So who are these three men who make up the cast for today’s story?

Let’s start with the literal “passers’-by”. Both Priests and Levites in ancient Israel had to be men from the tribe of Levi; any Jews from the eleven other tribes could not be priests, and to be called a Levite meant from the tribe of Levi.

• Levites who weren’t priests assisted in the practical operation of the temple as guards, musicians, or administrators.
• Priests offered the sacrifices and took care of other ritual concerns in the Temple in Jerusalem

So we’ve got two institutionalists here – to representatives of the only religion of Israel – Judaism.

The third figure is a Samaritan. Samaritans were Jews. During the united Monarchy of Kings David and Solomon there was only one nation. On Solomon’s death that nation split in two – Judah in the south, and Israel in the North.

In that Northern Kingdom King Omri, the seventh king of Israel, purchased a hill in 885 B.C. and build a city there. He called it “Samaria”. The region around it adopted that name.

150 years later a Babylonian king defeated Israel and deported its elites, leaving only the peasants. He then replaced those elites with colonists who brought their own religions. The cultures merged and intermingled, producing a sort of hybrid Judaism that retained the Pentateuch and much of the prophetic literature.

100 years later the southern Kingdom of Judah was also defeated and deported by the Babylonians. But they retained their identity as Jews and were allowed 70 years beyond that to return to Jerusalem and restore not only their nation but their faith.

The Samaritans offered to help rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, but the returning Judeans refused, calling them ‘impure’ and ‘half-breeds’. It went down hill from there! The Samaritans built their own temple on Mt. Gerizim and, rather like North and South Korea, they continued to stare at each other across the old East-West border, right down to the time of Jesus. If they lived today Judean Jews would think of a Samaritan the way we think of North Koreans. Jesus’ listeners might have expected the Samaritan to go through his pockets to see if there was anything left to steal.

So it’s not hard to see that for a Judean Jew the compassion of the Samaritan toward someone who was most likely a Judean was surprising.

But here’s the problem for us – that would certainly not have been the most striking part of the parable for Jesus’ listeners. Remember he’s telling this story as a Southern Judean Jew, to Southern Judean Jews. The most striking thing in the story for them is not the behavior of the Samaritan, but of their own country-men.

And not just their own country-men: These two were, as representatives of these listeners’ own faith and of their central religious site – the Jerusalem Temple – were individuals who, above all other Jews, would be expected to show compassion and mercy for the least and lost, for the poor, and sick – for someone lying beside the road, possibly dead, but at least severely injured.

The most shocking part of this story for Jesus’ listeners was the behavior of the Priest and the Levite.

Our own understanding invites us to admire the compassion of the Samaritan without understanding just exactly how striking it was, and to look down on the actions of the two Jews without understanding just how aberrant they were – we end up engaging in a sort of unknowing anti-Semitism, while also failing to understand the true power of the parable.

So what would the parable sound like today: In Central Los Angeles a homeless man is mugged, beaten, and left for dead. Two men approach: an Episcopal priest, with the Senior Warden, on their way to the parking lot after the Sunday services. They see the pile of bloody cloths with a human being inside but keep on walking. Then a swarthy young black man with gang-tattoos on his arms comes along, stops, picks the homeless man up, and takes him home, caring for him until he’s recovered.

Sure, we’re impressed by that compassionate, caring behavior from a stereo-typed individual who we in our blindness might have expected to go through his pockets to see if there was anything left to steal. But isn’t it more shocking to think that two Christians – an Episcopal Priest and a Senior Warden – would be so heartless as to “walk by on the other side”?

Welcome to the Kingdom of God, says, Jesus, where “Insiders who are expected to provide aid do not; outsiders who are not expected to show compassion do” (Amy-Jill Levine). It calls our assumptions into question and invites us to think differently about the way things are for those who take seriously the answer to the question “who, then, is my neighbor?”

And it invites us to re-examine the answers we might give to the lawyer’s question - because they’re likely to be different now than they were before we really understood what was going on in this story. “My neighbor” turns out to include “The Other”, “The Stranger”, the one whom I might fear, or despise, or wish to ignore. And it includes those whom I want to, or normally do, respect whom I see failing in their responsibilities.

It includes everyone - for in the Kingdom of God there are no outsiders. The rule of thumb now is based not on ethnic identity, or group affiliation, or religious conviction, but upon compassionate ethical action and behavior – and we should be able to expect that from any and every human being. Amen.