This is my talk I gave in Church on the Parable the Good Samaritan.
The Good Samaritan – Luke 10:29-37
Most of us are quite familiar with the term the Good Samaritan. We use it frequently. There are hospitals named Good Samaritan. There have been books and movies named the Good Samaritan. There are now even Good Samaritan laws which offer legal protection to people who give reasonable assistance to those who are injured, ill, in peril, or otherwise incapacitated.[1] The protection is intended to reduce bystanders' hesitation to assist, for fear of being sued or prosecuted for unintentional injury or wrongful death.
And it all originated from a parable from the bible in the New Testament Luke 10:25—37 that Jesus used to answer a question from a lawyer. And that is what I’ve been asked to give my talk to you about today is the parable of the Good Samaritan. I’m going to review the parable and then go over two main ideas of it, the first idea of mercy and service and the second idea of it representing the plan of salvation.
A lawyer asked Jesus a question, what shall I do to inherit eternal life. Jesus responded to him what where the most important commandments, his response, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself. Jesus said that was correct. But then the lawyer asked Jesus, who is my neighbor?
And that is when Jesus used the parable of the Good Samaritan to describe who our neighbors are.
I’m going to paraphrase Luke 10:29-37
A man traveling on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was attacked by thieves; they stripped him of his clothes, beat him, wounded him, and then left him for dead.
By chance a priest came by but he didn’t stop, instead he went to the other side of the road and past the injured man by.
Likewise, a Levite, when he came upon the injured man and looked at him, went to the other side of the road and passed him by and did not help him;
But a Samaritan on his journey, saw the severely injured man and felt compassion for him and went to him. He nursed his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them and put him on his own animal and took him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day when the Samaritan went to leave he gave money to the host and told him to take care of the hurt man and if he spent more than what he had given him he’d repay him when he returned.
Jesus, than asked the Lawyer which of these 3 men was a neighbor to the man that was attacked and hurt by the thieves, the lawyer answered the one that showed him mercy, and Jesus simply said, Go and do likewise!
I did not now this but back in Jesus’s time the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was called the “The Bloody Pass” and was extremely dangerous. Jerusalem is 2100 feet above sea level and Jericho is 825 feet below sea level, the road that connects them is winding and ample with opportunities to ambush people. Also, the people of Samaria, aka, Samaritans, did not get along with the Jews during Jesus’ time. Samaritans were seen as less than human and were often mistreated. The fact that Jesus used a Samaritan as the good person in the parable was quite radical.
The word “neighbor” in the Greek means “someone who is near,” and in the Hebrew it means “someone that you have an association with.” This interprets the word in a limited sense, referring to a fellow Jew and would have excluded Samaritans, Romans, and other foreigners. Jesus then gives the parable of the Good Samaritan to correct the false understanding that the lawyer had of who his neighbor is, and what his duty is to his neighbor.
Martin Luther King Jr’s thoughts on the parable were this -
“… "I imagine that the first question the priest and Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But by the very nature of his concern, the Good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
The parable shows on its first look a story of compassion, mercy, and service. A man stopping to help another man who has been injured and needed his help and he simply did what was right.
Maybe the priest and the Levite felt helpless, fearful the man was faking, or the robbers were nearby waiting to ambush them as well.
Maybe the robbers needed to feed their families by taking from the man they attacked and they were desperate with no other options then to hurt this man.
Maybe the man that had been attacked, only had his clothes and took this dangerous journey alone because he felt despair and had no more hope left.
Maybe the Samaritan was trying to change the opinion others had of his people in his time, of them being resented by others by the going against stereotypes.
If we shift our perspective to each character in the parable you see the story take on different angles. There have been times in my life where I’ve been afraid and helpless. Times where I have felt desperate and I have through careless words or actions hurt friends or family, and I have also felt despair and lost hope. And then there have been other times where I’ve been kind and reached out and shown mercy and compassion to my fellow man.
I decided to think upon this parable and think back on my life and try to remember any examples within my family of being the Good Samaritan and the more I focused and thought back I was taken by how my parents lived this parable and I didn’t even realize because it was just the normal way of life in the household.
We always had people that were in between places to live staying with us while I was growing up. One time the two neighbor boys’ mother went to get milk and she didn’t come back for 3 days. She had dropped them off just to play for a little bit while she went to the store get milk and we didn’t see her again for 3 days. Dad and Mom took care of them. Didn’t call the police and had a talk with her when she got back and after that they moved to Illinois to stay with their dad for a couple of years while their Mom got help. I was 9 I had no idea why it was taking her so long to buy milk.
