the Samaritan who had mercy on the fallen man, and how they fulfill the command of our Lord, directed at all of us, to ‘Go and do likewise.’
“Jesus intended to shock his first century listeners with this parable. The Samaritans were distant relatives of the Jews, and both groups hated each other with the irrational wrath reserved only for the closest of human bonds. Saint Luke gives us an example of this revulsion at the parable’s end: the lawyer cannot even bring himself to say the word ‘Samaritan’ when he admits that only the man from that despised group was merciful to the lawyer’s fellow Jew agonizing on the side of the road. A present-day portrayal of the parable might feature a Palestinian coming to the aid of an Israeli, or an illegal immigrant from Mexico caring for a certain presidential candidate.
“Luke does not provide us with the Samaritan’s motive for doing what he did, nor does he record the reactions of others listening to Jesus speak this parable. But the love clearly animating his actions is reflected in the question Dr. King puts in the mind of the Samaritan: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’ This man did not see race when he tended the enemy of his people lying half-dead on the roadside. He did not hesitate to sacrifice his time, his food, his drink, and his money to restore a fellow human being to life. He overcame the fear that sent the priest and the Levite scurrying to the other side of the highway, and he conquered the anger that must have tempted his heart as he approached the victim, the odious enemy of his people.
“That same heroic charity animates the hearts of the vast majority of our police officers. In carrying out their work, they reveal their willingness to sacrifice their lives, a willingness shared by Jesus when he took on human flesh to heal our wounds. (Let us also keep in mind that Jesus is at once the Good Samaritan and the victim of the robbers in the parable: he vivifies us as the divine physician, and suffers in our place upon the cross.) Only an unselfish heart can make a sacrifice of this sort. In such a heart as that which belonged to Jesus, the Good Samaritan, and the slain officers, there is no room for fear or anger, because perfect love, as we read in the First Letter of John, casts out all fear, and channels anger to constructive, not destructive, ends.
“Dear friends in Christ, we all too frequently take the role of the priest and Levite in the parable, worrying about what will happen to us. We are too afraid to inconvenience ourselves, too angry to reflect peacefully, too devoted to our ignorant prejudices to listen to anyone who formulates a different opinion. A dangerous blend of fear and anger, two terrible spiritual cancers, is dominating our public discourse at present. Propagating fear in our community is nothing more than cowardly crossing to the other side of the road. To foment anger in the form of smugly self-righteous rants on Facebook, or to wait for someone else to enact a constructive solution, is to avoid the wounded heap of humanity placed in our path when it is our duty to give a reason to hope and a worthy cause to live for.
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