I have written and deleted a thousand posts this week.
I sit here the author of a blog named Samaritan’s Song. It is a name I chose over a decade ago without the slightest clue of the resonance it might have now. I chose it because then, as now, I found the parable of the Good Samaritan striking and resonant. I chose it because that story, among so many others, is a reminder that God can surprise us with who He wants us to be, and what He wants us to do.
In this parable, a learned man—an expert in the law—stands up to test Christ.
He thinks he knows God. And to be fair, knowing God is sort of his entire business. So he asks Jesus what it is He should do to inherent eternal life. Perhaps he was goading Christ to proclaim His divinity publicly. Perhaps, as many of the others, he was hoping to catch Jesus out on a technicality he could decry as blasphemy.
Jesus, as He often does, turns the question around: gives this brilliant man a chance to display his clear learning. “What is written in the Law?” He asks. “How do you read it?”
His interlocutor reels off chapter and verse, line-perfect. He knows this. He knows he knows this. “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
“Well done,” Jesus says. “Go do that.” Probably starts to turn away.
It isn’t enough. Scripture tells us the man wanted to “justify himself.” The Amplified translation indicates that he wants to vindicate himself. He wants to confirm his own rightness and his understanding of the Scripture: although he perhaps doesn’t realize it, he believes he knows Scripture better than God. And so: “And who is my neighbor?”
It’s such a sarcastic, smug, preening response. And it expects, I think, a simple answer: something cut-and-dried, something simple, something affirming who he is and how he lives.
The answer Jesus gives is not that. The answer Jesus gives, instead, is a parable. And in this parable, the man who turns out to be the sort of neighbor God wants—the hero of the story, the person Christ wants us to emulate—is not a priest, is not a Levite. The good neighbor is a Samaritan, and the characteristic that sets him apart is mercy.
The story ends there—to emulate, I like to think, the stunned silence of the speaker.
What does it all mean?
Well, it means you don’t get to split hairs with God, is what it means. You don’t get to decide who your neighbor is. God does. And God says “neighbor” doesn’t have to do with location or likeness. If you’re a Samaritan, your “neighbor” doesn’t need to be another Samaritan. Doesn’t need to be someone with beliefs and ideals and a background and a house and a culture like yours. Might, in fact, be someone with wildly different beliefs and ideals and backgrounds and cultures. Might be someone the situation demands you despise.
It also means you don’t get to decide what “neighborly” means.
There are a lot of people lately who seem to think God has tapped them on the shoulder to start a war in His name. But I’m sitting here looking at this parable. Go and do likewise, God says, pointing to a Samaritan who tended to the needs of someone who could not repay him. Go and do likewise, God says, and pulls into a world of ointments and bandages and financial sacrifice. Go and do likewise, God says, about a man who engaged in considerable effort and expense for the sake of a another who likely would have in other circumstances wanted nothing to do with him.
Never forget that Jesus told Peter to put away his sword.
I’m not God. I don’t claim to be able to know the hearts of humans. But I know what God has told me love looks like. God has taught me what peace looks like, and sacrifice, and humility, and compassion. God has shown me who a neighbor is. God has lived this before us in incarnate flesh, offering Himself up to suffering and pain.
By their fruits you will know them (Matt.7:15-20). And Scripture tell us that the fruits of the Spirit are “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).
Be wary of false teaching, my friends, and those who claim the name of God but whose actions do not reveal Him.
Lord, have mercy on this country.
Samaritan's Song 