A Heart Moved to Mercy — Luke 10:25-37
In the larger journey section of Luke 9:51–19:22, Jesus answers a lawyer’s question by asking a question. He then tells a parable which begins and ends with a wounded man (Lk 10:30,35) who is the focus for three people on a journey. They are from different classes — a priest (Lk 10:31), a Levite (Lk 10:32) and a Samaritan (Lk 10:33, 35). They arrive, see and respond.
Vincent van Gogh’s painting, completed a few months before his tragic death, places the wounded one in the centre of his depiction of Luke 10:25–37. He portrays mercy as action-orientated, interactive and found in unexpected places. The face of the wounded man is that of his brother, Theo, who had carried Vincent through his psychological and financial difficulties. Vincent painted himself in the role of the Samaritan. In this reversal, both stand in need of mercy which is both given and received. Jesuit, James Keenan, describes mercy as “the willingness to enter into the chaos of others” and invites us to journey into the many layers of this parable of mercy.
A Heart Moved with Compassion
The three men journeying the lonely 27 kms descent from Jerusalem to Jericho saw the wounded one but only the Samaritan “had a heart moved with compassion” (splagnizomai) Lk 10:33. This verb and its other forms in the New Testament means being moved from the depths of one’s being. It evokes the noun for womb-compassion (rahamim) which comes from the Hebrew word for womb (rehem).
There is a threefold pattern. There is a description of need, then a person is described as “having a heart moved with compassion”, and something must be done to address the need the heart has felt. We find this pattern in two other parables — when the father sees his lost son return (Lk 15:20) and when a person is caught in a huge debt (Mt.18:24–25, 27). Jesus, whose life and actions are the incarnation of God’s mercy, is described as “having a heart moved with compassion” when he met the funeral of the widow’s son (Lk 7:13) and healed the men who were blind (Mt 20:34). This threefold pattern is repeated when Jesus sees that the crowd “were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Mt 9:36) and cured their sick (Mt 14:14). Matthew says that after a great crowd had been with Jesus for three days he had compassion for them because they were hungry (Mt 15:32).
A Very Different World From Ours
The great crowds were mostly poor Jews living under various systems of the Roman occupation and making their livelihood from the land or sea. They had a collective history of being ruled by other nations. In the broadest sense most were rural peasants with little power over their economic or political situation and dominated by landlords and overlords. They were required to give in taxes any surplus they earned. If they fell into debt they lost their land. The land then fell into the hands of fewer and fewer. The poor became tenants, day labourers and some, like Jesus, were village artisans.
In this world the peasants may well have seen the bandits as heroes standing for justice, as social bandits who robbed the rich to help the poor. Possibly even those who first heard this story may have identified more with the bandits than with the wounded man.
Cultural Background
The Samaritan’s response to the wounded man showed generosity and care above cultural expectations. The well-known hatred and separation that existed between Jews and Samaritans has led us to see the Samaritan as “good” for coming to the wounded man’s aid. He was presumably a Jew from Jerusalem. However this obscures much about the Samaritan and the cultural situation of Jesus’ first hearers.
The story gives indications that the Samaritan is a merchant or trader. He journeys (Lk 10:33), he has an animal to carry his goods and he has with him two items typical of trade at the time — oil and wine (Lk 10:34). Traders were unpopular with peasants who regarded them as part of the system that oppressed and exploited them. Traders were despised by the elites who regarded them as new wealth and upstarts.
It seems that as a trader the Samaritan knew a typical stopping place for commercial people and he took the wounded man to an inn (Lk 10:35). Public inns were notorious for being dirty, noisy and basic. Only persons without families or social connections would dare stay at such a place. Also innkeepers had low moral reputations. The Samaritan took the wounded man to the inn, put himself into debt and gave himself and the man he was helping into the hands of the innkeeper.
Showing Mercy
The Samaritan showed mercy to the wounded man and drew on all he had available to care for him. He used the medicinal qualities of oil and wine on his wounds and fabric for bandages. His animal carried the wounded man and he paid for the stay at the inn with coins.
The threefold pattern in this parable guides us into the works of mercy: we see a need, then “having a heart moved with compassion” we decide how to address the need the heart has felt. In a world of structural sin where political and economic systems function to benefit those with power and wealth, immense harm is done to the majority of people. Mercy takes us to the root causes of suffering and injustice, to the works of justice.
No interpretation of Jesus’ parables can be made with absolute certainty because parables are not stories with neat, tidy answers. They are ambiguous and unpredictable, inviting the hearer to discover the reign of God. New Testament scholar, Douglas Oakman, suggests this parable is not about neighbourliness but what the kingdom is like, implying that the reign of God is found in unlikely and even immoral places. It is a parable of reversal. The lawyer to whom Jesus told the parable could not cope with where he found mercy. Instead of answering with the term Samaritan, he answers Jesus saying: “the one who showed mercy.”
In Van Gogh’s painting we see a portrayal of the giving and receiving of mercy. The two characters wear the same colour trousers, similar coloured head bands and one is losing his sandals to be bare-footed like the other. They show one act in “the great river of mercy which wells up and overflows unceasingly . . . from the heart of the Trinity, from the depths of the mystery of God” (Pope Francis, Misericordia Vultus, par 25). How might we give and receive justice and mercy in solidarity with those wounded by our political and economic systems?