The road to Jerusalem

 The road to Jerusalem 

Luke provides this context for the parable we have come to call “The Good Samaritan”:  A lawyer stands up from a crowd Jesus is teaching and asks him a series of questions, the last of which - according to Luke is “Who is my neighbor?” in answer to which Jesus tells the parable.

     But what if the lawyer doesn’t ask last, “Who is my neighbor?” but “How does one walk through the world – it’s a mess?” and Jesus tells the same parable:

     “A man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and left him for dead. It happened that a priest was going down the same road in the other direction, and when he saw the bloody, beaten man, he crossed the road – he walked around him on the other side. And Levite, also going to Jerusalem, when he came to where the man, bloody and beaten, was, did the same thing: he crossed the road and passed by on the other side.

     “Then a Samaritan on the same road came to where the man was, but he stopped to see if he might still be alive. He was! And the Samaritan wrapped up his wounds, put him on his donkey, and carried him to an inn that happened to be nearby.

     “He spent the night with the man, who told him what had happened to him. Indeed, they talked of all manner of things. The next day, the Samaritan took money out of his purse and gave it to the innkeeper, saying,‘Use this to take care of the man until I get back.’”

     Then, Jesus looked at the lawyer. And the lawyer said, “What?” And Jesus said, “Why are you always walking a straight line to Jerusalem?” And the lawyer said, “What?”

     If you have ears, let them hear.

12.04.15