The punchline of the parable of the Good Samaritan is found both at the beginning, as well as the end of today’s passage, and it is not the Lord who delivers it but instead a nameless onlooker, an expert of the Jewish Law. The “lawyer” begins this whole dialogue with this question: “Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” The perennial question posed by this man is indeed a question for which humanity has often sought an answer.
It is not enough to know how we should live but the weightier question would be how do we live forever. This loaded question indeed shows that this lawyer has some insight into the teaching of Christ Jesus. For he understands that the promise and inheritance which Jesus speaks of is not just the Promised Land, as his ancestors would have believed, but rather unending life, and he wants to make sure he gets his share of this reward.
Instead of providing an answer, the Lord uses the Socratic method - He answers this man by asking another probing question, compelling the man to give his own answer to the question he had posed. And so, the man cites the Torah to answer his own question on the criterion for inheriting eternal life: love God and love your neighbour as yourself.
Our Lord agrees with the lawyer’s answer, but then the latter adds an additional question: “Who is my neighbour?” Our Lord’s parable of the Good Samaritan is the answer given. There is no denying that the lawyer had asked the right question. But his motives were far from pure. In fact, he had come to the Lord not as an ardent student thirsting for knowledge, but as it says in the text, the lawyer’s motive was to “disconcert” Jesus. This was another attempt to trap the Lord, in order to accuse Him of not following the Law.
There is great irony in this story. The lawyer comes to Jesus fully recognising that the law commands him to love God and neighbour. Yet he approaches the Lord without love and with a hostile intent to trap Him. It was a gotcha question. The irony of his motive points to this important lesson: The law of love is not meant to be contemplated as if it was a legal or academic exercise. The law of love is meant to be lived out in a relational way. No wonder, after praising the lawyer’s answer which was quoted verbatim from the Law, the Lord then exhorts to him to “do this” and eternal life would be his.
Our Lord’s parable is the timeless tale of an assault and robbery, and the unlikely hero who comes to the victim’s aid. Love is owed to a stranger left for dead on the side of the road, and it is not the paragons of Jewish piety, a priest and a Levite who reveal it, but a cultural and religious outsider who extends it. Our Lord had already taught His disciples to love their enemies and this Samaritan would be the perfect illustration of His teaching.
In the example of the Good Samaritan, our Lord collapses the two great commandments. If we love God, we love our neighbours, whoever they are. We love our neighbours because we love God. Our way to God is one that leads us to the other -the way through the brother or sister whom I must love.
The parable actually does not provide a direct answer to the question asked by the lawyer but changes the orientation of the question instead. Our Lord is in fact telling him not to ask, “who is my neighbour”, but instead he should be asking, “how can I prove myself to be a neighbour to others?” The onus is not on others to show that they are deserving of our care but on us, to show how we can be caring to others, even when they don’t seem to be deserving of our love and compassion.
It is for this reason that true love does not end up focusing on the self and how good I am. To love our neighbours, means that we seek the good of our neighbours in the same way that we seek good for ourselves. Take all the zeal, all the ingenuity, all the perseverance which you use to get good for yourself, and seek your neighbour’s well-being.
How troubling and shocking it is to see that those whom we would have expected to offer their assistance to the maimed traveller, namely the Priest and the Levite, passed by him without being affected or moved to pity. How extraordinary that the same individuals who worshipped God daily by offering prayers, singing hymns, and doing everything that was formally required of them and ordained, were truly destitute of kindness and of love, and failed miserably to practice charity. Their worship had become “self-referential.” It is a stark paradox that those who boasted to love God were doing so only in form and not in essence, for St John reminds us that “if someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” (1 Jn 4:20)
St John was right - we cannot say that we love God, if we do not have the same love for our neighbour. St. John Chrysostom, the great Doctor of the East, said “Remember brothers that you will have to give an account not only of your life, but of everyone.” The more one is united to his neighbour, the more he is united to God. The greatest lesson of our Christian faith is that, our love for God cannot be separated from our love for every other person in the world.
Yes, asking the right question opens new vistas to our thinking and creates opportunities for learning. But in our context, asking the right question may lead us down the road of salvation, whereas the wrong question, down the path of perdition. It’s never “what would become of me, if I were to help him.” That would always be the wrong question. The right question would be “What would become of him if I did not help him?” That would be the right question to ask. The answer to our future lies with our neighbour’s well-being. If you have understood this truth, heed the Lord’s exhortation: “Go, and do the same yourself.”
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