03.15. THE GOOD SAMARITAN

THE GOOD SAMARITAN

Luke 10:25-37 The lawyer who unwittingly gave occasion to our Lord to utter the Parable of the Good Samaritan, was not one of those who sought to betray Him into some indiscreet or unorthodox expression with which they might accuse Him before the authorities. He was rather of the less offensive type of person very largely represented in our own day, who takes an interest in religious subjects and religious teachers, who goes to hear all the varieties of preaching, and is ready with an opinion on every novel theory, and who for the most part measures all he hears by a standard as obsolete and inapplicable as it would be to measure the sufficiency of a town’s defenses by their ability to resist sling-stones or battering rams. This lawyer tested our Lord by putting to Him a question on which a great many others hinged, and which gave promise of a lively discussion in which a number of our Lord’s opinions would be expressed and a full view of His teaching laid open. He wished to arrive at that kind of knowledge of our Lord’s religious position and whereabouts which in our own day is sometimes sought to be reached by putting the question, Do you believe in miracles? or, Do you believe that Jesus is truly and properly God? The question, however, proved an unfortunate one for the scribe’s purpose, though one of the luckiest ever put, in so far as it called out one of those Parables which the child eagerly listens to and which never throughout his whole life cease to have some influence upon him.

What answer the lawyer expected it is impossible to say. Certainly he did not expect to be referred directly and solely to the moral law, but probably thought he should hear of fasts and prayer and sacrifices. And in responding as he did and quoting a perfect summary of the law, he no doubt anticipated that Jesus would speak of purely religious duties in which the scribe was probably exemplary, or would at all events take off the edge of the bare commandment by muffling it round with a number of observances, explanations, and so forth. But in place of this he is staggered by having the naked law thrust home upon himself as the sole and sufficient reply to his own question: That is God’s law; He asks no more; you already know all His requirement; do it, and you live.

There is, of course, not the smallest shade of quibble in this answer of our Lord’s. It is the simple eternal truth. All we have to do to inherit eternal life is to love. God is love, and in creating us He made us such that all we have to do is to love. Let us only do this, heartily love God and our neighbor, and we fulfil the whole law. God has given us this feeling to be both the spring and regulator of all else, so that if it be in life and healthy exercise all else goes well with us. To ask why we may not hate or neglect, is to ask why we are as we are, why God has made us thus? For us eternal life is eternal love. Christ did not come to abolish this law, but to fulfil it; to make it possible to us to keep this eternal law of our being. What we in this generation have to do and to be in order to be eternally alive, is, of course, precisely the same as what men of any generation have had to do and to be; the difference is, that we have better means of fulfilling the law. The lawyer, however, cannot allow his question to be so easily disposed of. He seeks to pursue the subject, and accordingly puts the further question, “Who is my neighbor?” The simplicity of the answer of Jesus to his first question must have excited in the minds of the bystanders some suspicion of the scribe’s sincerity. They must have felt that any one professing to know the law might have answered such a question for himself. The scribe therefore “desiring to justify himself,” to show that he had a real interest in the subject, and that it was not so easily disposed of as Christ’s answer implied, asks for a definition of the term “neighbor.” To one trained as he was, it was a natural inquiry, and yet it betrays the shallowness of his thoughts on the subject. No one whose heart was filled with love could have asked such a question. Love never seeks limits, but always outlets wider and freer. In His reply, therefore, our Lord does not direct attention to the objects of love, but to those who exercise it. He does not directly answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?”— a question that bore in it the hope that these neighbors might prove to be few and such as might be easily loved — friends, relatives, connections; but He shows, by an instance of the actual working of love, that it makes neighbors. It is not the defining of neighbors that gives us the definition of love, but the experience of love that defines for us who are our neighbors. He makes the lawyer at once see who his neighbor is, by showing him what love is. He lets him see that his question cannot be asked by a loving heart. Love is here, as elsewhere, a much prompter and truer teacher than theological definition.

