Jesus the Foreigner (by Anselm Gruen) published with the kind permission of Continuum.

In some parables Jesus has painted a self portrait. The self-portrait that which fascinates me (Anselm) most is the story of the Good Samaritan. A man is going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he is attacked by robbers. They steal his clothes, his money and possessions. They half kill him. Doubled up in pain, the man is injured in the dust. A priest is going along the road. “He saw him and passed him by” (Luke 10:32). A Levite does the same thing. A Samaritan, a foreigner, someone who was suspect to the Jews, an “outcast”, sees the man and has compassion on him. He pours oil and wine on his wounds, binds them up and puts him on his donkey, to take him to an inn. In this Samaritan Jesus paints an image of himself.

Jesus is a foreigner. He isn’t the typical pious Jew. He comes from Galilee, which seemed suspect to the Jews. Pagan tribes had also settled in Galilee. They had mixed with the Israelite population and were no longer pure Jews. The Samaritans were despised even more by the Jews than the Galileans were. The Samaritans were the descendants of the Asiatic tribes which had been settled in Samaria after the Israelites had been carried off to exile in Assyria. They had accepted Yahweh religion; however, they didn’t worship Yahweh in the temple in Jerusalem but on Mount Gerizim. Jesus identified with this Samaritan. He comes from another world, not the familiar world of pure Judaism.

In the person – man or woman – who has fallen victim to the robbers and is lying plundered and half dead by the wayside, Jesus paints an image of us. We have been hurt by our life history. We’re full of wounds inflicted by others (even those closest to us). People have robbed us, they have sapped our energy. We have given them everything. Now we’ve nothing but ourselves. We are lying in the dust and cannot get up again.

The Greek word for human being, anthropos, comes from the verb anatre-pein, which means “hold up something, raise something.” Our life has prevented us from walking upright. Now we’re dependent on the compassion of others if we’re to have ground under our feet again. The representative of religion and its cult pass us by. Jesus is the Samaritan, the foreigner, who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, from the holy city to one of the oldest cities in human history. Luke portrays Jesus for us as the divine wanderer who comes down from heaven to visit us human beings where we live. The Greek word for visit is episkeptein. It means cast an eye on something, look something over, inspect it.

Jesus comes down from heaven to see how things are going with us. He looks at us and views us lying robbed and injured by the wayside. He doesn’t pass me by when I’m wounded, as the priest and Levite did. Full of compassion, he bends over me and pours oil and wine on my wounds.

Jesus the Messiah, the anointed one, anoints our wounds with oil. Oil is the symbol of the healing power of Jesus. The wine is an image of his love. Jesus binds up our wounds, raises us up and puts is on his donkey.

Van Gogh painted a marvellous image of the Good Samaritan. The image quivers with effort. The Samaritan is making a supreme effort to get the wounded man on his donkey. The church fathers interpreted this scene to mean that Jesus lays us and our suffering on his shoulders to raise us to the cross and set us upright. On the cross Jesus dies upright, outstretched. Van Gogh, who himself greatly suffered from his inner divisions, probably understood more than anyone else what it meant for Jesus to raise up the man lying in the dust, to raise him from the dust as it were like Adam, and to create him anew.

Jesus paints a fine self-portrait here. In this portrait Jesus approaches us in his undistorted sensitivity. In the two thousand years since then, countless men and women have made efforts to accept those who have been robbed and injured, those who have been overlooked and are lying on the roadside, to go to them and raise them up. From this image Mother Teresa drew the strength to turn to men and woman lying in the streets of Calcutta, uncared for by the representatives of either state or religion. Within her something of the image of Jesus has shone out in our time.
The image of the Good Samaritan has also asked too much of many people who believed they had to drag the wounded around with them all their lives. But Jesus paints a more humane image. It’s enough to bring the wounded person to the next inn and leave then there. The innkeeper, probably God, will then care for him. Jesus has picked us up and carried to the cross, so raised up there we can go our own way once more. We need bear one another to the next inn. We are not therapists who can heal all wounds. We go part of the way with the wounded and bring them into the saving sphere of God, so that they are healed.

Questions;
Who has wounded you and plundered you? Where are you lying half dead by the wayside? Imagine Jesus coming to you and pouring oil and wine into your wounds. Allow Jesus to raise you up.

Jesus painted the portrait of the Samaritan to invite us to act as he does. Where are the wounded and plundered people lying on the wayside of your life? To whom should you go today?