My Mom and Dad were always helping people from big things, to small things, to family, friends, to strangers. We lived in the country with a lot of curvy roads and people would lose control of their cars and my dad would get the truck and go pull them out of ditches and bring them in the house and pour rubbing alcohol on their cuts. Sometimes they didn’t want an ambulance, cops, or tow trucks called for various reasons. So we’d patch them and their cars up if we could, Mom would get food and coffee in them and tell them to slow down and pay attention next time.
One of our closest childhood friends even moved in with my Dad while he was going through his divorce. I asked him why he hadn’t moved in with his own Mom or Dad as they had nicer houses. The house I grew up in has always been old. Mom always had Dad tearing down walls. I think the Kitchen has been 5 different configurations. The Living Room has been a bed room then a living room at least 3 different times and so on. He said yeah they have nice houses but you’ve always had a nice HOME!
My parents lived the Good Samaritan parable by loving everyone as they loved themselves as they loved me and my brothers. Every person they met they treated as their neighbor. My mother had a smile, a wave, and a laugh for everyone she met. She never knew a stranger; which sometimes drove my Dad nuts as she truly could talk to anyone and keep on talking. My Dad, though not as talkative, would never hesitate to offer his help to anyone who needed it, stranger, family or friend.
I’m thankful to my Heavenly Father for giving me my parents.
Gordon B. Hinckley wrote in Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes, “It is not enough just to be good. We must be good for something. We must contribute good to the world. The world must be a better place for our presence. And the good that is in us must be spread to others. This is the measure of our civility.”
My Dad told me he wasn’t sure if he and Mom had been good parents until he saw my brothers and I as parents; it was when he saw that we were kind, loving, patient, and helpful to our own children that he knew he and Mom had been good parents. I told him, you and Mom weren’t good parents, you were great parents, to us, to our cousins, to our friends, to the neighborhood kids, to the kid at the grocery store whose dad hit her across the face with his car keys and you picked him up and slammed him against the wall and told him if he ever did that again you’d break him in half. You are the example every father should strive to live up to. I’ve seldom seen my father cry and it’s usually been when someone we’ve loved has passed away. He looked at me with tears in his eyes and hugged me and said simply, today, I needed to hear that, Thank you, Sis! It is one of the few times I’ve ever felt I’ve actually helped my Dad with anything instead of him helping me.
C.J. Jung said - “You are what you do, not what you say you'll do.”
The 2nd interpretation of the Good Samaritan parable is one that was common in early Christian faith of it being a metaphor for the fall of man. I found several articles a few by Brother John Welch on this idea of the parable. One article called the Good Samaritan & Eternal Life, explains the characters of the parable like this, “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. And further, the two denarii mean the Father and the Son. The manager of the stable 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.”
This studying of the parable shows it as an allegory of the plan of salvation. I didn’t even think of this 2nd layer to the parable until doing some praying for guidance in my talk and then changing what I was typing into my google search engine to include eternal life along with the parable's name turned up the articles.
The man never makes it to Jericho. He had to have the Samaritan’s help because he couldn’t make it in the world without him. Just as we cannot be saved without the savior and his atonement to bring us home to Heavenly Father. I believe Jesus is the Samaritan. But I think more likely we are the ones on the side of the road. And Jesus is the one who picks us up and gets us on our feet again and binds up our wounds and bears our burdens when we cannot carry them anymore. Jesus is the one who takes us to a place of safety and makes a home for us and He promises to return when the time has finally come.
Another article in the February 2007 Ensign called The Good Samaritan: Forgotten Symbols again by Brother Welch in which he states, “In His parables, Jesus taught the essentials of the Father’s plan of salvation. As a type and shadow of this plan, the good Samaritan places our deeds of neighborly kindness here in mortality within the eternal context of where we have come down from, how we have fallen into our present plight, and how the binding ordinances and healing love of the promised Redeemer and the nurture of His Church can rescue us from our present situation, as we serve and live worthy of reward at His Second Coming.”
To love one's neighbor as oneself is defined in scripture as having eternal life, or the very life of God Himself coursing through one's actions, thoughts and words. 1 John 3:14 states - "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death."
I’d like to close with my testimony, I know this church is true, studying for this talk, searching the scriptures, the doctrine, the ensign, I was enriched by the word of God and it brought me comfort and peace. The memories from my childhood, especially of my Mother, whom I miss so much, that I hadn’t thought of in a long time and had honestly forgotten were a true blessing. I am grateful I was given this talk by the bishopric. I say these things in the name of our savior and God’s son, Jesus Christ, Amen.
