The Questions We are Left With

Luke 10:25-37, Colossians 1:3-10

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered what would be his last speech in Memphis, Tn. He was there in support of the sanitation workers who were on strike after the deaths of two black employees, due to unsafe working conditions. Tensions were high in Memphis. King was receiving death threats. On the night of the speech, a fierce thunderstorm was raging in the city – adding to the edginess of the moment. King, though not feeling well, showed up in Memphis to reinforce the mission of the movement and the peaceful stance that he was committed to uphold.

          Mid-speech, King said, “Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness.” Then he began a retelling of this well-worn parable we just heard, the Good Samaritan. In Dr. King’s telling of the parable, It came down to this: The question the priest and the Levite seem to ask themselves is, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But when the Samaritan came by, he reversed the question: “If I DO NOT stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”

The invitation to us today is to reconsider the questions asked in the text, to faithfully think them through, as we should.  And then to ponder the questions we are left with. But friends, jumping to the end, if I may, Jesus concludes the parable and conversation with the Lawyer by saying, Go, and Do Likewise. Faithfully thinking it through won’t be enough, in other words.

In a discussion with his Rabbi, a man said, “Why do you always answer a question with a question?” The Rabbi said, “How would you like for me to answer?”

A lawyer approaches Jesus with a (the first) question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus could have answered him with a litany of scripture, but that’s not the way to make a truth stick. So, he probes the questioner to find out where he’s coming from – the way any first century rabbi would have, “What is written in the law? How do you understand it?” Vintage rabbinical procedure.

The lawyer responds by quoting the Shema from Deuteronomy 6, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” and includes Leviticus 19:18, “and [you should love] your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27).

Classic Hebrew vision. He nailed it! Jesus applauded him and said, Go and do that! Put this vision into practice and you will inherit eternal life. But instead of embracing that he already had the answer to his question, he asked for one more point of clarification, “well, but… Who is my neighbor?”

Another question for us to analyze. What does it say about the Lawyer that he didn’t ask, “How do I love my neighbor?” John Claypool suspects that the question is asked as a delaying tactic. Rather than have to go and do what he has confirmed, he wants to think about it, talk about it a little more. Guilty. I confess: I have done this myself. Analysis paralysis. Let’s study this a little more before we take a leap. I mean we wouldn’t want to get it wrong.

Dr. King said, ‘...that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate.” But Jesus pulled that question from the air in which it hung, and he “placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho.” 

The Jericho road is a dangerous road. Jerusalem sits 2500 feet above sea level. Jericho is 850 feet below sea level. This dramatic drop in elevation is why Jesus began his story saying, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. The two places are only about 15 miles apart, but it's a steep drop of 3300 vertical feet.  One can imagine this winding road being a common place for ambushers to lie in wait. So, when preachers have imagined why the priest and the Levite didn’t stop, they have speculated that it may have been about purity laws (they couldn’t touch a bloody body and then perform their duties in the temple), or that they were late for a meeting and didn’t have the time to stop; that may have all been right. But it may have also been about their personal safety and the dangers they might encounter if they stopped to take care of this one who had already been a victim of robbery and a beating. Perhaps his robbers were still around. Or maybe it was a set up.

See, students of the scripture like us, today, have had plenty of time to analyze the story, the details, even justify when the two didn’t stop. The Lawyer didn’t have that kind of advantage, so I’m pretty sure Jesus is going for a more obvious truth when he says, But then a Samaritan came down the road and he saw the man. He had compassion for him, so he stopped, washed his wounds and bandaged him up. Then, he put him on his own animal and took him into town where he gave him a place to stay, cared for him overnight and made provision for him to stay there and be cared for until he could return. Dangerous unselfishness.

With that conclusion, Jesus reframes the man’s original question and asks him, Of those three, who proved to be a neighbor?

Maybe because of the bitter tension between Jews and Samaritans; maybe because Samaritans were descendants of a “mixed population;” maybe because they occupied the land following the conquest by Assyria (in 722BC); maybe because the Samaritans opposed rebuilding the Temple and Jerusalem; maybe because they constructed their own place of worship on Mount Gerizim; maybe because they were considered ceremoniously unclean, socially outcast, and religious heretics… The Lawyer could not even say the name, “Samaritan” in answer to Jesus’ question. But he knew who proved to be a neighbor. So, he answered him, “the one who showed mercy.”

Where are you in the story? Some days, I am the merciful good Samaritan and other days, I am a hurried, dis-oriented, unmerciful, preoccupied Priest who is asking the wrong questions: 

How far does my responsibility go here?

What is the least I am required to do to get by?

What is this going to cost me?

Who deserves mercy?

If I stop to help this person, what will happen to me?

Will we choose complicity while we keep thinking about it?

OR Will we choose to be a neighbor?

I think another one of those questions we are left with is this: On those other days, when I’m the one in the ditch, Who will I allow to be a neighbor to me?

One of our ESL volunteers has told me about being invited several times by a Syrian family to join them for a meal, or “just come in for tea.” Usually, he says, he doesn’t want to impose, and he has other things to do of course. And he wouldn’t want to take food from this large family that has enough mouths to feed already. But this woman, she continues to invite him because she appreciates the ministry, his kindness, the volunteers accommodation of providing transportation - not only to classes, but also to Manna House and so on. So, one day, he finally said yes. He was invited inside to a beautifully set table, abundant with homemade foods. The smells were amazing, the dishes were a feast to the eyes even before they passed the lips.  He sat at the table with the family and ate until he couldn’t eat anymore.

So, I ask you, Who was a neighbor?

Before we decide, may God give us the grace to realize who has been neighbor to us: who has helped us—especially of those we ignore or discount, like day-laborers, the girl at the checkout counter, the migrant worker; or the guy who washes the dishes. We are dependent on the very Samaritans we often discount or exclude. There is mutual appreciation in real neighboring. The parable suggests that God comes to us in ways and in the people we least expect.

Go and do likewise.     

Endnotes

Claypool, John R., Stories Jesus Still Tells: The Parables

Craddock, Fred, Interpretation commentary series, Luke

https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm

https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=747 (Rilke quote)

Taylor, Barbara Brown, An Altar in the World

Wyant, Jennifer S. Working Preacher commentary, Luke 10:25-37, 2025