Every now and then someone brings us to our senses. Somebody, perhaps, comes along and tells you what you’ve always known to be true but you didn’t want to face up to it. You know the person is as right as rain.

The gospel story in Luke 10:25–37 is just like that. It is as right as rain, and the lawyer in the story who didn’t want to face up to it, knew it too.

The smart lawyer addressed a loaded question to Jesus, pretending as he did so that he sought the road to eternal life. Jesus knew the man’s intentions and he got him to quote the law which the lawyer correctly did. So far, so good. But, then the lawyer asked Jesus one question too many. “And who,” he asked, “is my neighbor?”

Jesus let him know that everybody qualified as neighbor. And, to make the point clear, Jesus told him a story about the behavior of different neighbors. The shocking bit about the story is that the best neighbor was the ill-regarded Samaritan; not the priest, not the Levite.

Everyone who heard this story that day knew how it went with Jews and Samaritans. As long as memory served, Jews and Samaritans were dead set against each other. No love was lost between them. A Samaritan to a Jew was worse that a communist or a socialist to an American. A Samaritan was faithless in the eyes of Jews. He was no neighbor to them.

Still, the supposed faithless Samaritan wins the day.

Belonging to the right group and abiding by all the laws in the book do not constitute salvation, according to Jesus. What constitutes salvation is love of God and neighbor. The Good Samaritan by his loving actions for someone in distress was a true neighbor. It is the Samaritan’s example of neighborliness that the Lord holds up to the self-righteous lawyer.

When the lawyer acknowledged the truth, Jesus said to him: “then go and do the same.”

—Fr. Hugh Duffy