one another worse than Yankee fans and Redsox fans, or Missouri Tigers and Kansas Jayhawks. For a Jew to tell a story in which a Samaritan was the hero was unthinkable.

Yes, there are some basic messages in the story. There's the message of being a neighbor to those in need; obeying the commandment to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. There's the truth that the good news of Jesus is for everyone, not just for people who are like us. But I believe there's another message in this story that goes unnoticed, and it's in the actions of the Samaritan himself.

More on this on Friday. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.