4 lessons from the Good Samaritan

Many Mennonite Church USA congregations are engaging the Scriptures with renewed intentionality. These initiatives are taking a number of forms, including congregation-wide Year of the Bible programs. This energy fits well with our denominational priority of spiritual formation.

The stories of the Bible have the capacity not only to make a one-time impact on our lives but to continue shaping us over a lifetime.

Perhaps you’ve had the experience of reading a passage in the Bible that speaks to you at a certain time in a certain way and then you read it again at another time and it has something fresh to say to you. This is a common experience. The Holy Spirit is at work in us, connecting us to the biblical story just when we need it, in just the way that we need it.

I’ve had that experience a lot with the Good Samaritan. As time goes on, Jesus’ story has continued to reverberate with new meanings and new shapings for me.

Below I share four lessons the Good Samaritan passage has taught me over the years. These may be like or different from your own learning. They attest the ongoing formation that the living word is accomplishing in the lives of Jesus’ followers.

Lesson one

In my younger years, the Good Samaritan spoke to me as a story about good people and bad people. The priest and the Levite were bad people because they didn’t help someone in need. The Samaritan was a good person because he did help someone in need. And through his story, Jesus is encouraging me to be a good person like the Samaritan—one who helps others; one who helps others even when it is inconvenient. That’s a good lesson and a good encouragement.

Lesson two

During my seminary years I had the privilege of learning a lot about the Jewish people in Jesus’ day. I learned that the Jews and the Samaritans were neighbors and did not get along. In this context of hostility between Jews and Samaritans, Jesus comes along and tells a story to Jewish people that holds up a Samaritan as a role model. We can imagine his listeners being disconcerted, perhaps offended, and certainly challenged. For Jesus’ first listeners, he told about a bad person who turned out to be a good person, and that’s not the way the world is supposed to work. Jesus intentionally chose the most unacceptable hero for maximum shock value. And he did this to register a sharp social challenge.

That was a new lesson for me. The Samaritan was not just neighborly; he crossed a wide social divide in order to be neighborly. The Good Samaritan is about good people and bad people but also about prejudice, prejudice about how we determine who is good and who is bad.

Jesus’ story encourages me to examine my own prejudices, where I may have labeled individuals or groups as bad and been blind to their goodness. Jesus’ story asks me, “Where are the social divisions in my community, school, church, civic organization, business, retirement community? What can I do to help dismantle those divides?” Jesus story shows that difficult circumstances can bring out the best in people and lift up the common good that binds us together. How can I work for the common good? That’s a good lesson and a good encouragement.

Lesson three

Jesus’ story is about good people and bad people. It’s about prejudices and overcoming social divides. The Good Samaritan is also a story about the hard choices we sometimes make in order to serve others, that life is often about difficult decisions between two good options.

This new lesson came to me when I realized I’ve been hard on the priest and the Levite over the years. Rather than being hopelessly bad people, they were faced with a difficult choice about which way to serve God and others. Their choice wasn’t between good and bad options but between two good options. Let me explain.

When Christians read the New Testament, we are set up to think the worst about Jewish leaders and not without reason. Some of them were enemies of Jesus. So we’re disposed to regard the priest and Levite as selfish and heartless for not stopping to help the injured man.

Yet most people in Jesus’ day respected priests and Levites. The priests led worship at the Temple, and the Levites assisted them. To exercise those duties they held to a strict code of religious purity. And God was the one who chose the priests and Levites for such important roles.

One thing priests and Levites had to avoid was touching a corpse. This would disqualify them from worship duties. They could be reinstated but only after a lengthy purification process.

The situation on Jericho Road is complicated for a priest or Levite. Jesus says the robbers left their victim half-dead. He may well have looked fully dead. A priest or Levite may have wanted to help. Yet to misjudge and touch a dead body would violate God’s law and disqualify the minister from serving others in worship. He may have thought, Why dishonor God and be irresponsible to others who are counting on me?

Perhaps it was a hard choice, a hard choice between two good ways to serve God and others.

We understand hard choices. A youth sponsor is driving her group to catch the plane for Phoenix. It’s a tight schedule to get everyone there, unloaded, checked-in, through security, to the gate. She sees a car broken down and people in distress. Does she stop and help?

The wheat is ready for harvest, and the forecast is for hail and it’s Sunday. Is God pleased with the farmer who keeps the combine in the shed, loses his crop and risks impoverishing his family?

Those are hard choices. Maybe the priest and the Levite had a hard choice to make, too.
So the Good Samaritan asked me some new questions: When have I experienced difficult decisions between two good things, even two good things for God? How did I resolve the tension? How did things turn out on the basis of my choice? Would I choose differently the next time? In what areas of life do I struggle with too many choices? Where are my personal hardest choices between good and good?

Lesson four

The Good Samaritan encourages me to help others, to overcome prejudices and to be kind to others who face difficult choices.

And here’s one last stop on my journey with the Good Samaritan—for now. This lesson comes from a new insight into Jesus’ brilliance as a storyteller. I noticed that Jesus receives the lawyer’s question (“Who is my neighbor?”) and doesn’t answer it. Instead, Jesus changes his question to a new question, and through this new question Jesus invites the lawyer to a whole new life.

Jesus makes this change subtly. Essentially the lawyer asks, “Which people should be the receivers of my neighborly actions?” He wants to spend his energy wisely. Jesus’ story, however, focuses not on the receiver of neighborliness but on the actors: The priest, the Levite and the Samaritan.

Jesus changes the lawyer’s question from Which people should receive my neighborly actions? to, Which one of these—priest, Levite or Samaritan—acted like a neighbor?

The lawyer can only answer Jesus’ new question, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus says, “Go and do likewise.”

The lawyer came to Jesus for a scorecard; he leaves with a role model and a challenge. Jesus says to forget about analyzing who’s inside your circle of responsibility.
Neighborliness is showing mercy, and mercy has no limits.

“Neighbor” is not a service to the worthy so the server can earn maximum points. If somebody’s in need, just help. Don’t focus on inheriting life; focus on sharing life; do that and inheriting life will take care of itself.

Jesus is brilliant. Through the subtle change in his story, he takes away the lawyer’s surveillance camera and hands him a mirror. Jesus also encourages him with an opportunity. As I listen in, Jesus encourages me as well: Don’t worry about categorizing the people you meet. Trust the merciful response; that will lead to life.
Conclusion

That’s four forming lessons the Good Samaritan has offered me—and counting. Jesus’story continues to reverberate with ever-new meanings. And this passage is not unique.

The Holy Spirit can use any portion of the Bible to speak fresh words to us, words that spiritually transform us. The Scriptures are indeed wonderful words of life from the God of life.

David A. Stevens is pastor of Eden Mennonite Church, Moundridge, Kan.