4 Reflections on Jesus' response to "Who is my neighbor?" in the Gospel of Luke (10:25-37) to Live into in 2022
"The story of the Good Samaritan as told by Jesus is designed to split open the worldview of its hearer and let in a shaft of new and unexpected light. Instead of the closed world of Jesus's hearers, in which only their own kith and kin were properly to be counted as neighbours, Jesus demands that they recognize that even the hated and feared Samaritan is to be seen as a neighbour." + N.T. Wright
"Who is my neighbor? 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." + Gustavo Gutiérrez
"The Jericho Road is a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing ... In the day of Jesus it came to be known as the 'Bloody Pass.' And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the Levite asked was, 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?'" + MLK
"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. ... It is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit ... Our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest of kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously – no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption." + C.S. Lewis
Walking with Jesus transforms us to see others through His eyes. Welcoming and loving our neighbors like He does will give us the gift of stopping the rush of life to listen to and have compassion on those we get the privilege to cross paths with where we work, live, and play.
Christ is all,
Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan
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