Every year at Passover the boy Jesus and His family made the trek to Jerusalem to observe the festival. The gospel of Luke records a famous account of one of these trips, when Jesus was twelve and held the elders in the Temple spellbound with His wisdom.
But let’s imagine the following year, when He was thirteen, His mother decided they could stay on for a few days after the feast, allowing Jesus time to confer with the elders. Joseph, meanwhile, would go down to Jericho in order to help a cousin build his house. Originally two friends were to accompany him on this dangerous road, but both men having suddenly taken ill, Joseph determined to make the journey alone. When Mary objected, he assured her, “I’ll be fine. My cousin is counting on me to come. The Lord will protect me.”
The rest of this story you know:
A certain man went down
from Jerusalem to Jericho
and fell among thieves,
who stripped him naked,
beat him, and departed,
leaving him half dead.
How tragic this story would be if it ended here! But as you know, Joseph was rescued by a kindly Samaritan, who bandaged his wounds, placed the poor body on his own donkey, took him to an inn and cared for him, and upon leaving, paid for his continued care. As it happened, Joseph, an old man whose strength was broken, died six months later. But instead of dying brutalized and abandoned by a roadside, he died in peace in the arms of his family.
If things had really happened this way, Jesus would never have forgottens the story his father must have told, again and again, of the loving Samaritan who had saved his life. When He grew up, Jesus too would tell this story many times, perhaps adding some details of His own to sharpen its moral, such as the priest and the Levite who happened along that road yet passed by on the other side.
It’s even possible that Jesus Himself, prior to this incident, had more or less believed the party line about Samaritans: not that they were slovenly, low-down, and treacherous—for the Lord did not regard people that way—but certainly that they were heretics, victims of a twisted theology. As indeed they were. But through the saintly conduct of one Samaritan towards His father, the young Savior may have experienced an early instance of the truth that correct theology is not necessarily the soul of love.
God made humankind, it is said, because He loves stories. I’ve reimagined this one, with its invented backstory, to suggest how storytelling might have become such an important feature of Christ’s ministry, and to illustrate something of the manner in which He composed His parables. Generally, I suspect, they were rooted in some factual occurrence, but the Master no doubt altered details and added new material in order to highlight His Message.
But let’s go one step further. Because of the Samaritan’s loving care to his own earthly father, Jesus would never have told this story without deep emotion. Indeed we may conjecture that through the parable Jesus Himself may have come to recognize more deeply His own neighbor. Always after this, instead of traveling to Jerusalem via Jericho, perhaps Jesus and Mary made a practice of taking the more direct route through Samaria. If anyone gave them trouble, they would tell the story of the goodness of the Samaritan to their Joseph, whereupon they would be welcomed to pass.
Thus the Prince of Peace may have experienced early on the power of stories as a means of waging peace.
