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Good Samaritan Readings by Nicaraguan Peasants
Jean-Pierre Ruiz

The priest who worked with the farmers and fishermen of Solentiname, Nicaragua, knew that poverty and oppression were no barrier to understanding the Bible. He discovered that the Bible speaks to powerfully to oppressed people. Their insights, in turn, can teach all of us.

When the peasants of his parish heard the parable of the Good Samaritan, they understood it as a story directed to them. The man by the side of the road was no stranger to them. They had seen his bruised face in those of their Latin American brothers and sisters who were victims of violence and torture.

The people of Solentiname identified with the Samaritan, a victim of prejudice. His example gave them the strength to have mercy on those around them.

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When the villagers of the Nicaraguan town of Solentiname gathered for Sunday worship, the people themselves took an active part. They explored and reflected on the message and meaning of the Scriptures instead of passively listening to a homily or sermon preached by their priest. Each Sunday, copies of the Gospels were distributed to those who could read. One person read aloud the passage for the day's study. Their priest recorded many of their discussions. He published them as The Gospel in Solentiname.

He learned from the people the deep truth of Jesus’ words of grateful prayer in Luke’s Gospel: "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants" (Luke 10.21). The peasants of Solentiname, along with others in Latin America, have come to understand this reference to infants as inclusive of poor people like themselves. Both infants and the poor have to depend on others and have trouble making their voices heard.

The priest who worked with the farmers and fishermen of Solentiname knew that while poverty and oppression are no privilege, they are no barrier to understanding the Bible. They saw the God of the Bible as a God of justice who seeks to free the oppressed from every form of injustice. In that way, the Bible speaks to oppressed peoples. It leads them to key insights that deserve the attention of all of us. When the peasants of Solentiname heard the parable of the Good Samaritan, they understood it as a parable directed to them.

The people of Solentiname heard the parable of the Good Samaritan as a call to act with compassion. To them, it was a challenge to break down barriers of apathy and fear. It challenged them to work toward building unity. They should "go and do the same" as the Samaritan who showed compassion to his wounded companion by the side of the road. The man by the side of the road was no stranger to them. They had seen his bruised and bloodied face in the faces of their Latin American brothers and sisters who were victims of violence and torture.

Latin American readers of the parable recognize that they need to be like the Samaritan, himself a victim of prejudice. They cannot remain passive in the face of the urgent need of the those they meet along the road of life’s journey. Claiming their own human dignity, they embrace the responsibility that real unity demands. They accept the call to become agents of genuine compassion.

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As the Peruvian priest and theologian Gustavo Gutierrez insists, "We must not forget that the word of God issues its challenges. The Scriptures are not a passive store of answers to our questions. We indeed read the Bible, but we can also say that the Bible ‘reads us.’ In many instances, our very questions will be reformulated. In the gospels this happens frequently to those who approach Jesus. For example, when Jesus is asked, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ he…inquires in turn, ‘Which of these three…proved neighbor to the man?’" Gutierrez understands that the Bible poses "a challenge that can shake us from our inertia, an answer that cannot be shackled by our questions."

When the villagers of the Nicaraguan town of Solentiname gathered for Sunday worship, the people themselves took an active part in exploring and reflecting on the message and significance of the Scriptures instead of listening to a homily or sermon preached by their priest. Each Sunday, copies of the Gospels were distributed to those at the worship service who were able to read, and one person read aloud the passage on which that day’s discussion would be based. Their priest recorded many of the dialogues that were the result of their shared reflections on the Scriptures and published them as The Gospel in Solentiname, because he learned from the people there the deep truth of Jesus’ words of grateful prayer in Luke’s Gospel: "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants" ( Luke 10.21). The peasants of Solentiname, along with others in Latin America, have come to understand this reference to infants as an inclusive reference to poor people like themselves, because both infants and the poor find themselves in situations of dependence on others and without realistic means for self-determination or for making their voices heard.

Along with many other Latin Americans, the priest who worked with the farmers and fishermen of Solentiname knew that while poverty and oppression are certainly no privilege, they are no barrier to understanding the Bible. In fact, because the God of the Bible is a God of justice who seeks to free the oppressed of this world from every form of unjust domination, the Bible speaks to oppressed peoples in special ways, leading them to key insights that deserve the attention of all of us.

When the peasants of Solentiname heard the parable of the Good Samaritan, these were some of the impressions they shared with each other and with people far beyond their own Latin American setting. On hearing the words, "An expert in the Law of Moses stood up and asked Jesus a question to test him: ‘Teacher, what must I do to have eternal life?’," Manuelito, one member of the community in Solentiname, commented, "They believed in a heap of religious rules, and they wanted to see if Jesus said they had to follow them; if he said they didn’t, he set himself against the law."

