Father help us to help our neighbour.
While all parables are important and help us to learn, this one is very obvious, not only to the priests and scribes who were trying to be clever with Jesus, but to us.
There were in a position where they thought they were above everyone else. They were teachers (or supposed to be), but instead of guiding their 'students' to be equals, they wanted to be master of their class. Paul in his letters says that we are all equal in Christ. The body may have a head, feet, legs, hands, etc but they are all working together.
The priests were more interested in what people thought of them. It boils down to them wanting a position of power. And power is only power if other people know it. The parable of the Good Samaritan highlights this elevated position they thought they were in. Thinking of themselves and not of others.
The first two travellers to meet the wounded man both chose to cross over and leave him. They may have had good reason. Perhaps he might die during ministration then the priest would be unclean and not able to praise God correctly, perhaps it would have taken too much time and they would be missing the opportunity to teach others in the synagogue. Perhaps ...
But they had missed the entire point of the law. When they asked Jesus about the law, Jesus replied that to love God and love your neighbour was fulfilling the law, hence the question of who is my neighbour. If you remember from a few weeks back how Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount to show that we should go beyond the requirements of the Law.
In some ways I think the scribes and lawyers wanted Jesus to define a 'neighbour' in some ways, eg someone who lived within 50 meters of their house, so they could argue it for weeks and come up with an acceptable definitions (so they need not be neighbourly to everyone who fell outside the definition).
To show that God was not interested in where a person came from, Jesus chose to base the hero of the story around a Samaritan. Apart from the Romans, the Samaritans were the most hated (and looked down on) by the Jews.
In this way Jesus was showing that others may be a lot better than they thought themselves to be. Which is an important lesson to us as well.
How do we view ourselves in terms of those around as? Do we think we are above them?
What do you know about the Samaritan People?
How can we show our love to God?
and to our neighbour?