The parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) is one of Jesus’ most profound and disruptive teachings. Far more than a call to moral goodness, it is a challenge to our deepest assumptions about who belongs, and who deserves our care. The parable is unique to Luke’s gospel, and the exchange that precedes it is equally important. A man well-versed in scriptural interpretation asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responded, “What is written in the law?” The man answered by quoting the summary of the law from the Torah: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Deut 6:4–7, Lev 19:18). Today’s reading from Deuteronomy echoes the first half of this command: “Turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul” (30:10).

Jesus affirms this answer because both the canonical writings and wisdom tradition of his people had long insisted on empathy and fairness; for example, in Tobit, “What you hate, do not do to anyone” (4:15-17) and in Sirach, “Judge your neighbor’s feelings by your own” (31:15-17). Jesus’ own statement from the Sermon on the Mount/Plains became known as the Golden Rule, similar to that found in many other religions: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you”(Matt 7:12, Luke 6:31). Note that “love your neighbor as yourself” and “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” are not identical. One focuses on the equal worth of self and others; the other emphasizes action. Jesus upholds both in affirming the man’s answer here, and in formulating the Golden Rule in his sermon(s).

The man could have stopped there — but he presses further: “And who is my neighbor?” Perhaps he was uneasy about how broad the principle was; perhaps he merely wanted to draw Jesus into further debate. In response, Jesus builds on themes present in scripture. Leviticus 19:34 already expanded the summary of the law to include the stranger: “you shall love the stranger as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Eventually, Jesus will take this even further in offering, at the Last Supper, his “new” commandment: “love one another as I — God — have loved you,” that is freely, sacrificially, unconditionally. But for the time being, in Matthew’s longer sermon, Jesus opens the Golden Rule with the phrase “in everything”, and applies the principle to “everything” from murder, divorce, and revenge to generosity, prayer, fasting, and discernment. Luke, for his part, includes a shorter record of the sermon, but a few chapters later, follows the man’s question with the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is as follows. 

A man is attacked and left half dead on the road. Two respected Judeans pass him by, but a Samaritan stops to bandage his wounds, lifts him onto his animal, and pays for his continued care. It helps to recall who the Samaritans were. After the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel in the 8th century BCE, these tribes intermarried with other peoples and maintained worship on Mount Gerizim instead of Jerusalem. They were regarded with suspicion and hostility by the descendants of the southern tribes, including the Judeans, who saw them as impure and disloyal. So to praise a Samaritan as the true neighbour was unthinkable. 

But Jesus did more. He reframed the question: not “Who is my neighbour?” but “Who acted as a neighbour?” The original question delimited whom we must love, defining the scope of our moral obligation. But Jesus turned it around entirely. Instead of asking whom we are supposed to love, he made us consider who is doing the loving. We’re used to assuming that in the phrase “love your neighbour,” the neighbour is someone quite different from us; like the Samaritan, in this case. But in Jesus’ telling, the Samaritan is not the object of love — he is the one who loves. He is the one who treats a long-standing enemy as his own neighbour. He is the one who turns the other cheek, who shows mercy, who lives out the very ethic that Jesus teaches elsewhere, including its ultimate expression, “Father, forgive them,” spoken from the cross. The parable forces us to ask: might those we habitually vilify be more capable of compassion than we imagine? As such, Jesus doesn’t only challenge us to love across differences, but he invites us to recognize that the one we fear, reject, or despise may be the one who shows us what love looks like, despite how we treat them. That is the truly unsettling power of this story, which offers far more than a sentimental lesson about “being nice”, or the easy fairy-tale love about which we hear in songs and movies — love into which we “fall” as though by accident. 

bell hooks (1952–2021), a feminist scholar, cultural critic, and social activist, devoted her book “All About Love: New Visions” (1999) to challenging precisely this notion. Born Gloria Jean Watkins, she adopted the name of her great-grandmother as a pen name, styling it in lowercase to emphasize her message over her identity — a choice shared by several second-wave feminist writers. bell hooks authored more than thirty books exploring the intersections of race, gender, class, and spirituality. Raised in a Christian home, she never rejected her faith in adulthood, despite her subsequent engagement with Buddhism. However, hooks critiqued patriarchal and authoritarian structures that pervade institutional Christianity, especially where they uphold male dominance or racial injustice, and insisted upon returning to the heart of Jesus’ radical message: that is, love.

Yet to bell hooks, love is not a passive sentiment but “an act of will — both an intention and an action.” She insisted that “we do not have to love. We choose to love.” The Samaritan models that choice. He crosses the lines of culture, faith, and history to care for a wounded stranger in ways that are practical and consistent: bandaging, transporting, paying for care. In bell hook’s words, love is “daily, patient, and deliberate.” It can be dramatic, but more often it looks like cleaning up, sharing a meal, pausing to listen, choosing forgiveness — again and again, because of the dignity of the person beside us, which is based in God’s own image. Love takes commitment, courage, patience, and humility. 

Jesus’ parable collapses all boundaries between self and neighbour, friend and stranger, even between God and humanity. To love the neighbour is to love God. To offer mercy is to embody Christ. To receive care, even from unexpected sources, is to encounter grace. So, who are we in this story? The priest? The Levite? The Samaritan? The wounded one? As bell hooks reminds us, “to love well is the task in all meaningful relationships, not just romantic bonds.” Within our parish, our workplaces, our families, who have we ignored or avoided? Who might need a listening ear, a visit, a note of forgiveness? Who is lying wounded in our world today? Maybe, it is someone we would normally struggle to love. 

The Torah and the New Testament command fairness, empathy, and love for the stranger that Jesus fulfilled in his own ministry by healing, feeding, blessing, comforting, challenging, and at times, confronting. His call to “go and do likewise” means more than admiring, more than even imitating the Samaritan — in fact, it means opening ourselves to being blessed. 

Jesus’ sermon on the Mount/Plains, which builds up to the Golden Rule in both Matthew and Luke, opens with the Beatitudes. What reads like a set of unattainable standards is, effectively, a portrait of active love modelled by Jesus. Blessed are those who mourn—because they feel deeply and care truly. Blessed are the merciful—because like the Samaritan, they don’t give up on one another. Blessed are the peacemakers—because they value connection over being right. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness—not for ease or for perfection, but for what is just and good and true.

The blessings that Jesus announces are inseparable from the command to treat others with compassion and fairness. This is not just a feeling but an act of will — exactly as bell hooks describes — rooted in the knowledge that we are all neighbors, all children of God, and all worthy of mercy. So let us keep choosing love in action. Let us keep choosing to “do likewise”.