LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 287

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II. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS
discover the answer to that very question. Let me tell you a
story about a person just like you. There once was this man.
…”? The fact that this “certain man” is assigned no ethnic
identity allows every hearer to identify with this character.
Read together Luke 10:30–35. Because this parable is such
a familiar one, the instructor should lead the students back
through the text, pointing out the following:

1. Luke 10:30: “he fell among robbers, who
stripped him and beat him and departed,
leaving him half dead.”

He Is Our Righteousness

The man loses much more than his money. Whether or not
the beating indicates that the man tried to resist or simply
indicates the utter cruelty of the robbers is not important
for the story. What is important to notice is that the man is
left with absolutely nothing by which he can slow his dying
or save his own life. He has no clothing. No strength. No
money. No food. No transportation. Was he conscious?
We don’t know, and the strange description ἡμιθανῆ
(hēmithanē; “half dead”) is not very precise, but in the story
he makes no sound or movement to attract attention to
himself as a plea for help. This does not bode well for us,
does it? The character who was supposed to provide an
answer to the question is now helpless and speechless. The
protagonist is now a victim.

Leader’s Guide

Session 2:
A Story to Answer Questions and to Reframe Them
Luke 10:30–35

2. Luke 10:31–32: “a priest … [and] a Levite”

Introductory Remarks

Although this is not the place for a comprehensive review of
the interpretation of parables, a few introductory remarks
ought to prove helpful here. Some instructors and students
may be familiar with the history of the interpretation of
this parable. Almost without exception, from the earliest
commentaries we possess until the interpretation of John
Calvin, the parable of the Good Samaritan was interpreted
as an allegory of salvation in Christ. The man traveling to
Jericho was understood to be a picture of fallen humanity,
and the Samaritan who rescued him was understood to be a
picture of Christ. This approach is quite evident in Luther’s
preaching on this text. There will not be time to present the
detailed ancient and medieval interpretations of the parable
and then ask for student response. It is very likely that even
raising the issue of whether the parable is to be read as an
allegory or not will derail the discussion so that it never
returns to a careful reading of the text itself. Even modern
interpreters often present the student of the parable with a

false dichotomy when they suggest that the parable is either
an allegory about Christ or a story about human love and
compassion. Rather than raise such big issues with neither
preparation nor time to deal with them satisfactorily, this
study suggests the parable be introduced as follows.
We have already seen how the story that Jesus tells is in
response to the lawyer’s questions. Although his two questions are related, the parable is most directly a response to
his second question. Try to imagine yourself in the lawyer’s
place. How would you expect the story to answer your question? Because we know the parable so well, we usually don’t
take the time to ask about what the lawyer would have been
expecting and how he might have heard it. If Jesus is going
to answer the lawyer’s question at all, wouldn’t you expect
the story to be about a man who has to decide or who learns
how to decide who his neighbor is? Wouldn’t you expect
the story to begin, “Oh, so you want to know who your
neighbor is? Let me tell you a story about a man who had to
Leader’s Guide |

3. Luke 10:33–35: “A Samaritan”

Here again, the commentaries and parable studies will
provide abundant social and historical background on how
a Samaritan would have been regarded by Jesus’ original
hearers.5 And here again, we need to be careful that we don’t
lose sight of the story for the sake of the background. Still,
the centuries-long animosity between Jews and Samaritans
would certainly have determined the lawyer’s response to
this unexpected twist in the story. The Samaritan is just the
sort of man that the lawyer seems to want to exclude from
his own legal and moral responsibility, the sort of man
he desires not to have to love, and this is certainly not the
quarter from which he would want rescue to come were he
actually the half-dead man in the story.
Two minor details, often unnoticed, merit brief mention.
First of all, notice that this is the first character who is not
described as “going down” the road from Jerusalem to
Jericho. Perhaps not for the lawyer but certainly for the
reader, Jerusalem has taken on very foreboding connotations. Jerusalem is the place where Jesus is headed right
now in the Gospel narrative, and it’s the place where He is
going in order to die. As in the story, deliverance, rescue
and life do not come from Jerusalem, so also Jerusalem will
not be the place from which life comes until the Jerusalem
of temple and Law is fulfilled and transformed into the
Jerusalem of the cross and the empty tomb.

3

Why these two characters? Fitzmyer notes that both priests
and Levites enjoyed a “privileged status” in Palestinian
Jewish society: “their levitical and/or Aaronic heritage
… associated them intimately with the Temple cult and
the heart of Jewish life as worship of Yahweh.”1 And both
Fitzmyer2 and Just3 provide additional background concerning the connection of purity and defilement with the
parable. Neither Jesus nor Luke, however, draws our attention to these things. Although the respect that a priest or a
Levite may have enjoyed at the time is likely behind their
being “cast” this way in the parable, the importance of the
laws concerning “corpse defilement” has been questioned in
more recent discussions of the parable.4 If we are still trying
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke X–XXIV, vol. 28A, The
Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 883.

1

2

Fitzmyer, 883.

