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By Root 1269 0

from the “mopping, shopping, and dropping” role that Jewish society as a whole, not Jesus, had given them. Although no women were among the twelve disciples, Jesus treated women as equal to men in other respects, including those women who were on the fringes of society. In the Gospels, several women, including Mary Magdalene, were the chief witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection. And in the early church, women served as prophets, church leaders, deacons, and missionaries. A reasonable, objective reading of the New Testament—which takes into account the social restrictions placed on women of the first century—goes a long way in refuting the notion of subservience of women in traditional Christianity. But centuries of male-dominated church hierarchy simply placed women in the second class in Christianity.

What’s so “Good” about the “Good Samaritan”?

This is how Jesus told the story, exclusive to Luke. A man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho when thieves beat him, robbed him, and left him for dead. A priest, one of the highest religious officials in Judaism, and a Levite, a priest’s assistant, both passed by the body on the other side of the road. They either acted out of strict observance of the Jews’ purity laws against touching blood, or simple callousness. Then a Samaritan came by, put the injured man on his donkey, tended his wounds, and took him to an inn, where he paid for his care. Jesus, who was being quizzed by several lawyers who wanted to “test” him, asked one lawyer which of these three was the real neighbor. When told “The one who showed him mercy,” Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.”

What was so special about the story? Samaritans did not have a great reputation among Jews. They were not good neighbors. The Jews and Samaritans had a long and unhappy history. The Samaritans had first come into the land when the Assyrians conquered Israel. An offshoot sect, they followed the Books of Moses but did not treat the rest of the Hebrew scriptures as sacred, and there was bad blood between the groups. To give some sense of how Jewish people then would have viewed a story with a Samaritan as the good guy, a modern equivalent might be called “The Good Palestinian Terrorist.”

Jesus’ message was simple. Blind obedience to the Law of Moses and strict adherence to religious rules, such as avoiding blood for the sake of “purity,” were meaningless motions when unaccompanied by merciful actions toward the needy. In making a Samaritan the hero of his parable, Jesus also underscored his acceptance of the outcasts of Jewish society, an outlook that included the lepers, crazies, sinners, tax collectors, and other “losers” who surrounded him and to whom he actively ministered.

Jesus’ use of parables—there are about thirty of them; some appear in all four Gospels, others appear in only one—like that of the Good Samaritan was a characteristic teaching tool. He often used simple stories to make his point. Occasionally these “parables” were not stories but comparisons, riddles, and metaphors, some of them quite complex. Jesus often used these parables not simply to make a point but more importantly to get his followers to think, an activity that later church leaders have not pursued as vigorously.

THE PARABLES OF JESUS

One of Jesus’ key teaching methods was speaking in parables, or short stories from everyday life that he used to illustrate a spiritual message. These parables could be a line or two of extended metaphor, such as this description of the kingdom of heaven found in Matthew: “like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.” Or they might be more complex stories such as those of the “Prodigal Son” and the “Good Samaritan.” While many of Jesus’ parables contained very simple moral lessons, others were more Zen-like and obscure. His disciples could sometimes seem very thickheaded about getting the point of them, and Jesus even shook his head once or twice over his slow students. After Jesus told the disciples the parable of the Sower (see below) in