Good Samaritan

GOOD SAMARITAN

What is religion? Is there a true religion? Is it an opium of the people as well said by Karl Marx? The true religion is: Love God and Serve Humanity. One who loves God certainly does the service to the humanity. One who does the service to humanity is definitely a Good Samaritan. Today more than ever there is hunger for love than hunger for bread. Hence let us give a smile of love to the lonely and thereby let us become the Good Samaritan.

A little sparrow saw Jesus on the cross with crown of thorns. It became very sad and wanted to do something for Jesus. The sparrow was making round and round until it found a way to remove a thorn from the crown of thorns. In removing the thorn, it got stuck himself. Without hurts and wounds no one can become the Good Samaritan. God loves the world through us. We are the co-workers of his love. We are the extended hands of God. Hence we need to remove the thorns, thorns of poverty and injustice, thorns of class, colour and creed, thorns of selfishness and individualism, thorns of prejudice and rash judgement that wound the body of Christ. If a little sparrow could remove a thorn from the cross of Jesus, we should also remove the thorn from the wounded body of Christ. In removing the thorns we get hurts and wounds and thereby we become the Good Samaritans.

Why did Jesus narrate this parable? There are three reasons: number one: To remove the racism. The Jews and Samaritans were children of one father Abraham. The twelve tribes of Jacob were divided into two Kingdoms. The tribes of Judea and Benjamin joined together known as the kingdom of Judea. The rest of ten tribes together formed the kingdom of Samaria. When Jewish people of these two kingdoms were taken for exile in Assyria, the people of Samaria intermingled with Assyrians. When they came back to Samaria they brought the Assyrians too. Since there was intermingling of blood and religion, they became a hybrid race which the Jews could not accept them as one among them. At the time of Jesus the racism reached its height that they would kill each other. Being a Jew Jesus who wants to put an end to this racism therefore he narrates this story praising the goodness of the Samaritan.

The second reason is to convince the Jews that what is important is the spirit of law, not the letter of law. Saving life is far more important than the ritual purity. The priest avoided the wounded man, presumably in order to maintain ritual purity. Similarly, a Levite saw the man and ignored him as well. The priests and Levite go by the letter of law not by the spirit of law.

The third reason is the most important. It is to teach the crowd what is the true religion. The true religion is to love God and to serve the humanity. Our service is to the one who is in need, in danger and in distress because he is not a stranger, but our neighbour. The same living God created you and him. He is your neighbour and your own brother. If you serve him, you serve God. If you refuse to serve, you refuse to serve God.

The Church Fathers interprete this parable in this way. The man who was going down is Adam. Jerusalem is paradise, and Jericho is the world. The robbers are hostile powers. The priest is the Law, the Levite is the prophets, and the Samaritan is Christ. The wounds are disobedience, the beast is the Lord’s body, the [inn], which accepts all who wish to enter, is the Church. … The manager of the [inn] is the head of the Church, to whom its care has been entrusted. And the fact that the Samaritan promises he will return represents the Savior’s second coming.

To be a Good Samaritan we need to have compassion. Compassion is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. It is language of heart. We must radiate God’s compassion. Jesus said whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you do it for me. It doesn’t cost much to give a smile to a lonely person and to give a hand to a blind person to cross the road and to give a little bit of food to the hungry. When we do these we do them for Jesus. In doing the service, we become the Good Samaritan.