from John Claypool’s sermon, “The Samaritan” (Luke
“Why was it the Samaritan and not the priest and Levite do you suppose who stopped to minister to the beaten man? There are several answers that could be given to this question. One possibility is that Courage was the differential that separated these three, that one of these, namely the Samaritan, was simply a braver human being than the other two. There’s good evidence in the very context of the passage… It took a measure of bravery to even be on that road in the first place [17 miles from Jerusalem to Jericho] …Like any mountainous road it is circuitous, many turns, lots of caves where it was easy for brigands to hide out…to this day that stretch of road is known as the red or bloody way because so much violence had occurred there. And so, it could be that as these three were making their way along the road each of them were saying to themselves…a person has to be careful when he has to make this journey alone, and the last thing I want to do is to stop or become vulnerable… And so it could well be that the priest and Levite got in touch with their fear, and the Samaritan knew fear but also had something greater than fear, and, therefore, his courage explains why it was he and not the other two who stopped.
And I remind myself that that is no small item in the religious pilgrimage. Paul Tillich taught us years ago that Courage is the virtue that powers all the other virtues. In fact if I don’t have a measure of bravery I’m going to have trouble getting on with any of the significant ventures of life. How can I love the Lord my God; how can I really set about to love the neighbor; or that most frightening of all the challenges: how can I go into the depths of my own being and learn to love all that I might find there. It could be the Samaritan was simply the most courageous.”
from Paul Tillich
“The first duty of love is to listen.”
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