Monday in the 27th Week of Ordinaey Time, October 9, 2023

The Samaritans claim to be the descendants of the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, and Joseph, which had settled in the north of the Promised Land at the time of the conquest by Joshua.  At the time of the Assyrian conquest of the northern Kingdom of Israel in 721 B.C., very many members of these and the other northern tribes were relocated to Assyria and elsewhere.  Few of these ever returned to their homeland.  The survivors of these depopulation efforts continued to practice their tribal customs and to maintain their traditional worship of God.  One hundred and twenty-four years later, the Kingdom of Judah in the south was conquered by the Kingdom of Babylon.  Very many citizens of Judah, especially among the governing and priestly classes, were exiled to Babylon.  During the approximately seventy years of exile, the Jewish religion — that is, the religion of the Judahites, properly speaking — formed.  The writings of the Torah and of the Prophets were copied and organized, and a sense strengthened that all who worshipped God must worship him in the Temple in Jerusalem.  The rebuilding of the Temple became the priority of the people once they returned from Babylon.  To the Samaritans who had remained behind and whose religion had not changed much over the years since the fall of Judah, the “new” Jewish religion seemed like a sect that had broken off from the true worship of God, which they had maintained.  But to the Jews, the refusal of the Samaritans to acknowledge the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem as central to the worship of God was a rejection of the Covenant.  At the risk of oversimplifying, we can perhaps see this break as between the orthodox and reformed believers, or between those who refuse to change and those who adapt to the times.  Contact between members of the two groups was limited.  The Jews allowed themselves to buy food from the Samaritans, but they would not have engaged in any social activities with them. 

The Lord Jesus speaks in this parable of “a Samaritan traveler who came upon [the wounded Jew] was moved with compassion at the sight.”  Now, probably the Samaritan knew this man was a Jew, since the road lay in land between Jericho and Jerusalem, that is, in Jewish territory, although not far from that of Samaria.  Yet Jesus expressly tells us that this Samaritan “was moved with compassion” at the sight of this wounded and perhaps dead Jewish man.  Luke uses Greek verb here to tell us how Jesus felt when he saw the widow whose son had died, and whom he would raise (Luke 7, 13).  The Lord then touched the bier on which the dead man was being carried out of the city to his grave, causing those who were carrying it to stop in their tracks.  With the words, “Young man, I say to you, Arise,” the man sat up and began to speak.  Luke concludes this account with the words, “And he gave him to his mother.”  Something similar happens in the parable.  The Samaritan is so moved to compassion that he does not fear to touch even death, but does so and finds the man still alive.  Hurrying, the Samaritan unburden his beast of whatever merchandise or goods it was carrying and put the man on it, which must have taken a good deal of work to do this by himself.  Then, cleaning his wounds and binding them up, he left his goods behind, possibly hiding them in nearby caves, and took him to an “inn”.  This inn would have been something like a bunkhouse, or a cabin with several beds or simply straw mattresses on the floor.  Privacy would have occurred only if there were no other occupants to the place.  The Samaritan left the (Jewish) innkeeper with instructions to care for the wounded man, with promises of further payment if that was necessary.  And just as Jesus gave the son back to his mother, the Samaritan gives the wounded Jew back to his compatriot, the innkeeper, who must have been as astounded in the story as the “scholar of the law” was to hear this.  Here, the outsider teaches mercy.  Jesus teaches it to the crowd, and the Samaritan teaches it to the innkeeper as well as to the wounded man, who seems unconscious throughout the story.  Of course, Jesus raising the dead man is a sign for how he will touch death and destroy it by entering into it, out of compassion for us travelers wounded nearly to death by sin.

The Samaritan in the parable did not need to save the Jew, but he did not let the Jewish man’s animosity for his people stop him from acting on the compassion he felt.  He loved the man anyway, at some risk and at some cost.  So we should “Go and do likewise”, showing the compassion of Jesus to those around us.