1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• The next two week’s readings deal with the radical nature of what following Jesus’ commands requires, a love that is deep to the point of scandal.
• The word “test” in v. 25 is ekpeirazo, the same word for “tempting.” It means the explicit challenge of one’s honor. The lawyer would have been a recognized expert in the scriptures, there was no difference during the first century between religious and civil law. So the lawyer is trying to get Jesus to say what the lawyer knows to be the right answer.
• The question is what is necessary to “inherit eternal life.” Inheritance is what God promised to Abraham’s descendants through the covenant in Genesis 12:1-3.
• Jesus responds by asking the lawyer a question about the law, thus reversing the lawyer’s challenge to him.
• The lawyer’s response (different from Matthew 22:34-40 and Mark 12:28-34, where it is Jesus who responds) is an expansion of Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” This is a piece of the Shema, a prayer that Jews are to repeat twice a day. Here and in Matthew and Mark it is linked with Leviticus 19:18, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”
• Whatever the number of qualifiers, the result is the same that love of God is to claim the whole of one’s life. “With all your mind “is not in Deuteronomy, but is consistent with the teachings of Hillel, a well-regarded Jewish scholar from just before the time of Christ.
• The lawyer’s follow-up question in v. 20 was intended to once again gain the upper hand after Jesus reclaimed it by forcing the question back on the lawyer in v. 26. Jewish law contained a series of boundaries for how Jews were to treat Gentiles and Samaritans, how priests treat non-priests, how men and women interact, and so on.
• The man in the story Jesus told was noticeably undefined. The Jewish listener might assume him to be a Jew, Luke’s Gentile audience might see him as a Gentile. “A certain man” becomes a common feature in how parables begin in Luke (12:16; 14:2, 16; 15:11; 16:1, 19; 19:12; 20:9).
• The road from Jerusalem to Jericho is a dangerous one. It drops over 3,200 feet in 17 miles, through narrow passes. The wild terrain allowed many places for bandits to hide.
• Three passersby come across the man. By storytelling convention, after the first two fail to stop, the third will break the pattern. Given that the first two are clerics, a priest and a Levite, the expected turn here would be for the third to be an Israelite, thus giving the story an anticlerical edge.
• But the third traveler is not an Israelite, the third traveler is a Samaritan. It is hard to put in modern context just how unexpected this shift is. This is a Crip helping a Blood, an ISIS fighter helping an American. Naming the helper as a Samaritan not only forces a reconsideration of the stereotypes of Samaritans, it requires the invalidation of all stereotypes. The lawyer is so disgusted with this example, that when Jesus asked him which of the three was the better neighbor, the lawyer cannot even utter the word “Samaritan,” calling him instead “the one who showed him mercy.”
• The Samaritan “was moved with pity” (v. 33) for the man. Another translation is “had compassion,” the Greek word is esplaginsthe. It shows up three times in Luke’s Gospel; here, Jesus toward the widowed woman who’s son had died (7:13), and the Prodigal Father (15:20). In Luke’s Gospel, showing compassion is an attribute of God. Likewise, the lawyer described the Samaritan as “the one who showed him mercy” (v. 37). Almost every time the word “mercy” shows up in Luke, it is as an attribute of God (Luke 1:47-50, 54, 72, 78; 17:13; 18:38-39).
Works Sourced:
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Parsons, Mikeal C. “Commentary on Luke 10:25-37.” Working Preacher.
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