Arthur A. Just, Jr., Luke 9:51–24:53, Concordia Commentary (St. Louis:
Concordia Publishing House, 1997), 447–448.

3

4
See, for a good example, Klyne R. Snodgrass, Stories with Intent (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2008), 355. On this point, it is also worth noting Joel Green’s point:
“[I]t is remarkable and probably significant that no inside information regarding
the incentive(s) of the priest and Levite is provided. The stark reality is simply
that they do nothing for this wounded man.” See Joel B. Green, The Gospel of

287

to hear the story along with the lawyer, a somewhat different concern emerges here. From such a perspective, we find
ourselves thinking, along with the lawyer and the half-dead
man, “I can’t believe neither of them would stop. I would
have stopped to help a priest or a Levite in need!”
The word ἡμιθανής (hēmithanēs; “half dead”) occurs only
in Luke 10:30 in the New Testament, and it is a rare word
in ancient Greek generally. It does occur one time as well,
though, in the Septuagint, and it is interesting to compare
that passage with our text. 4 Maccabees 4:1-14 gives an
account of an attempt by a certain Apollonius to plunder the riches of the Temple in Jerusalem. As Apollonius
approached the Temple with his forces, a cavalry of angels
rode down out of heaven brandishing weapons that flashed
with lightning. At such a sight, Apollonius fell to the ground
“half dead” in the Court of the Gentiles and implored the
people there to intercede for him. In this case the high
priest did intercede and Apollonius was delivered. This
story from 4 Maccabees may suggest to us what would
have been expected to happen in our parable: the priest —
whose very vocation was one of intercession — would have
offered the saving help to the man and provided the story
with a perfect illustration of biblical neighborliness. But, the
expected rarely happens in parables.
One further point should be made here, and it has to do
with our Lord’s reason for teaching by means of parables.
At least one way that we “hear but do not understand”
(Luke 8:9-10) is when we hear the Word and force it to say
what we want it to say, when we hear the Word in a way
that only confirms our current misshapen or inadequate
knowledge of God and His ways. It would, in this case,
be a terrible and tragic irony if the telling of this parable
only served to reinforce our prejudices about certain kinds
of people. We instructors of the Word must do all in our
power to guard against our people hearing the parable in
such a way that it teaches that all Jews are hypocrites or that
all outwardly religious people are self-righteous and sanctimonious. Or that minority groups, marginalized people
and outsiders in general are all righteous simply because
of their membership in those categories. Jesus tells a story
that breaks down old categories of thinking and forces the
hearer to re-think his questions. We must not let the parable
become a “biblical ethnic joke” — as if there could be such
a thing.
Luke, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1997), 430.

4 | He Is Our Righteousness | Session 2

stranger. Knowing that more will be needed to ensure the
poor man’s return to health, he contracts with the innkeeper
to make sure that the care will continue as the Samaritan
continues toward his original destination.6 All expenses are
to be charged to the Samaritan: the ἐγώ (egō; “I”) of verse
35 is emphatic, meaning, “I, and not the wounded man,
am responsible for payment.”7 No matter what is required
to restore the man, the bill will be settled in full by the
Samaritan when he passes that way again on his return trip.
More impressive still is the fact that Jesus offers no explanation for this Samaritan’s extravagant compassion.

Looking Ahead

Are you beginning to think differently about this parable?
What questions do you have about what was covered
in this session? What questions do you still have about
this parable?

Second, we are perhaps too quick to suppose that the lawyer
was driven by his loveless sense of freedom from responsibility toward Samaritans and others that he could not regard
as God’s chosen — and that this shows how far he was from
being a student of the Christ. Turn back for a moment to
Luke 9:51–56. Had not James and John, His disciples, just
wanted to see an entire village of Samaritans consumed by
the fiery wrath of Heaven? The lawyer was likely not the
only one there who was uncomfortably unhappy with a tale
of a good Samaritan.
Our Lord, however, spends no time whatsoever with the
man’s ethnic identity, and what impresses the hearer of the
story is the comprehensiveness of this man’s compassion.
He sees immediately to the wounds, applying soothing oil
and cleansing wine, then binding them. His compassion for
the man not yet nearly exhausted, he transports the man
to a place of shelter from threat and element, where healing can begin. As with his resources, so is the Samaritan
generous with his time: he spends the night caring for the
5

See, for example, Just, 448; Green, 431 and 404–405; and Snodgrass, 345–347.

He Is Our Righteousness
It is notoriously complicated to “convert” ancient currency into contemporary
value. Lenski is correct, though, that we should not get the impression that this is a
fairly modest amount of money. Contrary to our situation, where a couple of days’
worth of wages would not keep you long at a hotel, including full room service and
nursing care, Lenski provides good evidence that the Samaritan’s two denarii may
well have covered two months’ worth of the invalid’s expenses. For the details, see
R.C.H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Luke’s Gospel (Minneapolis: Augsburg
Publishing House, 1946), 607.

6

7

Pa rt icipa n t ’s

Guid e

Session 2:
A Story to Answer Questions and to Reframe Them

Plummer, 288.

Leader’s Guide |

5

2019 Convention Workbook