In Luke 10, Jesus sums up all the commandments in two statements:
- Love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind
- Love your neighbor as yourself
After saying this, Jesus was asked, “Who is my neighbor?” In response, Jesus told what is often called the story of the Good Samaritan. After a priest and a Levite passed an injured man, a Samaritan stopped to help the man.
In John 4, we are given an account of the interaction between Jesus and a Samaritan woman. After a discussion with her, she went into the town and told people about Jesus and many believed in Him.
Samaritans were a different culture than the Jews. The area of Samaria had been occupied by 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel. Hundreds of years before Christ, the 10 tribes in Samaria were conquered by the Assyrians, who then occupied the area. Many of the people were carried away, but some remained and intermixed with the Assyrians, which led to the people known as the Samaritans in Jesus’ time. The Jews hated the Samaritans and looked down on them due to their mixed heritage. John 4:9 ends with a statement that the Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. It is said that devout Jews would not even pass through Samaria but would go the long way around to get to Galilee.
Also, in the Jewish culture priests and Levites were highly respected members of society. So for Jesus to make them the villains of his story and a Samaritan a hero would have been contrary to much of the thinking of the times. Passing through Samaria instead of going around was unusual to begin with but then to stop and interact with a Samaritan, and a woman none the less, would have been almost scandalous to many of the Jewish people. The fact that Jesus showed respect to the Samaritans and even related to the Samaritan woman on the basis of her culture (the question of whether to worship on the mountain as the Samaritans did or in Jerusalem as the Jews said was correct) showed that he did not see the Samaritan culture as inferior or the Samaritan people as lower than the Jews.
- What does Jesus’ teaching tell us about our attitudes toward different cultures?
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