Black's Blog

April 2, 2010
Luke 10:29-37

What connection can we make between the Good Samaritan parable and Good Friday? It may be that stories such as this one are what got Jesus put on the Cross. Certainly the scribes and Pharisees did not have a high opinion of Samaritans. They were among the most despised members of society, and to a great extent “religiously” persecuted by the religious Jews. Jesus’ lifting up a Samaritan as being the model of virtue, the one so moved to compassion to help the “beaten up and left half dead” man by the side of the road certainly could get Him into trouble. The Samaritans were probably on the scribe’s mind as not being included in neighbors to love when he asked Jesus “who is my neighbor?” Now Jesus turns the tables on this man by saying that the ones who act in a neighborly manner and keep the commandments may well be Samaritans.

Beyond this connection I would say (as I proclaimed last night on Maundy Thursday) that the point is that we are to have the same kind of servant love that Jesus exemplified in His teaching and actions. Just like Jesus our commitment and our behavior are to be consistent. We are to love all equally. Even as God poured out His lifeblood in His Son Jesus to save us so we are to pour out our lives for others.

As we prepare to commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus, it is His divine nature that we may appreciate most. After all, if Jesus was not God’s Son would His death and resurrection help us as much as it does. But maybe as we go into the Easter season and beyond into Pentecost it is His human nature that will help us to direct our lives. If Jesus taught that there is to be no limit to our love, then we need to have no limit to our love. We should not get so upset about that other political party, the team and coach we do not like, the family members and friends that we have to spend Easter dinner with, or even how the world “seems to be going to hell in a hand basket.” Instead, we are simply to love without boundaries…without limits. Our neighbors that Jesus asks us to love surely include all of the above.

“Help us, Jesus, to love our neighbors as ourselves. Amen.”