It is this, then, that our Lord teaches by means of the Parable — that love, or a merciful spirit, finds a neighbor in every one that is in need and can be helped; that no tie of kindred or obligation imposed by office is so keen-sighted in detecting a neighbor as love is. This He illustrates with the same wonderful readiness and finished perfection and fertility of thought as are displayed in all the Parables. The instance of misery or misfortune which our Lord chose was one constantly occurring. It was as common for a man to fall among thieves on the Jericho road and be left half dead as it is now for miners to be killed by an explosion of fire-damp or for men to be maimed for life by a machinery accident. So notorious had that road become for robbery and violence that it was called “the red or bloody way.” It only needs to be observed about this poor man, that he lay in the most urgent need of a friend, of one who would give him help, of one who would take a little trouble and spend a little time over him. It remained to be seen whether such a person would turn up. The first to come to the spot was a priest, that is, the man of all others bound to do him a friendly turn. The priest was not only a Jew, he was the representative of the Jews, the Jew by preeminence; as especially Jewish as the British sailor is especially British, and to be counted on wherever a fellow-countryman is in trouble. He was by his birth and by his office the brother of all his race, not suffered to recognize one tribe more than another, not suffered to allow even his own family ties to draw him from close attachment to all the people. The medical officer of a parish would surely not pass a man lying on the road with his head cut open, or why does he hold his appointment? A soldier who has fallen wounded in a retired part of the field of battle will hail it as an unusually fortunate circumstance if the first man that comes up is the surgeon of his own regiment. So, if this wounded Jew had strength enough to see the priest as he came in sight, he must have considered it a remarkably happy coincidence which brought just the person who might most naturally be expected to show him kindness — one who lived for the people’s good, and one who had just been engaged at Jerusalem in services well fitted to bring him into sympathy with the various distresses of men. If any man might be included in the term “neighbor,” surely the priest might. But the priest thought otherwise. Like many another man, he was content to do what he was obliged to do, and what his ritual prescribed, but had none of the spirit of his office. And so it had happened to him as it happens to all who so use their official position — it had hardened on him as a shell, and separated him from his fellows. He was not more a man because a priest, but less a man. It was not the fulness of his humanity that made him a fit priest; but his priestliness actually blighted his humanity all round. The other order of men who might chiefly have been expected, from the nature of their order and office, to be forward to assist and put themselves as public property at the disposal of all, was the Levitical. The insufficiency of a merely official tie is therefore further illustrated by our Lord’s introduction of a Levite on the scene. He also sees, but turns his head away and almost persuades himself he does not know his help is needed. It is as if the English consul in some Italian port, in passing along the street, saw an Englishman being assaulted and in danger of his life, but instead of interfering turned into a side street, trying to persuade himself that the man was not an Englishman, or that the quarrel was not serious, though he saw blood; or that the robbers were Government officials securing a culprit.

It is unfortunately too easy for us all to imagine, with the aid of our self-knowledge, what excuses these men would make for themselves. Possibly the priest knew the Levite was behind him, and thought the work fitter for him; if so, it is one instance more of the folly of leaving to others work which is fairly our own. Possibly both men were tired with their service in Jerusalem, and eager to get home. Possibly both were a little afraid of delaying in a spot in which there was such speaking evidence of its insecurity. Probably neither of them cared to get mixed up with a business which might involve them in legal proceedings, necessitating them to appear as witnesses, or which might even bring suspicion on themselves. So they passed by on the other side — they tried not to see it. From our translation you might suppose the Levite made a more minute examination of the man than the priest — “came and looked on him,” it says — but the words are the same in both cases. There is no reason to suppose the Levite was either so much harder-hearted that he went out of curiosity close up to the man to see how he was hurt, nor that he was so much softer-hearted as to intend at first to help him, but found, or persuaded himself he found, his wounds too deep for skill of his. The significant fact in both cases is, that they saw the man, but passed by on the other side, as if trying to persuade themselves there was no man there and no reason why they should pause. This conduct, I say, we can too well understand. Which of us has not been guilty of passing by on the other side, of leaving misery unrelieved because it was not clamorous? This unfortunate, lying half dead by the roadside, could make no importunate supplications for relief, could not sit up and prove to the priest that it was his duty to help him, could not even ask help, so as to lay on the priest the responsibility of positive refusal; and so he got past with less discomfort, but not with less guilt. The need is often greatest where least is asked. And how many forms of misery are there lying within our knowledge as we journey along the blood-stained road of life, but which we pass by because they do not bar our progress till we give our help, or because it is possible for us to put them out of our mind and live as though these things were not. It is true we could not live, or certainly could only live in depression and wretchedness, if we kept constantly before our minds all known suffering, — if we had a vivid image of the pain and sorrow at this present moment afflicting thousands of gentle and innocent persons, — if we set before the mind’s eye the the hopeless, wearing anguish that is hidden in every hospital in this and other lands, the blank despair that numbs the spirit of whole tribes swept into slavery under the crudest oppression, the various miseries and difficulties which desolate life and cause many and many a victim to curse the day of his birth. To go about our ordinary duties with all this present to our mind would be as impossible as to live in peace, or to live at all, if our senses were acute enough to make audible to us all the noise within a radius of two or three miles, or to make visible to us all that exists unseen. But the passing by on the other side which leaves guilt upon the conscience is the putting aside of distress that comes naturally before us, and the refusing to assist where circumstances give us the opportunity of assisting. A lost child is crying on the street, but it is awkward to be seen leading a dirty, crying child home, so we refuse to notice that the child is lost; a man is lying as if he were ill, but he may only be intoxicated, and it looks foolish to meddle, and may be troublesome, so we leave him to others, though another minute in that position may, for all we know, make the difference between life and death. You read a paragraph of a paper giving a thrilling account of a famine in China, or some other great calamity; but when yoi. come to a clause intimating that subscriptions will be received at such and such a place, you pass to another column, and refuse to allow that to make the impression on your mind which you feel it is beginning to make. In short, you will, in these and many like circumstances, wait till you are asked to help; you know you could not in decency refuse if you were asked, if the matter were fully laid before you and all the circumstances detailed, but you will put yourself out of reach before this can be done; you will not expose yourself to the risk of having your charitable feelings stirred, or at any rate of having your help drawn upon; you will, if possible, wipe the thing from your mind, you will carefully avoid following up any clue, or considering steadily any hint or suggestion of suffering.

