“REACH BEYOND ETHNIC BARRIERS.” LUKE 10: 25-37.
LUKE 10: 25-28, 29-32, 33-35, 36-37.
PLESE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO L.UKE 10.
The Life Question addressed in today’s lesson is “How should I treat those who are ethnically different from me?”
I grew up in Seminole County, Ok., during the Great Depression. I remember when state and federal laws supported the separation of the races. Separate schools, separate waiting rooms, and separate rest rooms were visible reminders of the inequality of blacks and whites under the law. The blacks could not attend the theater nor eat in the café with whites.
I attended and graduated from the New Lima High School. The black students attended Old Lima School and we never mixed socially.
The laws supporting segregation were challenged and eventually overturned, but new laws did not change old hearts. Racial prejudice cannot be eradicated by the passage of law.
In grade school and high school I never remember being in classes with any black students. In O.B.U. there were a few students from Nigeria but I don’t remember any local blacks attending.
The first time I ever sat in class with black students of U.S.A. culture was in graduate school at Okla. A & M, (Now O.S.U.). For the first time I came to realize that the black students were equal or superior to me in their ability to learn and achieve in advanced subjects.
When we moved to Shawnee in 1952 the black people lived in the south part of town near the river and their children attended the all-black Dunbar school.
Early in the 50’s our pastor at Immanuel Baptist Church announced that integration was taking place and we would soon be faced with the question, “What shall we do when a black person comes to our church requesting membership in our church.”? Some members voiced strong opposition to accepting them as members.
Brother Baugh led us through many Scripture verses and we voted as a church to receive black members into our congregation. A few members moved their membership as a result of this decision.
I am glad that I had been able to overcome much of my prejudice against other ethnic groups before my five girls chose their husbands. One chose a Chickasaw Indian, One a Choctaw Indian and one a Texan. Now my grandchildren are choosing their mates; one has married a Mexican and one is engaged to a Cherokee Indian.
The rest of us came from English, Irish, Dutch and Scotch stock with other mixtures difficult to trace. So our family gatherings are a melting pot of races with no room for prejudice or looking down on the other person’s pedigree.
When our son-in-law from Connecticut came to visit Immanuel he said, “I want to meet a real Indian.” I tapped Bertha on the shoulder and told her that he wanted to meet a real Indian. She said, “My father was Apache and my mother was Comanche and those are the meanest Indians there are.” He had met a real Indian.
Samaria was the name of the capital of Northern Israel. After the Assyrians scattered most of the survivors of Israel among the nations, they moved into the area people from other nations. These newcomers intermarried with the surviving Israelites who were still in the land. Their descendants were called Samaritans. Their religions were a mixture of their old religions and the religion of the Israelites.
When the Jews returned from Babylon, the Samaritan leaders made several offers to help: but the Jewish leaders refused because they did not trust the Samaritans. Jews considered Samaritans a mixed breed who had compromised their faith by intermarrying with Gentiles.
The Samaritans claimed to believe in the God of Israel. They accepted only the first five books of the O.T. They built their own temple on Mount Gerizim, but the Jews destroyed it. The Jews and the Samaritans hated each other.
Racial prejudice and bigotry were rampant between Jews and Samaritans in the first century A.D. Despite the fact that the Samaritans descended from Jewish forefathers, orthodox Jewish people regarded the Samaritans to be half-breeds who displayed callous disregard for the Law of Moses.
The Samaritans built a temple on Mount Gerizim in Samaria, but the Jews believed that God accepted burnt offerings and sacrifices in only one place, the temple in Jerusalem. For the Samaritans to build a rival temple on Mount Gerizim was considered sacrilegious.
The Samaritans considered their temple to be the sacred site for worshiping God. But in 128 B.C. a Jewish army destroyed the Samaritan temple---a righteous deed from a Jew’s viewpoint but a sacrilege from a Samaritan’s viewpoint. The temple was never rebuilt, but Samaritans still regard Mount Gerizim as the holiest place on earth.
