By David A. Davis
In the Christian tradition, the Golden Rule has been paired with one of the most familiar of the parables of Jesus. The parable of the Good Samaritan is understood to be an embodiment of the Hebrew Bible’s teaching of “love your neighbor as yourself.” Understood as a unique genre of the New Testament, parables are intended not so much to be figured out as experienced. Parables can have an ending that catches the reader of scripture by surprise. A parable taught by Jesus may stir the heart or seem more like a kick in the gut. Unlike a fable that often has a simple moral takeaway, a parable can stir more questions than answers. To teach in parables is to invite mystery and wonder into a timeless yearning to live faithfully and authentically.
As told in the gospel of Luke, Jesus is having a conversation with a man who asks what he has to do to inherit eternal life. After answering with loving God with heart, soul, strength and mind, the man concludes with loving your neighbor as yourself. Jesus affirms the man’s answer; “Do this, and you will live.” But the man presses a bit further and asks Jesus “and who is my neighbor?” The answer to that question in the teaching of Jesus comes in the form of the parable of the Good Samaritan.
In sum, Jesus tells of man who fell among thieves and was left for dead in a ditch. Two of the most visibly religious in the community come by one at a time and they both see the man in the ditch but they pass by on the other side of the road. A stranger and a foreigner who was far from home and traveling comes upon the man and he tends to the man’s wounds, cares for him, and takes him to a safe place for healing and recovery telling the proprietor to do whatever the injured man need and he would repay him when he was on his return journey.
Jesus then turns to his inquisitor and asks which of the three men passing by was a neighbor to the one in the ditch. The man responds that it was the “one who showed him mercy.” The whole encounter concludes with Jesus telling that man to “go and do likewise.”
Jesus doesn’t tell the man to go and be good. In fact, Jesus never refers to man as “good,” as in “the good Samaritan”. It is tradition labels the man “good,” not Jesus. Maybe that’s because, at the end of day, the parable isn’t about being good.
The wonder and the power of the parables of Jesus is that they cannot be so easily reduced. This isn’t just a story with a life lesson, a takeaway about being good. Yes, Jesus said, “Go and do likewise,” when the man referred to the “one who showed mercy.” But he didn’t say to go and do good. He said “go and do likewise.” Jesus might as well of said, “go and be,” “go and live.” He said, “Go and do likewise.” He didn’t just say, “Go and be good,” like parent dropping off a 6-year-old to a birthday party. “You be good, sweetheart.”
Doing good and showing mercy just aren’t the same. To go and do likewise is an exhortation not just to do good or be good but to live and to be and to work for and to long for a world of mercy, pity, and compassion. To go and do likewise is a command from the lips of Jesus that assumes that separation walls should be tumbled down and hateful stereotypes should be crushed and righteousness starts with a trickle of unexpected action.
To go and do likewise is a plea to participate in communities that respond to the hate-filled speech of social media with daring acts of hospitality while being liberated from all that has been ingrained in us about those who are different. To go and do likewise is an invitation to fill the public square with acts of kindness rather than the typical rhetoric that takes up so much space and air and energy.
To go and go likewise is to love you neighbor as yourself. It is to be an embodiment of the Golden Rule.
David A. Davis is pastor of Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton.
