'Neighbors'
are not just nearby

Luigino Bruni

Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan to answer the scribe who asked him, at the end of a dialogue about eternal life and the Law: "Who is my neighbor?" Debate at that time on this question was centered on social distance.  How far does ‘my neighbor’ extend? Does it extend to one’s relatives? To members of my community? Or does it go beyond that? Proximity was understood as concentric circles: First the family, then relatives, then friends, etc. And it was this concept that Jesus sent into crisis.

"A man was coming down from Jerusalem to Jericho..." . It was a man – anthropos in the original Greek – without other descriptive adjectives, probably a Jew (‘he came down from Jerusalem’). But like in other cases, the lack of qualifying adjectives universalizes and excludes no human being. A thirty-kilometer road, vaguely marked out at that time, rocky and deserted, unsafe... In fact, as Cardina Ravasi has said,  it cannot be ruled out that Jesus took his cue from a crime story. 

We know nothing else about his wealth, status as a merchant or pilgrim, his age, or his guilt or innocence in fleeing from prison or creditors. We don't know, and we do not have to know. He was a man like us, like everyone else. And this man runs into robbers, who seriously injure him ("leaving him half dead").

Religion is not enough...

Two people pass by, but they are not just ‘men’. They are qualified people. They are religious men, professional worshipers, and therefore also responsible for care and assistance to the poor and victimized within that society. A first-century listener of the parable would know full well that these two men would have had to stop for supplies and other details, but they kept going. They made a quick cost/benefit calculation and then continued onwards, in accordance with their own programs. We don't know much more than that, because it was unimportant to Luke. What was important was their agenda prevailed over that emergency. They kept going, circling around him. They bypassed him.

The first message: religion is not enough to make us stop in front of a victim. The world is full of religious people who come out of a mass or a mosque, and do not stop to help victims along the way. It is not enough to bring together all religious believers for a civilization of proximity, of closeness. Something more is needed.

Then a third man passes by, who is also qualified. He is a Samaritan, belonging to a community historically hostile to Jews, and that hostility was still alive in first-century Palestine. Thus, he was a sort of schismatic, a "heretic", of a community that in the Bible is called "the stupid people who dwell in Shechem", indeed, "not even a people" (Sir 50:25-26).

So, he was the least "close" to that man. He had a horse and was someone passing through a hostile land, perhaps he was a merchant. And he had fewer moral and civil obligations to stop. He had more reasons not to stop. But he did.

The need for a new idea of proximity, of closeness

Pope Francis chose this parable as the cornerstone of his encyclical, Fratelli tutti: "The distinctions between Judean and Samaritan, priest and merchant, fade into insignificance. Now there are only two kinds of people: those who care for someone who is hurting and those who pass by; those who bend down to help and those who look the other way and hurry off." (n. 70). A universal fraternity, Chiara Lubich would say, centered on proximity and not on (physical) closeness. The Samaritan who becomes "neighbor" is the least "close" to the victim. The first two were the closest but they did not enter into proximity. The one who had the least reason to enter into proximity, became the neighbor. During a trip, the Samaritan came across an unexpected event, recognized a victim and chose proximity. That Samaritan decides to become a ‘neighbor’. Blood brothers are born. Neighbors become so by choosing to become so. It goes beyond all reasoning about bonds of closeness.

This distinction between nearby and neighbor is essential, also for political, social and economic discourse. The economist, philosopher, and Nobel Prize winner, Indian Amartya Sen, grasped this. For every idea of justice, the starting point is impartiality; an open and universal impartiality, which gives every citizen of the world the right to invoke justice. The idea of justice as impartiality needs a new idea of proximity, one not linked to geographical, ethnic, religious or national nearness. And it is in this context that Sen, a non-Christian layman, uses the parable of the Samaritan as a reference, a parable which revolutionizes the idea of neighbor. Proximity had normally been understood as geographical, ethnic, affective, cultural proximity: one must love one's neighbor, and therefore one loves one's neighbor more than one's ‘less’ neighbor. But, the parable of the Samaritan, Sen says, tells us the neighbor is the one who "cares for that man". It is a going beyond all other non-impartial neighborhoods. Sen writes: " Jesus does not, on this occasion, directly discuss the duty to help others – all others – in need, neighbors or not, but rather raises a classificatory question regarding the definition of one’s neighbor…The duty to neighbors is not confined only to those who live next door.” And then adds: " The Samaritan is linked to the wounded Israelite through the event itself:"2.

The closeness born of the Gospel

The Gospel neighbor is not the one next door. The fraternity born of the proximity of the Gospel thus differs, and distances itself from all the other fraternities ever known throughout history. The neighbors to love are not only my compatriots or those who are part of my own community.  It is not like -- "Americans first, Italians first...". This makes no sense for the Gospel, and not even for Sen. The first people to be neighborly toward are the victims: all victims. Each victim is that person I meet along the way, without asking anything about their identity and "closeness" to me. It is therefore not a closeness of many "communitarianisms" or that of the populist "we", so strongly occupying the scene today. It is not the fraternity of those who are near. It is the fraternity of those who are far away. It is not the fraternity of equals, but of those who are different. It is not simple fraternity but an improbable fraternity. "Closed groups and self-absorbed couples that define themselves in opposition to others tend to be expressions of selfishness and mere self-preservation" (Fratelli tutti, 89).

Care is collective action

On a further note, most readings of this parable end their commentaries at the moment when the Samaritan assumes care of the victim and then hands him over to the innkeeper. This last verse of the parable has known allegorical interpretations, beginning with the Church Fathers. He becomes the second Good Samaritan. In entrusting the victim and the two denarii to the innkeeper, the Samaritan acted from a place of trust, of trust that during his absence his two denarii would be used to treat the sick and not squandered by the innkeeper. The innkeeper could have instead not cared for his guest, or perhaps in the end boasted of many other expenses invented for his care. The conclusion of Luke's parable tells us that the Samaritan decided to trust when he had every reason not to. 

We do not know why Luke ended this parable by associating the innkeeper with the Samaritan’s actions. Perhaps Luke wanted to tell us that care is always a collective action, that one person is not enough to save a half-dead human being. What we do know, however, is that this given and, perhaps, unnecessary conclusion to the economics of the parable is indeed a good message for the world of business and labor. In a Gospel that generally does not look positively upon merchants and the wealthy, we find a generous gaze falls upon the innkeeper ‘merchant’, who had an undervalued and little respected profession, but who was paid by the Samaritan for his work. 

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1 For further information, cf. chapter 10 of L. Bruni, The Gospel of Luke. A rereading, Ed. Paoline, Rome 2024.

2 A. Sen, The idea of justice, Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge (USA), 2009, pg. 172.