the injured man slumped in his own saddle. They kept their money safe in their purse, congratulating themselves, no doubt, on the 10% tithe they had just paid. But he freely sacrifices a month's wages or more in order to secure the nursing care this man would need to make a full recovery.
And note very carefully: all this he did in complete ignorance of the man's racial identity. That is the significance, you see, of Jesus' observation that this man was unconscious and stripped naked. All the normal means by which the ethnic identity of somebody could be established were missing. His dialect and manner of dress were undefined. The Samaritan encounters this victim of criminal violence simply as an anonymous human being. Jew, Gentile, fellow Samaritan—he can't know which. Yet he cares for him. He rescues him. He provides sacrificially for his future welfare. The implication is clear, and Jesus pulls no punches in pointing it out.
The challenge of love (Luke 10:36–37)
You can see the lawyer swallowing hard, can't you, as Jesus forces him to answer his own question again. He can't bring himself to say 'the Samaritan', for that hated word would have stuck in his throat. On the other hand, he can't deny the moral force of the story he's heard. So he replies with embarrassed circumlocution, 'the one who had mercy on him'.
There must have been a glimmer of a smile on Jesus' lips as he observes his discomfiture. This man who had come for a sparring match now finds himself, not just defeated, but convicted. 'Go and do likewise,' is Jesus' call to him (Luke 10:37). And surely in those two imperatives, 'go' and 'do', Jesus unmasks the hypocrisy not only of his original enquirer but also of us all. It is so easy, isn't it, to engage in high-sounding generalizations about loving people. But this masterpiece of a parable grounds the practical implications of that moral theory in real life.
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