Luke 10:25-37

Luke constantly points out the scandalously backwards kingdom. Those we expect to want God’s Kingdom, don’t and those who not only shouldn’t want the Kingdom, but shouldn’t be allowed to have it, run towards it and are held up as an example. 

Lawyer- not civil or punitive. He was an expert in the Torah (the law). He is trying to trap Jesus. 

In a formal teaching setting everyone would sit around the Rabbi’s feet to listen and to challenge or question someone would stand up. 

Deut 6 & Matt 22- Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might. Luke & John say, heart, soul, mind, & strength. Same meaning written to different audiences (Jewish and Greek). 

Neighbor- 2 Greek words- 1. Houses around my house (location) 2. Plesion- broader and the lawyer is trying to get at who all this includes. 

Jesus can tell this guy has a motive and answer in mind. Jesus answers that, lif you think you can uphold the law perfectly then, sure, go ahead and do that.” The point of the parable is to undermine salvation by works because I don’t even know who my neighbor is and there are dark things in my heart I didn’t even know were there. 

“The lawyer is hiding behind the law to justify his unneighborly attitude.” - Green, The NT in Color

Scripture is first and foremost a mirror for me. I am not the hero in the story. 

This parable isn’t the answer to, “what must I do to have eternal life?” It is the answer to, “who is my neighbor?” Jesus is the ultimate Good Samaritan who did everything I needed to be saved. 

The audience would have been rolling their eyes and not feeling sympathetic for the traveler for traveling alone with valuables on this dangerous road. “He brought this on himself.” “He deserved what he got.” 

Two expressions of religious professionals should have known what do, but they were more worried about ceremonial uncleanness. They were more worried about inconvenience than the heart of God. It also looked like a mugging set up. 

Jesus has just painted two staples of Jewish piety in a bad light. 

Jesus then humanizes an enemy that had been dehumanized for generations. The Samaritan had no ethnic, cultural, religious, or proximity obligation to help the Jew. He would have had to tear his own clothes to bandage the man. He was lavish with his resources. He walked the treacherous path while the Jewish man road. He paid for a month and half in the hotel and offered to pay if more is needed. 

The assumption by any passing Jew would have been that the Samaritan beat the man up and was kidnapping him. He would have also ostracized himself from his own community for helping the enemy. 

Jesus reframed the question back to the lawyer. The lawyer can’t even bring himself to say, “Samaritan.” 

We should walk away from this story not just with motivation to be better, but with awareness and repentance of the darkness in our own heart.