A beautiful and challenging message for us about how neighborliness and mercy go hand in hand:

[The Samaritan] is described by the lawyer to whom Jesus tells the story as "the one who showed mercy" (v.37), and we are asked to "go and do likewise".

Now, this word mercy is a bit curious in this context, for the word mercy suggests an unmerited kindness, the gift of something undeserved. When a judge shows mercy in a criminal case, he is not responding to the facts, or what custom or even justice requires. But in the face of justice he shows mercy, that is, he forbears to do what is expected to someone whom he has in his power, and who has absolutely no claim upon him of any sort, and instead he shows compassion. It is not simply kindness; it is kindness in face of an opportunity to do otherwise. Mercy is not less than justice done; it is more than justice requires.

The reason why the Samaritan is called "good" and is described as "showing mercy" is that, as a stranger in Israel, a foreigner, he had no obligation to show hospitality to Jews, who were his sworn enemies; in fact, he might have been taught that a dead or dying Jew was one less Jew about whom to worry. Likewise, Jews traditionally were not encouraged to help a Samaritan; the law that tended to apply in this relationship was the law of the jungle. The Samaritan acted contrary to universal expectations and against his own cultural history and community interest; he showed mercy in spite of it all.

What this story demonstrates to us is that, if justice is the tool of the powerful, then mercy is the power of the weak, for herein is the power not simply to change conditions but to change minds and hearts. The Good Samaritan showed mercy when he could have exacted rough justice. And Jesus upholds him as one who, living beyond what the law requires, has a clue of what righteousness and eternal life are all about.

Simple justice simply will not do. The old definitions of justice and hospitality will not work. It is a new and radical day that Jesus proclaims. In showing mercy, hospitality to the strangers among us, we expand the circles of God's providential and refreshing love and thereby free ourselves as well as others from the bondage of our own narrow limits.

The story of the Good Samaritan told two thousand years ago has become a touchstone for those who ask not merely, "How am I to treat my next-door neighbour?", but "To whom am I called to be a neighbour?"

--from the sermon, "...and who is my neighbour?" by Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, preached at the June 2009 World Council of Churches conference