Further reflections from the academic dean of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Lebanon.
"And who is my neighbor?" an expert of the law asks in fury, annoyed
with Jesus’ message and behavior that frustrates every notion of
conventional "righteousness" (Luke 10:29). Jesus embarks on one of his
breathtaking stories about a man, a "righteous" man, apparently the
hero of the narrative, suddenly transformed into the "enemy," replaced
by a new hero, a Samaritan, an "unrighteous" man. New Testament
scholars have pointed out that in this story, the man called to love
his enemy is not the Samaritan, but actually the man who lay wounded,
stripped of his clothes, half dead. For he, rather than the Samaritan,
is the character in the story with whom Jesus’ audience would have been
able to identify. By inviting the wounded to accept to be helped by his
conventional enemy, Jesus calls every one of us to accept to be helped
by God, the "outcast," whom we have rejected. more >>