The Good Samaritan: 21st-century Style

Today we studied the parable of the Good Samaritan in seminary. In the first half of class, I wanted them to understand what the parable meant to the man whose question it was answering. In other words, I wanted them to understand how the parable answers the question "Who is my neighbor?" So, we talked about the animosity between Jews and Samaritans, for example. And then I asked them to rewrite the parable in modern times using people and places we would relate to and react to in the same way Jesus' Jewish audience would have in their time.

I got some interesting responses. One student set the parable in New York City after September 11th and the start of the war in Afghanistan. An Afghani gets mugged and beaten, and the only one who stops to help him is a US soldier who has just returned from Afghanistan. My favorite part about the story was when another student said at the end of it, "Wait, shouldn't it be the other way around?"

Another student set it at high school, with a disliked and prejudged girl the only one to stop and help a freshman who has dropped all of their things down two flights of stairs. One student couldn't think of anything else to write, so he imagined himself as The Hero on the road who fights off the thieves even though he's outnumbered. The funniest one, which has earned my sister a special prize for guessing it before it was ever written, was from a student who wrote about the Good Samaritan as a Michigan fan.

For the last half of class, I wanted to look at the deeper meaning of the parable. This deeper meaning is the answer to the lawyer's initial question "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?", and is essentially an allegory for the Fall and Redemption of man. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, or even if you do, go look at this wonderful article in either pdf format with all the beautiful pictures of cathedral stained-glass windows or you can just see the text of the article at this website.) So, it was an unexpected but easy transition to this deeper meaning when the more difficult student, who didn't even open up his notebook to write anything down, suddenly said, "It would be funny if the man were Hitler and the Samaritan were a Jew. Ha-ha-ha. You know, Hitler saved by a Jew. Ha-ha-ha."

What a wonderful moment. Here he was trying to be shocking, and all I had to say was, "The irony of that is that the only one who could be Hitler's Saviour is a Jew." They all quieted up really fast, and someone said, "Jesus Christ."

"Yes," I said, "which brings us to the deeper meaning of this parable." And then we examined step by step what the early Christians understood about the Good Samaritan and the saving compassion of Christ. Thank you, Luke, for including this wonderful teaching tool about the fall and redemption of man, the great plan of salvation, and the infinite love of God.