Given this background, it is not surprising that Samaritans and Jews hated each other. Jesus, however, crossed that barrier with the woman of Samaria and others who acclaimed Him the Savior of the world. In Luke 9: 51-56 James and John wanted to call down fire on a Samaritan village that had refused to allow Jesus and His disciples to pass through their area, but Jesus rebuked them. Jesus showed His attitude toward Samaritans in the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Many Jews refused to associate with the Samaritans at all, and others limited contact to the bare minimum. The accepted Jewish understanding was that God did not love or care for the Samaritans since they were not members of God’s chosen, covenant people. Hatred and discrimination against Samaritans were accepted with the Jewish community. Knowing the social and religious tensions between Jews and Samaritans in the first century will help us understand the powerful impact Jesus must have made on His original audience when He told the parable of the Good Samaritan.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the best-known parables Jesus told. The phrase “good Samaritan” has become part of our English vocabulary and is understood even by those who are unaware of its origin. Many states, including Okla., have “good Samaritan laws” that require people to help those in need and protect them from being sued for doing so.
PLEASE READ LUKE 10: 25-28.
In vs.25 the man may have been asking a very genuine question. After all, this man was an expert in the law. He read, studied, and practiced the law of the land. I am rather inclined to think the lawyer had listened to Jesus, and now stood up, and put a question to Him, which, in his view, would put Jesus thoroughly to the test. On the other hand it may have been a malicious question. In either case, it was a supreme question; “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” There is no greater question than that.
What we have before us is a man who was trying to maintain his own righteousness and did not recognize his own lost condition.
He evidently thought that Jesus would prescribe some new rite or ceremony or would in some other way disparage the law. He was startled then, to have Jesus reply, ‘What is written in the law?” This answer robbed the enemy of his own weapon. Jesus never attempted to argue with one who was unreal.
He, in this instance, put the lawyer on the defense, as it were, leaving it to him to answer his own question as for as he thought he could. The man was supposed to be an expert in the law, so Jesus probed his understanding of the law. In this way the lawyer would expose his own attitude toward both God and his neighbor.
The lawyer, however, made a skillful reply. In vs. 27 he cited the same two commandments that Jesus gave on several occasions. He quoted the commandment in Deut. 6:5 to love God with all your being and the command in Lev. 19: 18 about loving your neighbor as yourself. Possibly he had heard Jesus teach these, or he showed amazing insight into the Scriptures. In either case he gave the right answer. Jesus acknowledged that fact and told the lawyer, “This do, and thou shalt live.” The lawyer’s response in vs. 29 shows how far he was from obeying the law. He declared that the Law is summarized in the requirement to love God and man.
Jesus again replied, “Thou has answered right: this do and thou shalt live.”
There was no shadow of evasion or deception in the statement of Jesus. Perfect love to God and to man is surely the way of life; but who can show such perfect love? Jesus came not to destroy this requirement of the law, but to reveal its complete fulfillment, to secure pardon for those who felt their need.
PLEASE READ LUKE 10: 29-32,
In vs. 28 Jesus commended the lawyer for correctly identifying the two greatest commandments. But the lawyer wanted to justify himself. He apparently had intended to show his greater knowledge of the obedience to the law than Jesus had. He had failed to achieve his goal. So he decided to try another approach. He asked, “And who is my neighbor?”
Was this a sincere question, or was it another way to show that Jesus was no expert in the law? The lawyer probably felt that he already knew the correct answer. The traditional answer limited neighbors to fellow Jews. Thus the man’s question revealed that he excluded some people from his definition of neighbor.
His question gave him away. He had trouble with the command to love his neighbor unless he could limit the definition of neighbor. Apparently he didn’t think of some people as neighbors; however, he wanted some way to show that his definition of neighbor was realistic and adequate.
Jesus then told one of His most famous parables. The word parable is not in the biblical text, and some Bible students think that Jesus was telling of an actual event. Certainly we know that the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was dangerous because of the robbers who attacked travelers. William Barclay wrote: “There is no doubt that this is a story from real life for it tells of the kind of thing that frequently happened on the Jerusalem to Jericho Road.
It was a road notoriously dangerous for travelers. It seemed to be designed for the purposes of these brigands. Jerusalem, the city that set on a hill, is 2,300 ft. above sea level; the Dead Sea near where Jericho was, is 1,300 ft below sea-level; and the road descended that 3,600 ft in a little more than 20 miles. It was therefore necessarily a road of sharp and narrow turnings and defiles, which provided excellent lurking places for brigands and bandits to ply their trade.”
Therefore, this kind of attack on that road often happened, and Jesus could have been relating an actual event. Jesus’ parables presented scenes familiar to the people of His day: He could have used an actual event as a parable.
