Even our scholar had to admit that he was a true neighbor to the robbers’ victim. The Samaritan, on the other hand, did all that he could to assist the fallen man. Was Jesus drawing on this historical incident to teach about the meaning of “neighbor”? Notice that the two men who “passed by on the opposite side” were caretakers of the Temple and part of the religious elite in Jerusalem (a “priest” and a “Levite”). In their kindness, they “assisted” the captives, put them on their “donkeys,” and took them peacefully to “Jericho” (see 2 Chron 28:8-15). The soldiers wanted to make everyone who survived the battle their slaves, but several Samaritan “princes” protested this brutality. It might help us to know an Old Testament story about how some Samaritans, whom the Jews hated as half-breed foreigners and corrupters of true religion, once (hundreds of years earlier) showed great mercy to people from Judah captured in battle.
To answer this question, Jesus told a parable. Did he think Jesus would so expand the meaning of the word “neighbor” that He would inevitably get tripped up in the many rules that tightly governed the relationship Jews were allowed to have with people both inside and outside their community? If the scholar exposed Jesus in an error, his testing (and self-righteousness) would be “justified.” That was not the scholar’s desired outcome, so he pressed on. Did he ask the first question out of a desire to expose Jesus in some kind of infraction of the Law? Did he have misgivings that an itinerant preacher with such a huge following of ordinary folk could be qualified to be a teacher in Israel? Because Jesus didn’t actually answer the first question, there was no way to find fault with Him. Why did he feel the need to “justify himself”? What does this mean? It could mean that the scholar was frustrated that his test didn’t produce the desired outcome. Not exactly: “But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” With this additional question, we find out much more about the scholar. This way of life is indeed the key to eternal life. He answers well-love God with all that you are and your neighbor as yourself. We can assume his question has some element of hostility in it, because Jesus answered it by asking another question, His frequent response to a trap (see Mt 22:15-22): “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” The quiz of Jesus now turns into a quiz of the scholar. Even Herod was asking, “Who is this?” (see Lk 9:7-9) Perhaps the scholar was suspicious that Jesus was a charlatan, attracting large crowds out of a large ego. Why? We don’t know much about this man, but we at least know that his question was not looking for an answer as much as an outcome, although it sounds very noble: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” By this time in His public ministry, Jesus had created an enormous buzz. It begins with the approach of a “scholar of the Law,” a man who was an expert in explaining the details of the Mosaic Law. It is fascinating to watch the progression of this episode. Luke’s Gospel-the parable of the Good Samaritan. Today we are reading a very well-known portion of St. A scholar approaches Jesus to test Him with a legal question Jesus answers with a question Himself.
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