But, as we have said, it was not just another man, or just another Jew, that came and saw this man lying in his blood, it was, both in the case of the priest and Levite, one who had a special tie or obligation to be compassionate. These men were supposed to be a kind of embodied and living law of God, an incarnate compassion, a reflex on earth of the mercy of the Most High. They of all men should have recognized this Jew as their brother. Their peculiar guilt is ours when we repudiate any special responsibility, and make as though there were no tie between us and the object needing help. And happy are they who can say that at least of this special guilt they are free, — who have really filled up with active love all the relationships of life by which God has brought them into connection with others, and who cannot reproach themselves with failing to see what any friend, servant, relative required, or, having seen it, to do it for them, — who know no instance in which they failed to bring assistance because it was of a troublesome kind, or of a kind that would have brought them into connection with disreputable people, or would have made them look foolish or meddling or romantic. Surely if not in your own case, then in the case of others, you see that it is not always the relationship that gives the love, but the love that makes the relationship, — that there is often a friend that sticketh closer than a brother — an outlaw from the faith that is more substantially helpful, wiser and readier in advice and prompter in lending a hand, than one belonging to the same “household of faith.” Had you met this Levite after seeing his conduct, would you not have been tempted to say to him, What are you a Levite for, if not to give such help? If you encountered a police official who carefully avoided all dangerous and troublesome interference, would you not be apt to challenge his right to retain his post? But might we not turn our challenge on ourselves, and say to ourselves, Why are you a Christian? what do you unite yourself to Christ for? Is it not that you may be able to do good, to be helpful, to become salt to the earth, and of exceptional value among men? If, then, you shrink from all exceptional duty, from all that calls for trouble and real sacrifice, from all that puts you seriously about, what is the good of your Christianity? where does it go? But while there are men whose lack of humanity empties their relationships and every office they hold of all service to others, save only what they are rigidly bound to by the letter of their engagement, and compelled to by the insistence or observance of others, there are also men whose love throws out sympathies on all sides, invents obligations where no claim could be enforced, and breaks through restrictions naturally hindering them from interference. So far from seeking excuse for not helping, they invent excuses for helping, or are unconscious that excuses are needed. Of this class of men the Good Samaritan is the mortal type — the once-drawn picture of the master-hand that needs no added touch. In him you see that it it is love that makes the difference; that in the time of need a compassionate heart is to more purpose than any tie, engagement, office, or bond. All the excuses the others had might have been his, and many more. He was not bound to the man by any tie of country, he was not even a mere foreigner, but was of the Samaritans, who had no dealings with the Jews. What the Christian is to the Mohammedan, the Jew was to the Samaritan. Born among a people whose most active energy was spent in demonstrations of enmity against the Jews, part of his education must have been to annoy and persecute. Neither was this man an official like the priest, who might have been greeted with a respectful salutation had the man been in a condition to have given it, and who would probably have resented the omission of such a token of respect; but he was an alien who would more likely have read the expression of a mocking hatred on the face of the passer-by, or have even been greeted with cursing, or “Thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil.” But over all these influences love triumphs, and he with whom this wounded Jew would at any other time have contemptuously refused to deal has now dealings with him of a very touching nature. That is to say, it is love that makes man neighbor to man. The true neighbor is the man who has a compassionate heart and a friendly spirit. Where this is wanting, it avails not that a man lives next door, or belongs to the same congregation, or is a member of the same club or union or profession; it ought to be so that these external associations quicken our friendliness, and so they often do, and where love exists they find expression for it in many suitable ways; but these external bonds can never supply the place of love. No doubt the people who saw how careful the Samaritan was of his protégé would say, He must be his brother, or his neighbor, or an old friend; for the truth is, that genuine compassion and affection make a man brother, neighbor, and friend of all. It is not, then, by any marks in others that you can test who is your neighbor; it is not by the marks of race, neighborhood, religion, common pursuits, old friendships, not by anything in them at all you can determine; but only by what is in yourself, namely, humanity of disposition, friendliness, compassion, or whatever name you choose to give it. Love alone can determine who is your neighbor.