The first person in the story is a certain man. The modern language Bible says “a Jew.” Jesus did not identify the man’s nationality or ethnic group. He was simply a human being, one made in God’s image and precious in God’s sight. This man was apparently traveling alone, a dangerous thing to do on this road. We are not told his vocation or the purpose of his trip.
The second group to appear in Jesus’ narrative was the robbers. The hapless man fell among thieves or into the hands of robbers.” These callous men showed him no mercy. They took all he had, even stripping off his clothes. As if that were not enough, they “beat him up” and left him half dead. Very likely he would have become fully dead if help did not come.
Someone has said that the robbers philosophy of life was, “What is thine is mine; I’ll take it.” Some people in every generation live by this philosophy. They rob people, and sometime do so with violent means. Others are more subtle in how they take what belongs to others. The latter group are the corporate thieves, the “white collar” criminals who use fraud and deception as their tools. They too often leave their victims half dead by depriving them of their means of living. How could anyone do this to fellow human beings? They obviously have no respect for human life.
The next person in the story was a priest: “A priest happened to be going down that road.” The words by chance do not imply that this was just a coincidence. What appear to be chance encounters are often divine appointments. At the mention of the priest, the lawyer probably thought, “the cavalry had arrived.”
Surely this man of God would rescue the injured man. But he didn’t! The priest saw him, but instead of stopping to help him, the priest passed by on the other side. Jesus did not explain such action. Perhaps the priest feared that the evil men who left their victim to die were using their victim as bait; and if he stopped to help, the thieves would attack him too.
Modern criminals sometimes pretend to need help but use this ploy to lure concerned people to stop and offer help. Then the would-be helpers become the victim. Another excuse may have been the law, which made touching a dead body an act that caused a person to become ceremonially unclean. This would keep a priest from his priestly duties. Perhaps he used the excuse, “Someone else will stop and help this pitiful man.”
The next one to come down the road was a Levite, a man who served in the temple. The priest and Levites were the mainstays of the temple, the center of Jewish religious life. Surely this religious man would stop and help the wounded man. But he followed the example of the priest. He came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
In a way the priest and Levite were responsible for the man’s continuing plight. Each of them could have helped, but neither did. They did not rob and beat the man, as the thieves did, but they left him there to die. They are striking examples of the sin of omission spoken of in James 4: 17. They also show the hypocrisy of a religion that ignores human need. What kind of religion did these two men have? Their philosophy of life was, “What’s mine is mine; I’ll keep it.” Religion without human compassion in action is not biblical religion.
PLEASE READ LUKE 10: 33-35.
When Jesus mentioned the next character in the parable, a Samaritan, the lawyer was likely quite surprised. From the perspective of such an orthodox Jewish lawyer, there was simply no such thing as a good Samaritan. On of the worst possible insults a Jewish person could hurl at someone was to accuse that person of being a Samaritan---which in John 8:28 happened to Jesus at least once.
The priest and the Levite, upon seeing their injured countryman in the ditch, ignored his needs and went their way. But the Samaritan had compassion on the man despite the mutual animosity between Jews and Samaritans. For a Samaritan too approach a Jewish man would often invite a hostile rebuke or insult. This Samaritan disregarded the response expected by his culture and decided to help a fellow human being in need, regardless of his religious affiliation, social status, or ethnic heritage.
Today, despite the openness many people appear to demonstrate toward those who are ethnically or racially different from them, many people, including many Christians, still struggle with their attitudes toward such people.
Prejudging people based on outward features is all too easy, and it is costly in numerous ways to spend the time and energy to really get to know someone of a different race. However, believers must adjust their expectations and their preconceived ideas about people. Believers have a mandate to reach beyond racial and ethnic barriers to befriend and minister to anyone, regardless of race, ethnic difference, or social position.
The Samaritan’s compassion was not limited to feelings, for he went over to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Olive oil and wine were commonly used for medicinal purposes. The Samaritan put his own life and security in jeopardy as he exposed himself to attack from robbers. The Samaritan went even further. He put the man on his own animal, took him to an inn and took care of him.
He also paid for the injured man’s food and lodging. An initial cost of two denarii was accompanied with a promise to reimburse the innkeeper for any additional expenses that might incur. A denarius was a silver coin worth about one day’s salary for a soldier or a common laborer.
