The following commentary may help to get a deeper understanding of the text.

     An editorial published in a December 1991 issue of Glamour magazine (and quoted by Mark Link in Action 2000, Tabor Pub., Allen, TX: 1993) related the story of a woman driving a red car on a toll road. Pulling up to the tollbooth, she handed the attendant seven tickets. “I am paying for the next six cars,” she said. As each of the cars stopped, the driver was told that the lady in the red car had already paid and “Have a nice day!” The woman in the red car attributed her generosity to something she had read by Anne Herbert: “Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.” Herbert suggested that “random kindness” is capable of creating a tidal wave just as “random violence” can. In affirmation of Herbert’s statement, the editor of Glamour extended this challenge: “Like all revolutions, guerilla goodness begins slowly, with a single act. Let it be yours.” In today’s gospel, Jesus is extending a similar challenge to believers, with one notable exception. The followers of Jesus are not called to random acts of kindness but purposeful loving service.

      Much can be made of the fact that a priest and a Levite saw the plight of the beaten man and continued on their way. Excuses can be offered for their behavior. Perhaps they had a more urgent matter to which to attend. Perhaps they thought the man to be already dead and did not want to render themselves unclean and therefore unable to perform their duties in the temple. Perhaps they declined to interfere in what they regarded as some sort of divinely ordained punishment for a sinful life. Perhaps, honest readers of this Lucan parable might even be inclined to sympathize with their refusal to become involved in the man’s plight. Whatever their rationale, those religious professionals were not the featured characters in Jesus’ parable. In what was no doubt both shocking and even a little insulting to his listeners, Jesus chose a Samaritan as the “star” of his story.

   Although they shared a common heritage, Jews despised Samaritans and treated them as foreigners. The hostility between Jews and Samaritans was exacerbated by a deep-rooted rivalry concerning their sanctuaries (Mt. Gerizim, Mt. Zion), messianic expectations, and by disputes regarding the interpretation of their sacred texts. The fact that Jesus chose a Samaritan to be the exemplar of a good neighbor indicated that among his disciples there could be no such rivalries or hostilities. He had come to redefine and interpret the law. Prior to Jesus, the term neighbor meant another Israelite; today’s parable stretches the traditional definition to include anyone in need. The robbed and beaten man was to be perceived and cared for as a neighbor because his need staked a claim on all who saw him. To refuse that claim is to breach the law as Jesus read it; to breach that law of love is to disinherit eternal life.

     It is significant that Jesus refocused what could have been a heady discussion initiated by a lawyer into a lesson on love featuring an unlikely hero. Roland J. Faley (Footprints on the Mountain, Paulist Press, New York: 1994) sees further significance in the fact that the lawyer could not bring himself to speak the word “Samaritan.” In response to Jesus’ question, “Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the man. . .” (v. 36), he could only say “the one who treated him with compassion” (v. 37).

     Whether the lawyer learned the life lesson Jesus was teaching is not ours to know. What remains of utmost importance for each of us is our own response to the claim made upon us by anyone in need.

These claims call out to us; these claims prohibit our turning a blind eye or choosing to simply pass by, unaffected and uninvolved. The claims of the needy and suffering, the claims of the maltreated and marginalized, these claims affirm our identity . . . “you are the neighbor!”