Another point is incidentally brought out by our Lord. Love does not ask, What claim has this man and that man on me? but, What does this or that man need that I can do for him? It must have been, and it still is, an edifying sight to see the completeness of the Samaritan’s attentions — to see him kneeling with the interested, anxious eye of a friend by the side of the Jew, gently raising his head, cleansing his wounds, mollifying them with oil, binding them with strips torn from the first thing that came to hand, restoring in him the grateful desire of life, and greeting his return to consciousness with the strength-giving congratulations of genuine affection. We might suppose he had now done enough. How is his own business to go forward if he thus delays? But love is not so soon satisfied. He sits by him till he is strong enough to be set on his beast, and does not resign his charge to any other. He does not feel that the robbed man is off his hands when he has got him to an inn. He has himself to go on his journey, but he will not on that account, nor on any account, disconnect himself from the man; he will disconnect himself from him only when he needs no more assistance. This is love’s way. To be asking, How far am I to go in helping others? shows we have not love. To be asking, To what extent must I love? Where can I stop? Whom can I exclude? and From what sacrifices may I reasonably turn away? is simply to prove that we have not as yet the essential thing, a loving spirit; for love asks no such questions, but ever seeks for wider and wider openings.

This, then, is our Lord’s answer to the question. How shall I inherit eternal life? The answer is. Love as this Samaritan did. You will not receive eternal life as the reward of doing so, in the sense that, having now helped men and sacrificed for them, you shall enter into an eternity in which you may cease doing so, and live in some other relation to them. Not so. But by loving men thus you hereby enter into that state of spirit and that relation to your fellow-men which is eternal life, the only eternal relation possible. What more can you be asked to do than to love those you have to do with? It is that which will alone enable you to fulfil all duty to them. You need not ask. What is due to this man or that, how much service, how much assistance, how much substantial help? These are very useful questions where there is no love, but they are never sufficient, and they are therefore all summarily dismissed by Paul in his brief rule, “Owe no man anything, but to love one another,”— that is the one debt always due, never paid off, always renewed, and that covers all others. You are meant to live happily and strongly and sweetly; the relations of society part to part are meant to move as sweetly as the finest machinery, and love alone can accomplish this. It is a mere groping after harmony and order and social well-being that we are occupied with while we try to adjust class to class, nation to nation, man to man, by outward laws or defined positions.

One of our most popular teachers, Emerson, is indeed bold enough to say, in direct contradiction to this Parable, “ Do not tell me, as a good man did today, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me, and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom, by all spiritual affinity, I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be.” Him we may well leave to be answered by that deeper seeing heathen, who said, “Nature bids me assist men; and whether they be bond or free, gentlefolk or freedmen, what matter? Wherever a man is, there is room for doing good.” To obey Emerson’s law would be to introduce into a world already sufficiently broken up into sects, classes, and parties, a division more alienating and inextinguishable than creed distinctions, more bitter and personal than race hatred, more irreconcilable and truly hardening than class separation.

We may therefore measure ourselves thus, and thus we may see what our religion has done for us. Our Lord came to set us right with one another; to put us on a footing with those with whom we are to spend eternity, such as shall make it possible to us to do so. He said, again and again, “This is the command I give unto you, that ye love one another.” This is one half of our salvation, one half which involves the other, and you may measure the help you have received from Christ and ascertain in how far you are a saved person by the ability you have to keep this command. This is the test John gives: “We know that we have passed from death to life.” How? “Because we love the brethren.” How is it, then, with ourselves? While Christ tells us we should not hesitate even to lay down our lives for the brethren, that is to say should not be behind even natural generosity, which week by week prompts men to sacrifice life for others, even for persons they could not name, — while Christ leaves us this command, and illustrates it by His whole life, do we grudge to live uncomfortably for our brethren? This comfort and that we raise to the rank of necessities, and limit our givings and our sympathies. But love sweeps away such necessities, and shows itself the highest law of all. If still you say, What are we to do for others? is it not enough to give what law and decency require us to give? is it not enough to forbear doing harm, speaking evil, inflicting injury? your Lord has but the one answer: Love them first of all, and see what will come of that.