This passage occurs in the RCL, Year C. Most recently Summer of 2016.
Summary: This is a classic passage that needs no complex exegesis to make it understandable. One can tell it as a morality tale (we should be the Good Samaritan); or one go a Lutheran route (Christ is the Good Samaritan). But if you want to try something else...A word I'd never caught before was the word for inn -- πανδοχειον -- literally all-are-welcome. I find this a comforting image of the church -- a place where anyone and everyone comes to receive mercy and healing on the road of life. (okay, okay, it is not a great image of repentance, but nonetheless, it is worth pondering: why do people find comfort at a local bar/inn and not the church).
Other words:
σπλαγχνιζομαι ("splagchnizoma", meaning "compassion", 10.33) This word means compassion in Greek; it comes from intestines. To have compassion meant your guts were turned over.
ζωην (from ζωη "zooe" meaning life, 10.25) In John's Gospel Jesus affirms that everlasting life is not something that begins after death, but begins here. You can really see this in the Greek in his Gospel, where many of the tenses regarding everlasting life are in the present: he who believes HAS everlasting life (John 3:36). In this passage from Luke, Jesus also connects everlasting life with earthly life. (Do this, Jesus says, and you will live.) Jesus denies a distinction between everlasting life (the lawyers' question) and life. To live with God is everlasting life, which begins here on earth. However, Luke here connects them with moral action. What does everlasting life look and feel like? Like showing mercy. I have no desire to drive a wedge between Luke and John or between faith and works here. Simply, the everlasting life is the life in the new creation, where our faith transforms us into God's instruments of mercy.
πως ("poos" meaning "how", 10.26) Jesus does not say, "What does the law say?" Rather he says, "How do you read the law?" A reminder that people can read the same laws in different ways!
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This digs into the Greek (and occasionally the Hebrew) of the NT lessons of the Revised Common and Narrative Lectionary.
4 comments:
I had also never noticed the "inn" before -- I assumed it was the same "inn" as Lk 2:7. (Which turns out to be the same as "guest room" in Lk 22:11.) What a great word and what a great discovery. I will be rolling that around in my head for a few days! Thank you!
The word mercy, eleos, appears in Luke's gospel 6 times. The first 5 times in the first chapter, the Magnification twice and the song of Zechariah twice. In these occasions, it is God who shows mercy to Israel. Could it be that the Samaritan represents God to Luke? How might ones perceived enemies remind us of God?
Also, Luke uses the Greek, Solana three times. 1:78, tender mercies of God. Luke 10, Samaritan, and Luke 15:20, father of two sons. Another special theological term for Luke that defines God's character/orientation toward Israel/humankind.
Also, Luke uses the Greek, Solana three times. 1:78, tender mercies of God. Luke 10, Samaritan, and Luke 15:20, father of two sons. Another special theological term for Luke that defines God's character/orientation toward Israel/humankind.
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