More Than Just Passing By - Eduardo Letkeman

Otto Weidt’s story opens with a man who risked his reputation, his money, and his life to save a few people when his whole country was doing evil. The Good Samaritan carries that same uncomfortable question: what does love look like when helping someone costs something? Luke places this parable after the disciples show that they still do not understand Jesus’ heart. Jesus sends them out, gives them power, and yet they still think in categories of “one of us” and “not one of us.” James and John see a Samaritan village reject Jesus and want to call fire down on them, but Jesus rebukes them.

The law gives the expert the right answer: love God with everything, and love a neighbor as oneself. Deuteronomy shows that love for God is meant to be on the heart, in the home, on the road, and passed down to children. Religious symbols, Bible verses on shirts, bracelets, or tattoos can become nothing more than following the law without having it in the spirit. Leviticus shows that loving a neighbor includes fairness, honesty, mercy, and refusing to endanger another person’s life.

The expert in the law tries to justify himself by asking, “Who is my neighbor?” His question reveals the problem. His definition of neighbor is limited to kinfolk, people, and those already close enough to love. Jesus answers with a story that turns that question around.

The priest and Levite see a dying man and pass by because they fear becoming unclean. Their concern for religious cleanliness becomes greater than their concern for a human life. The Samaritan, a person the Jews viewed as mixed, corrupt, criminal, and even worse than a Gentile, sees the same man and takes pity on him. The Samaritan does not ask who the wounded man is, where he comes from, or whether he deserves help. The Samaritan sees need, bandages wounds, gives his own resources, puts the man on his own donkey, and promises to return.

Jesus asks which man became a neighbor, and the expert cannot even say “the Samaritan.” The expert admits only that it was “the one who had mercy.” Prejudice judges people by culture instead of character. Christ tears down the old divisions of Greek and Jew, slave and free, and declares that Christ is all and in all.

The warning lands personally: believers often place themselves in the story as the Samaritan, when they may be closer to the expert in the law. The call to love a neighbor begins with becoming a neighbor to people taught to be hated, people wounded in the past, and people considered undeserving of love. Jesus does not give an easy task because human strength cannot fulfill it without Him.