The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) may be Jesus’ best known parable. It shows a person helping someone in need: being their neighbour.
But not just any person.
It was a Samaritan.
To Jesus’ earliest followers the Samaritans would have been an out-group. They would have been considered “Other”, not “Us”. The parable challenged its audience to consider the low-status Samaritan not by the status they had, but the good that they did. It Because it was the Samaritan, not the Priest or the Levite, who was the neighbour to the one in need.
Samaritans are no longer an out-group today. Today, we have new out-groups. But the parable’s principle remains the same.