Such selfless compassion as displayed by the Samaritan is reminiscent of Jesus’ words in Luke 6: 38, “Give, and it will be given to you; a good measure---pressed down, shaken together, and running over---will be poured into your lap. For the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” The Samaritan gave for the benefit of another person with no expectation of being paid back or rewarded by the person he helped. The philosophy of the Samaritan was, “What’s mine is thine; I’ll give it.”
In general, inns of that day were held in exceedingly low regard due to their poor quality and the disreputable character of most innkeepers. But the one to which the Samaritan took the injured man must have been of better quality. Not only was there secure lodging for the man but there was also medical care and food available for him.
PLEASE READ LUKE 10: 36-37.
Having completed the parable, Jesus in vs. 36 then asked the lawyer, “Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” With this question Jesus indicated the main point He intended the parable to convey. Often the parable of the good Samaritan has been explained as Jesus’ answer to the question “And who is my neighbor?” But does the parable actually answer the lawyer’s question? It seems that the concluding question by Jesus demonstrates that the main point of the parable is to teach us how to be a neighbor, not how to identify a neighbor. We don’t need to identify a neighbor because the term applies to everyone.
The way Jesus asked this question shows what was wrong with the lawyer’s question in vs. 19. Instead of asking, “Who is my neighbor?” he should have asked, “Whose neighbor am I.” The lawyer’s question is answered in the parable. Each person is your neighbor. No one is excluded: all are included regardless of ethnic origin or any other way humans group other people. But the way the lawyer asked the question implied that he did not feel that God expected him to love all people. Rather than looking for some loophole in God’s command, he should have been seeking to be a neighbor to all people.
So what does it mean to be a neighbor? Simply put, it means we show love and compassion to others. Failure to demonstrate such love to others raises doubts about the genuiness of ones profession of faith Jesus. (1 John 2:3-4, 4:8)
Of course none of us encounters all people. But we should pray for sensitivity to those whom God wants us to help. He placed the injured man in the path of three others, but only one proved to be a neighbor to him. God places people in my path and in yours. These are our neighbors. Do we pass by or give of ourselves to help. Whose neighbor are you?
The lawyer answered Jesus’ question by saying, “He that showed mercy on him.” Notice that the lawyer did not mention the word Samaritan in his answer. He could not miss the main point of the story, but he balked at mentioning that the helping neighbor was a member of a group against whom he was prejudiced.
Jesus had not told this parable to entertain or satisfy curiosity. He told it so the lawyer would practice being a neighbor. Jesus told him, “Go, and do thou likewise.” This called for more than academic discussions on defining neighbors. The key word in love is do.
Lest there be some misunderstanding, we need to be clear about something at this point. The parable of the good Samaritan does not teach that we can earn salvation by our good works. In fact, it teaches the exact opposite. In harmony with the rest of the N.T., the parable does teach that it we love God we will keep His commandments. Since one of His commandments is to love our neighbor as ourselves, we will demonstrate our love for God by loving our neighbor. This is really just another way to affirm the principle that we are not saved by our good works, but we are saved for good works. (Eph. 2: 8-10). According to James, faith without works is actually no faith at all; it is a dead faith that cannot save anyone. (James 2:17, 20, 22, 26).
Jesus’ closing challenge was a call to practice the two great commandments. Some people take the parable of the good Samaritan as salvation by works. Keep its context in mind. The love of neighbors assumes a life totally committed to love God. This story emphasizes our responsibility for active service to others. This passage is followed by two passages that stress trust in and devotion to God. In Luke 10:38-42 Mary sat at Jesus’ feet and in Luke 11:1-13 Jesus prayed and taught His followers to pray. In other words, being a good Samaritan is possible only to those who know and love God.
Jesus taught that the command to love one’s neighbor is second in significance only to the most important command of all: “Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
In Romans 13:8-10 the Apostle Paul asserted: “The one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments: Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet, and if there is any other commandment----all are summed up by this: Love your neighbor as yourself. Loves does no wrong to a neighbor. Love, therefore, is the fulfillment of the law.” We have neighbors all around us, for they include every person in the world. Now we must learn how to be a neighbor!’’
THE BIBLICAL TRUTH IN NEXT WEEKS’S LESSON IS THAT GOD WANTS HIS PEOPLE TO BE CONTROLLED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT RATHER THAN BY ALCOHOL AND DRUGS. A. V. DAUGHERTY <altav@swbell.net>