Progressive reflections on the lectionary #72

Monday 7th July 2025

Luke 10: 25-37 The not so 'good' Samaritan

I’m at the tail end of the URC General Assembly, where the days have been long, intense and at times emotional, and the nights have been (by my standards anyway) unreasonably late. Nevertheless - here’s my take on the lectionary gospel passage (The Story of “The Good Samaritan”) - please forgive any minor slips which can be blamed on too little sleep.

In our passage this week we have the culmination of the stories in Luke about Eternal Life. A legal expert asks Jesus: “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” To which Jesus responds by referring him back to the law - this ultimately resolves around a question of ‘who is my neighbour,’ in answer to which we get the story known to us all as ‘The Good Samaritan.’

I have perhaps two or three things to say about this story which I hope you might find interesting if not useful - the first is just a note to say that of the three Synoptic gospel writers (Matthew, Mark & Luke) it is only Luke who is interested in Samaritans, apparently. Matthew makes one mention, Mark makes none. Luke is different to these others, we might want to ask why.

Any answer to that must begin with a comprehension of who, or what, the Samaritans were/are and represent(ed) - they were not ‘gentiles’ as some mistakenly characterise them. When the ten tribes were taken into captivity (never to return) two things happened - firstly the Jews became the Jews, as the remainder of Israel was now dominated by the tribe of Judah. Now the Jews (Judah and Benjamin) are basically the whole of ‘Israel’ which was more properly the whole 12 tribes. Secondly those who were left behind in the Northern tribes did what was entirely natural, but which they were nonetheless forbidden from doing - intermarried with the local tribes. As a result you get the Samaritans - a people half of Israel and half not. Followers of the Torah (sort of) and worshippers of Jahweh, albeit without the focus on Jerusalem.

The Samaritans are, then, opposed to the Jews in many ways - although not quite at the enmity level that is sometimes expressed. Jews and Samaritans can still travel through each other’s lands without trouble. Perhaps it was only at football matches that things got really bad…

As well as noting Luke’s interest in this otherwise unremarked upon group, I also want to note the Christian editorial decision that has shaped our view of both this story in particular, and Samaritans in general. Everybody in the Christian world knows of this story - and we all call it the same thing. The only trouble with that is that Luke never calls the Samaritan ‘good’. We’ve done that. The Samaritan is just ‘a Samaritan’. The idea that most Samaritans are ‘bad’ which is engendered by the prefix ‘good’ is entirely our own, it’s not part of the text.

The story is actually not about ‘one good man’ as it is so often presented, it’s about two pairs of people who don’t behave as they might be expected. Two pairs of people who defy expectations and make us think about who, really, is our ‘neighbour’.

The first pair are obvious: the Priest and the Levite who spot an injured man and choose not to touch him. Why do they do that? Some suggest it’s for fear of contamination - but this is not sensible, because the man is injured not dead. If he were a corpse then yes, it could be fear of contamination, but instead he’s hurt. These two officials, representing the Jewish legal and religious establishment, have done what was not expected, and ignored one of their own. We may seem to be close kin - but that doesn’t make us the neighbours’ that the Torah commands we love.

By contrast there is another pair of characters who also act against expectations - the Samaritan traveller and his co-worker in this anti-crime, the inn keeper. Both of these play somewhat against type, the one reaching out beyond his cultural and kinship group to extend kindness and take some element of risk, and the other caring for and protecting a stranger despite not really knowing if the Samaritan will return to honour his promise that: “I will repay you whatever more you spend.”

Luke’s Jesus tells a story here which is a deliberate call back to one found in the Hebrew Scriptures. In 2 Chronicles 28: 9-15 we read about how the Ephraimites (one of the ten tribes, the descendants of whom would become the Samaritans) were moved to have compassion on their prisoners, they: “clothed them, gave them sandals, provided them with food and drink, and anointed them; and carrying all the feeble among them on donkeys, they brought them to their kindred at Jericho, the city of palm trees. Then they returned to Samaria.” Notice any similarities? Even the destination (Jericho) is the same. This story isn’t supposed to be new, the Samaritan isn’t supposed to be an unusually good man, there are more important characters than expected - ultimately this is a story about compassion, to have compassion, Jesus explains, is to ‘live.’

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