The world needs Good Samaritans

God calls us “to love our neighbor”.....we know the story in Luke 10/The Good Samaritan, and just as the experts of the law discovered..... I also have learned that the call of The Christ in not an easy call, it is one of sacrifice and stepping into “stuff” that is not always comfortable. It is often costly and it is often a call to the unloveable.

What I find amazing about this scripture is the people that you would “think” would be the ones to stop and help, are just the ones that passed by and they didn’t just pass by, but they CROSSED the road and passed by! They wanted to make sure there was no way they were going to get caught up in that mess. We think that way don’t we...we see the beggar at the traffic light holding a sign for money, we try to change lanes so we don’t have address the situation, or we fiddle with our radio or phone so we don’t make eye contact...I am sure like us, the priest and the Levite had other more urgent, more “godly” things to do and certainly there was going to be some one else to pass by that would help. But really, they should help themselves, is what we really think.
But here is where I see the problem for us..here is where we are called to change....when we read this story we always compare ourselves to the ones who passed by or the one who helped. And surely I am more like the one who helped...”I help people” But what if..what if, we put ourselves in the ditch?
What if we put ourselves in the place where without the compassion and mercy of someone else we would die???
It is this place of understanding that allows us to be the one with compassion and mercy that had no limits...
We are not called to a shallow sympathy for the world around us, I am sure the priest and levite felt “bad for the man”.. but we are called to ACTION... A true compassion that allows us to open ourselves up to poor, the oppressed, the hungry, the naked, the crippled, the sick, the homeless..the hurting.. it is then, that we experience a love and compassion that is powered by the one who calls us “to go and do the same”. Because when we choose to Love....Hope happens.... Change happens.
And this my friends is the very hope and change those living “in the ditch” of extreme poverty are praying for. The world needs good samaritans..people who like the man in the story who extended himself, without even knowing the total cost “whatever more it costs I will pay it”