clichés like "Charity begins at home", and "I never do anybody any harm", once you start comparing your loving with the extravagant generosity of that good Samaritan of mine, then you will realize what a moral failure you really are. You will not come to me then asking pompous, self-inflated questions like, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"'
No. Rather, like a man in the next story we shall be looking at, you will be found with your head bowed, beating your breast, saying, 'God be merciful to me, a sinner.' Have you got to that point of self-despair yet? Plenty of people come, like this expert, to have a debate with Jesus. Too few come to him seeking what he really wants to offer—a rescue.
Once we do get to that point where we know we need a rescue, however, we shall discover that there is yet a further dimension to this remarkable story of the good Samaritan; perhaps the most precious dimension of all.
In the last chapter I said that the parables were often abused during the Middle Ages, as a result of the allegorical interpretation of scholars. This story of the good Samaritan suffered more than most in that regard. A typical medieval reconstruction, for instance, tells us that the wounded man represents Adam, and that Jerusalem, from which he journeys, represents the state of innocence from which Adam fell. The thieves who beat him up are the devil who deprived Adam of eternal life. The priest and the Levite are Old Testament religion which passed by and could not help him. And the Good Samaritan, of course, is Christ, who comes to his rescue. The inn to which he takes him is the church; the two coins which are given for his care are the sacraments of baptism and the mass; and the innkeeper, self-evidently, is the pope!
Well, suffice it to say there is no evidence at all that Jesus intended his story to be understood in such a fashion. Yet those medieval scholars were not without their spiritual insight. For even if the good Samaritan was