Jesus turned the question around because he recognized that his questioner was an expert in religious law who should have been familiar with the ways in which the Scriptures teach the path to eternal life. The lawyer answered, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind" and "love your companion as much as you love yourself." Approving of this answer, Jesus then challenged the lawyer to put these words into practice, "That is right. Do this and you will live." Laureano commented on the dialogue between Jesus and the lawyer: "In trying to catch Jesus in a trap, he was the one who fell into the trap. Jesus makes him say things he doesn’t do." Another member of the community speculated, "Maybe he wanted to argue with him about worship in the temple, the sabbath, unclean food, purification, and many other laws…and Jesus makes him say what’s important."

The peasants of Solentiname who were listening to the dialogue between Jesus and the expert in the law and applying it to their own religious practices were not very aware of first-century Jewish beliefs and practices. Instead they were concerned with the ways in which the gospel addressed them and their own religious observances, because they recognized in the interchange between the lawyer and Jesus an invitation to reexamine the integrity of their own Christian religious practices. Sadly, the concern Manuelito and Laureano expressed for integrity in their own Christian religious observance did not prevent them from misunderstanding and misrepresenting first-century Jewish religious observance in dangerously negative ways.

The priest in Solentiname asked his people why they thought the lawyer then asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" To this Olivia replied, "He didn’t know his neighbor because he didn’t have love. He did like they do nowadays: give a little alms, a bit of bread to a few poor children." Olivia then added, "Your neighbors are all of humanity, that’s what the fellow didn’t know, that his neighbors were everybody." Alejandro suggested that the lawyer thought his companions were only his neighbors "who lived across the street, who surely were well-to-do like him." Rebecca reflected on the unselfish commitment to others that genuine love requires: "Maybe he loved his children, his close friends, but that was a selfish love; you can’t call that love, because if you love just a tiny few, when there’s all that enormous crowd of people, you’re not loving anything."

On hearing the parable itself, Olivia understood that Jesus gave the lawyer "as an example, a person of another race and another religion so we can know that everybody is a neighbor. He gave as an example one who wasn’t a neighbor but just the opposite, an enemy." Jesus has answered the lawyer’s questions not with a legal judgment but with a parable. On the connection between the man’s query and Jesus’ answer, Felipe commented, "The man’s question was what did you have to do to win eternal life, true life, and Jesus’ answer is: love. Love is life."

Laureano recognized that "being charitable to the poor, giving them worn-out clothes, isn’t loving your neighbor. Love of your neighbor is comradeship. Because that man not only cared for the wounded man but he took him to a hotel and paid for his room and said he’d pay for anything extra when he came back and, of course, from then on they remained friends; they were already comrades." Laureano learned from the parable that "The lesson is that everybody must be our neighbor, our companion, and that there should be no barriers between us." To this Manuel added, "Where there’s mutual aid, that’s where there’s neighbors. Only where there’s comradeship, where there’s companions and comrades, there’s neighbors. Jesus makes it clear that some, because they’re selfish, stop being neighbors of the others."

Recognizing the connection between love of God and compassion towards our human companions, Elvis remarked, "The fact is that in your neighbor there’s God. It’s not that love of God gets left out, it’s that those who love their neighbor are right there loving God."

In the epilogue to the third volume of The Gospel in Solentiname, written after the Nicaraguan National Guard ravaged the Solentiname community in 1977, the priest who served among the people there wrote, "As the peasants of Solentiname got deeper and deeper into the Gospel, they could not help but feel united to their brother peasants who were suffering persecution and terror, who were imprisoned, tortured, murdered, whose wives were violated and whose homes were burnt. They also felt solidarity with all who with compassion for their neighbor were offering their lives. For this solidarity to be real, they had to lay security, and life, on the line."

For Latin Americans like the people of Solentiname, merely hearing the parable of the Good Samaritan is not enough. People like Laureano, Olivia, Elvis, Manuel, and Felipe, ordinary Latin American peasants, heard the parable of the Good Samaritan as a challenging summons to compassionate action, as a challenge to break down barriers of indifference and fear and to work toward building active solidarity, to "go and do the same" as the Samaritan who showed compassion to his wounded companion by the side of the road. The man by the side of the road was no stranger to them, for they had seen his bruised and bloodied face in the faces of their Latin American brothers and sisters who were victims of violence and torture, who were stripped of everything they had and robbed of their freedom and human dignity.

In his book A Theology of Liberation, Gustavo Gutierrez wrote, "The parable of the Good Samaritan ends with the famous inversion which Christ makes of the original question. They asked him, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ and when everything seemed to point to the wounded man in the ditch on the side of the road, Christ asked, ‘Which of these three was neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ The neighbor was the Samaritan who approached the wounded man and made him his neighbor. The neighbor…is not he whom I find in my path, but rather he in whose path I place myself, he whom I approach and actively seek."

Latin American readers of the parable of the Good Samaritan, including the people of Solentiname, recognize that they, like the Samaritan—himself a victim of prejudice and ethnic stereotyping in the New Testament world—cannot remain passive in the face of the evident and urgent need of the companions they encounter along the road of life’s journey. Claiming their own human dignity, they simultaneously embrace the responsibility that real solidarity demands and thereby accept the call to become agents of genuine compassion.