Go and Do the Same
The familiar stories from Jesus' life can lose their punch if we aren't careful. At the time, they were often stunning to the hearers and challenged accepted ideas about God and life. The parable of the Good Samaritan is a case in point.
In Luke 10, we find Jesus in the middle of a bustling life of ministry as he teaches and does miracles and sends out emissaries from his group telling of the good news. In the midst of it a lawyer called a time out, wanting to put Jesus on the spot. These religious lawyers knew the scriptures inside and out and called spiritual balls and strikes for the people. You may recall the back and forth, but here it is in a different version.
Then a religious lawyer stood up with a question to test Jesus. "What must I do to get eternal life?"
He answered, "What's written in God's Law? How do you interpret it?"
The lawyer replied, "That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence—and that you love your neighbor as well as you love yourself."
"Good answer!" Jesus said. "Do it and you will live."
Looking for a loophole, he asked, "And just how would you define 'neighbor'?"
I picture the scene as Jesus in the midst of a crowd and Mr. Big calls for the spotlight, strokes his beard, then hangs onto the lapels of his robe to hold court. Imagine a basso profundo voice casting that last line as his "gotcha" moment before the crowd. But Jesus turns and proceeds to tell one of his most well-known stories to illustrate the answer to the lawyer's question, and that surely sent ripples of discussion through the crowd.
It was radical. The story was upside-down. The typical villain is cast as the hero. Usual leaders were shown to be shallow.
Here's the upshot: A guy traveling down a narrow canyon between Jerusalem and Jericho was jumped, robbed, stripped, and beaten nearly to death. While two of the good religious folks we might hope to run to the rescue turned aside and scurried along, an outcast went to him, did EMT work, then carried him to a BnB and paid them to look over him, and more if it was needed.
Jesus turns back to the proud lawyer and answers his question with a question.
What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?
Imagine how quiet it became as the impact of the story thudded to the ground before the lawyer. In the most practical of ways, religion had failed this wounded man, and it was someone seen as unworthy, of low class and certainly not properly religious, who shines as the neighbor to the needy. It doesn't appear to matter to the Samaritan what race or religion is the guy in the ditch, just that he really needs help, and he helps. Good Sam may have not known or followed the law, but he did it.
After the lawyer admits who is the real neighbor, I imagine Jesus locking eyes with the man, possibly with a hand on his shoulder, and quietly saying,
Go and do the same.
Go and do the same and show compassion toward those we encounter, our neighbors.
Go and do the same as neighbors to our neighbors: the Liberals and Progressives, the MAGA crowd and Christian Nationalists, LGBTQIA+, Immigrants, the Poor, the Rich, the Fatherless, the Addicts, the Homeless.
Go and do the same without expectation of return from our neighbors.
Go and do the same.
Wow. Seemingly impossible without having Jesus' eyes that see every person as creatures of the creator who need hope...from the outhouse to the penthouse. And not done in our own power, but emboldened by God's own heart for the world. We can't fix all the wounded in the world, but we can help the one in front of us.
Al, go and do the same.
The hero of the story was the person who stepped in to help. He is called a neighbor to his neighbor. What will I be called?
...and music for the week...
How about a couple of lame jokes to oil the machine?
One day a man passed by a farm and saw a beautiful horse.
Hoping to buy the animal, he said to the farmer: "I think your horse looks pretty good, so I'll give you $500 for him."
"He doesn't look good, and he's not for sale," the farmer said.
The man insisted, "I think he looks good and I'll up the price to $1000!"
"He doesn't look so good," the farmer said, "but if you want him that much, he's yours."
The next day the man came back raging mad. He went up to the farmer and screamed, "You sold me a blind horse! You cheated me!"
The farmer calmly replied, "I told you he didn't look so good, didn't I?"
__________
This old fisherman would go out in his boat every morning and come back about an hour later with a cooler filled with fish.
The game warden got suspicious as to how the old guy always caught so many fish in such a short time, so he invited himself to go fishing with the old guy.
They went to the middle of the lake, the old guy pulls out a stick of dynamite and throws it overboard. Boom! Fish start floating to the surface and the old guy starts scooping them up in his net.
The game warden says, "You can't do that. It's illegal."
The old guy quietly lights another stick of dynamite, hands it to the game warden and says, "You gonna talk or are you gonna fish?"