In most cases, we find it easy to pursue peace and practice love with those closest to us: our family and friends and those with whom we have things in common (race, class, or education). That’s one reason why the homogeneous unit principle is so effective in growing churches quickly. But Christ expects more of us than simply loving those who are like us! We have been commanded not only to love our own but also to love our neighbors as ourselves — as we would our own family. For as Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27).
Immediately following his words in this passage, Jesus is asked, by a man seeking to justify himself, “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29). It is to this question, that Jesus responds by telling the parable of the good Samaritan.
To understand the full context and meaning of the parable, it is important to recall that Samaritans were the descendents of the Northern Kingdom of Jews conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BC. Their once-pure Jewish bloodline had been corrupted through intermarriage with the Assyrians, and their worship of Yahweh corrupted through the assimilation of pagan belief and ritual. Consequently, the Jews living in Judea at the time of Christ, the very audience to whom Jesus was speaking, hated the Samaritans.
The primary purpose of the parable, then, is to clarify just whom Christ has in mind in speaking of a neighbor. And as we study the parable closely, we learn that “my neighbor,” according
to Christ, is not simply someone in need but someone who is not like me. More specifically, Christ teaches that a neighbor is someone we might naturally avoid, disregard, or even despise based on
ethnic origin. For the neighbor in the parable was a Jew, and the one who loved him as himself, like one of his own, was an otherwise despised yet good Samaritan.
This is not by coincidence.
The practical implication for the Jews listening to Jesus was that they would have to learn to love not only one another but also those outside their own culture, with genuine, sacrificial love apart from distinctions. Indeed, if a Jew wanted to fulfill the command to love his neighbor as himself — the second-greatest command, according to Matthew 22:36 – 39 — he would have to learn to love
like the Samaritan in the parable and, more than that, to love Samaritans in obedience to Christ.
Excerpt from Ethnic Blends: Mixing Diversity Into Your Local Church by Mark DeYmaz and Harry Li (pp. 183-184).
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