The Good Samaritan

The other day I was having a conversation with a few colleagues at work. They were wondering out loud what a Samaritan was and what made one good versus bad. I tried to explain briefly what Samaritans were and a little of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The point is, the story of the Good Samaritan is so powerful that after thousands of years, even if hardly anybody remembers what a Samaritan is or why any of them should have been good, the Good Samaritan lives on as a blanket term for anyone who tries to be a good person, especially one who does someone a kindness without any expectation of recognition or reward. Given that the Parable of the Good Samaritan is a good deal more specific than others of Jesus’s parables - for example, a certain man traveled from Jerusalem to Jericho instead of to a non-specific far off country, as in other parables -  I have to assume Jesus did not merely make up a story to tell a lesson, but rather shared an account of a true event. It is certainly not impossible that a certain man on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho really was robbed and left for dead and that a Samaritan really did stop and help him. That Good Samaritan performed an act of such selfless love and kindness, and did so with every chance that if his own people found out they would berate and perhaps ostracize him, and at the risk of drawing on himself the wrath and ire even of the victim for whom he provided, that this single act of unconditional love shines out so brightly through the centuries that even after the people of Samaria are no more, and are so far removed that few today even remember what Samaria is or where it might have been located on a map, yet still to this day do we remember that Good Samaritan. We should never underestimate the lasting effect that loving our neighbor can have not just for ourselves or for our neighbor but for future generations. Samaria has faded away, and the empire that swallowed it has been forgotten, and the kingdom that rose from that empire has gone away, and the empire that rose up after that, and on and on through centuries and millennia, but the love of that Good Samaritan remains to this day. Billions of people the world over have been torn between passing by on the other side of the road and rushing to help their neighbor in need, and billions of people have remembered and tried to follow the example of the Good Samaritan, even when they don’t know who or what a Samaritan is. We never know if, after a thousand years, the land of Texas or Norway or Senegal has been long forgotten, yet still people talk about the Good Texan, or the Good Norwegian, or the Good Senegalese, all because we did that one selfless act of love and kindness that will reverberate and echo through the centuries, long after we as individuals or even the lands from which we hale are long forgotten.