Recently, in a couple of books I’ve read, different Orthodox scholars noted that long ago a number of Church Fathers began reading the Parable of the Good Samaritan purely allegorically. As such, they don’t interpret the parable as modeling charitable behavior which we are to imitate but rather as an allegory of salvation. They think the Samaritan is allegorically Christ and we Christians are the parable’s victim of the crime in need of Christ to come and save us which He does.
Whereas I think the allegorical interpretation is one possible way of understanding the parable, I think it is a great mistake to miss that the parable is offering us an example to follow. Christ makes it very clear that charity is an essential aspect of being His disciple (think about His Parable of the Last Judgment where we are judged not so much based on our sins as on whether we practiced charity to the least of His brothers and sisters). We are to be a light to the world and the salt of the earth. We are to imitate Christ to incarnate Christ’s love in our own lives.
The Good Samaritan parable is teaching us to love everyone and to be a good neighbor to everyone, two main themes in the Gospel commandments. If we turn this parable merely into a description of Christians being in need of God’s mercy, we miss the fact that we are to imitate Christ in dealing with all the people of the world whether we like them or not. Exclusivist Orthodoxy is the same as Pharisaical Judaism. The Good Samaritan parable tells us to love others like Christ loves us (John 15:12). This parable shocks the Jews of His day because many of their religious teachers thought God’s commandments were just for the Jews in their treatment of each other. It shocks us today because we imagine God wants us to love only those who are perfect (like we think we are). God however loves even sinners and unbelievers.
Maybe the real challenge to Christ’s listeners of the parable is that God intended Israel and us to be a light to the nations, but instead they and we prefer to hide the light under a bushel basket to keep it for ourselves so that the rest of the “world” can’t share in it. The exclusivist faith practiced by the Jews reduces God to a nationalistic deity rather than the Creator and Lord of the entire world. Christ’s parable of the Good Samaritan is completely shocking not because it demands something “more” but rather it demands a total reorientation of thinking. Anyone who loves God and neighbor is doing God’s will, whether or not they are Jewish (or Christian for that matter). The Samaritan is the stranger and foreigner (which Christ also is, see John 1:10. Also note in John 8:48-49, He does not deny that He is a Samaritan).
The shock is that the Law applies across the board to everyone, not just to Jews as they deal with fellow Jews. Christ is challenging the very notion of Jewish exclusivist election – God can raise from the stones sons if He wants to (Matthew 3:9). A Jew is one who loves as God directs him/her to love, not one who keeps the minutiae of the 613 rules of the Torah. Christ tells the Jews that they are so pedantic that they miss the big picture, the very purpose of the Law. Christians will make the same mistake if they fail to see that they are to love even strangers because Christ loves all human beings. Christ identifies himself with the stranger, foreigner, sojourner.
Fraternized 