Parables 4: The Good Samaritan Luke 10:25-37 page 1
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Parables 4: The Good Samaritan Luke 10:25-37 page 1 |
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'the
wounded man stands for Adam; Jerusalem, the heavenly city from which he has
fallen; the thieves, the devil who deprives Adam of his immortality; the priest
and the Levite, the Old Testament Law which could save no one; the Samaritan who
binds the man's wounds, Christ who forgives sin; the inn, the church; and the
innkeeper, the apostle Paul!' Now I imagine that none of you has probably ever heard a sermon on the parable that said anything like that! The perpetrator of that interpretation, which sounds so strange to our ears, was none other than St Augustine of Hippo, one of the greatest church leaders in the first five centuries of Christianity. We would say his interpretation is over-detailed and fundamentally incorrect. And it was because Christian preachers went to such extremes in making fanciful allegories that there has been a reaction against this approach in the last century. Scholars said, each parable has only one point. Good news for those of you who don't like three-point sermons! The problem was, the scholars could never agree what the single point of a particular parable was. And so the approach I am taking is to assume that to a limited extent you can see the parables of Jesus as allegories, provided you don't take it to ridiculous ends. And in doing so, you can accommodate the fact that the parables are often saying more than one thing. So let's explore this familiar parable by looking at the main characters and seeing what they might say to us.
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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration. |
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