The Good Samaritan 3 - Luke 10:33-34

There was a really good stake conference once where one of the speakers dissected the parable of the Good Samaritan by having us imagine ourselves being each of the characters. When evaluating this story, the question comes up, who do I most identify with? Most of us probably can best appreciate that this story is supposed to put us in the place of the Good Samaritan, with the lesson to do good to others, but I’ve thought about myself in the roles of each of the other people as well. I can’t remember all of what was said, but it at least got me thinking about the idea that we aren’t just supposed to be the one rendering service but that we are also other characters as well.

The most readily identifiable character is in fact the good Samaritan who is described by the Savior as, “a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.” The first important point of this part of the narrative is that the Samaritan stopped to help. The IM comments, “There was considerable animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans at the time of Christ. Under normal circumstances, these two groups avoided association with each other.” We know that the hatred between the two groups was so profound that most Jews would travel many extra miles in order to go around Samaria so that they could avoid even going onto Samaritan soil, and in the days of walking everywhere and donkeys, that is quite a deep hatred. Presuming the injured man was a Jew, and we aren’t told that for sure, in fact his unidentifiable nationality is part of the reason why the priest and Levite didn’t stop, the Samaritan man wouldn’t have been able to assuredly identify him either. Without being able to positively identify this man as a fellow Samaritan, and probably assuming him to be a Jew as they were in Jewish territory, the Samaritan put aside societal expectations in order to care for a fellow human being.

I listened to Dan Carlin’s Hard Core History series about World War I, and he spent a great deal of time going through some of the human aspects of this conflict. One of the accounts he went over was the Christmas truce between German and British soldiers on Christmas Day 1914, where both sides came out of their trenches and sung Christmas songs together, shared chocolate and tobacco together, and I think even played a couple of sports games. It’s so easy to get caught up in what makes us different that we forget that really, we’re all just human beings, we all just want to be happy and to love and be loved. Like the commercial says, “We are more alike, my friend, then we are un-alike.” The Samaritan wasn’t superman, he didn’t have a super-human ability to love and care for someone else, he was just a human being who didn’t allow hatred to shut his eyes to the suffering of others. Dan Carlin told the story of a man who was so angered by his friends dying in a certain battle that he decided to go on a rampage and kill all the Germans he could find. The first German he came upon was injured and on his knees, this man wanted to kill him out of anger, but the German reached into his pocket and pulled out a picture of him with his family. The angry man was so moved by the picture, by recognizing that this German just wanted to go home to his family the same way he did, that he didn’t kill him. I don’t remember if he just left him there or if he took him prisoner, which would have meant food, shelter, and medical care, but either way, he allowed that man the chance to live and go home, he overcame the desire for revenge and instead granted mercy. These are the times when people did not allow societal expectations or even personal anger or hurt overcome them, they made their own decision to grant mercy and compassion when they weren’t compelled to.

The Samaritan was just as susceptible to attack by the robbers as the priest and Levite had been, yet he not only stopped but also “bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast.” It’s important to note that the Samaritan didn’t just pick the guy up and throw him on his animal and take off, he didn’t just save the man but he wanted the man to heal as well. The Samaritan saw the big picture and assumed responsibility for this man’s recovery and welfare in the long term, he didn’t want him to just survive, he wanted him to thrive. I don’t think anyone could argue that the Samaritan wouldn’t have been doing an amazing service to this man if he had just picked him up and gone, but he went one step beyond that. We can’t just serve out of obligation or guilt, but it’s important to take the extra step and make it really something really special.

The IM reminds us that both oil and wine have medicinal value, where the oil soothes and nourishes and the wine disinfects. One of the websites that I read last week noted that the Samaritan was probably a merchant and that the oil and wine were probably some of the goods that he was selling. The Samaritan was basically giving his goods to this wounded man in order to ease his suffering. I think it’s important to note that one of the main reasons the priest didn’t stop was because of the many different ways that it could have cost him money. If the man was already dead, he wouldn’t have been able to be paid by the treasury during the purification period of seven days, and if the man died later, the priest would have had to tear his clothes and bought new ones. On the other hand, the Samaritan freely gave of his own goods, and not just to save the man, but to make him more comfortable during the long trip, and to help his recovery by preventing infection. It’s also important to note that by putting the man on “his own beast,” this meant that the Samaritan would have had to walk the rest of the way to the inn, which would have made him dirty, tired, and hungry, but he did it anyway.

If we put ourselves in the place of the Samaritan, the story takes on a meaning that has probably been understood by us before, as this is the most common interpretation. If we are the Samaritan and the injured man is our fellow human being, then what is the inn? The speaker at stake conference indicated that in this example, the inn was representing the Church. We have people who are suffering; in fact I recently listened to an Ensign article where someone related some advice given to them by a prophet that was something like “treat all the people that you meet like they are facing some sort of crisis and you’ll be right half the time.” When I first heard it, I thought that it was pretty bleak, but then I have my own times of absolute crisis, and I know of that of other people too, and I think that maybe half of the people is a low estimate. There is no shortage of people who need help, and if we consider them in the place of the injured man, and we assume the position of the good Samaritan, then how do we serve them? It’s jarring to imagine coming across a bloody, beaten person on the side of the road, but there are so many people who are like that spiritually so much of the time.

Like the Samaritan, we can bind up their wounds, meaning help them with whatever temporal trials they are having, then bring them to the inn, or bring them to Jesus. If Jesus heals all, if we truly believe Him to be the Savior, then we know that we are not able to save anyone, but we can take everyone who needs help to the man that can, who is Jesus. We can share the gospel with them, we can introduce ideas that might be helpful, we can just love them and be their friend. And we can nurture them back to spiritual health in the setting of the gospel and of love.