The Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis explains how Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29–37) to illustrate God’s desire that no one be left alone in their hour of need.
Rabbi Jesus is talking to a religious leader—a lawyer—about what it means to be faithful. Together, they review the Jewish scriptures: The way to live right is to love God with everything you have and love your neighbor as yourself. Looking for a loophole, the lawyer wants to know who qualifies as a neighbor. Jesus answers by telling a story about a man who was robbed, beaten, and left for dead by a marauding gang. A priest and another religious man walked by and, seeing the man on the ground, they did nothing…. But a Samaritan—a mixed-race person considered in ancient times to be an impure enemy of the Jewish people—did not cross the street. Instead, he tended to the wounded man….
In using this story to answer his companion’s question about the definition of neighbor, Rabbi Jesus was getting to what he considered to be the essential laws—love God with all you have and love your neighbor as yourself…. If you want to know what love looks like, Rabbi Jesus is saying, here it is: Love crosses borders and boundaries; it makes new cultural rules; it cares for the stranger. Love turns strangers into friends. [1]
The religious scholar Jonathon Walton considers how Martin Luther King Jr. interpreted the Good Samaritan through a lens of love:
For Jesus, demonstrating our love for God by seeking the good of others—an ethic known as agape love—sums up the law and the teachings of the Hebrew prophets…. King held neither a romantic nor a friendly conception of love but rather an understanding of love expressed in intentional acts of care and compassion, which is at the core of the Hebrew Bible and the heart of the gospel message. King looked to the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) in his iconic “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” address.
Of course, the parable itself is about agape love, empathy, and identifying your neighbor in the unlikeliest of places…. Jesus subverts conventional wisdom and places empathy in the eyes of the one who would otherwise be considered a foreigner. Jesus wanted to make the point that the Samaritan could see as God sees. The Samaritan saw the victim through the lenses of love….
King’s retelling of this story models the ethical design of the parable. He demonstrates both an ethic of love and empathetic care without reducing one to the other. This is to say, we have the capacity and obligation to do what is right and to show concern for our neighbor whether we feel like it or not. When we strengthen our capacity to identify with others, and thus empathize with them, it is always easier to do right by them. Love and empathy, together, lead to justice.
References:
[1] Jacqui Lewis, Fierce Love: A Bold Path to Ferocious Courage and Rule-Breaking Kindness That Can Heal the World (Harmony Books, 2021), 103–104.
[2] Jonathan L. Walton, A Lens of Love: Reading the Bible in Its World for Our World (Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), 41–42.
Image credit and inspiration: Jenna Keiper, untitled (detail), 2020, photo, New Mexico. Click here to enlarge image. Just like the glasses we use to adjust our vision, love is a lens through which to understand and interpret scripture more deeply .
Story from Our Community:
In church life, we experience a tiny cell of “community,” of “fullness of time,” and of the “kingdom of God.” My prayer is that, with God’s help, this could be extended to all the nations of the world, so that we can all look around and say, “See how we love one another!”
— Robert C.
