who is my neighbor?
A religious leader once asked Jesus this question: “And who is my neighbor?”
Not to learn.
But to test Him.
Jesus answered with a story.
A man is beaten down, poor, and left for dead, sitting on the side of a well-traveled path. A religious leader passes by. A political leader passes by.
People who know the Scriptures pass by. People who are “like him” pass by.
But one person stops. An outsider. A person considered impure by the religious leaders. A person considered on the wrong side by the political leaders. A person considered “less than” or “other” by those waiting for Jesus’ answer to the question that was asked.
A Samaritan. Someone of mixed lineage. Someone not “like them.”
dangerous compassion
The Samaritan does not begin his interaction with the man with merely kind words.
He begins with compassionate action.
He kneels.
He binds his wounds.
He uses his own resources.
He risks embarrassment and judgment.
He does not first ask how the man ended up there.
He does not consider the optics of the situation.
He does not calculate what helping him might cost him financially.
He sees the suffering of another person and he moves toward it.
That is what makes the story dangerous to the ones asking the question of Jesus.
Because compassion always disrupts relational power dynamics.
people who pass by
Jesus could have chosen random travelers to ignore the wounded man. He could have made the ones who passed by Samaritans or Roman leaders. He could have made the wounded man the “other” and the one who stops someone “like them.”
But he didn’t.
He chose their religious leader to pass by.
He chose their political leader to pass by.
People who loved God.
People who taught Scripture.
People who believed they were faithful and on the “right side” of God’s story.
Sure, they did not actively harm the man.
They simply ignored him. Looked the other way. Kept walking.
And that is where the story becomes uncomfortable.
Many times, we are not the “villain” of the story.
We are just the passerby.
We are the ones with good theology and busy schedules.
We are the ones managing relational influence, public messaging, preserving institutions.
We are the ones who believe we are on the “right side of history.”
But the wounded are still there, along our well-traveled paths.
Those who have lived hard lives.
Those who can’t “dress up” or hide their messes.
Those who have had to leave their homes behind to make a better life for their kids.
Some are unhoused or hungry.
Some struggle with mentally illness or medical complications.
Most are the ones whose stories are too complex for campaign slogans. For church budgets. For social media influencer posts.
And we are tempted to judge them instead of kneel beside them.
To decide they just should have worked harder. Just shouldn’t have done this or that. That it is ultimately their fault or even God’s will that they continue to struggle or suffer…
the wrong kind of compassion
The Samaritan in Jesus’ story was the wrong ethnicity, religion, and on the wrong side of political lines to be the one helping the man. He was the wrong kind of compassion.
That was the scandal. That’s what made Jesus choosing him as the “hero” so wrong.
Compassion that broke tribal loyalty. Sacrifice that broke political allegiances.
The question from this story is not simply: “Am I kind?” or “Do I have compassion?”
The question is: Has my loyalty to ethnicity, to ideology, to political party, even to national identity trained me to walk past certain people without noticing? To allow harm to happen to people simply because they are not “like us.”
Have I learned to see suffering through the filter of the empire’s power dynamics?
The religious and political leaders may have told themselves they were protecting something sacred. But they protected it at the cost of their faith. At the cost of God’s love.
In denying compassion and mercy to the man, they denied the One who is the very embodiment of those things.
mercy over power
In the image posted, there are leaders, officials, protesters, officers – all convinced that their cause matters.
And maybe it does.
But in the foreground, someone is hurting.
The Kingdom of God is revealed not in the speeches or the strategies, but in the kneeling.
The Samaritan did not win a theological argument. He did not win a campaign for office.
He simply refused to step past a person.
He chose mercy, not political allegiance.
No one applauds for the Samaritan at the end of the story. Certainly no one thanks Jesus for his teaching.
But He does end his conversation with a command:
“Go and do likewise.”
a question for today
If Jesus told this story today, who would be cast as the Samaritan?
And how would we be uncomfortable with that choice?
Who have we learned to distrust, to discount, to disregard – who might actually be nearer to the heart of God than we are?
And who have we stepped around while arguing about being on the right side of politics or of power?
This week, ask yourself:
Where have I walked past someone because helping would complicate the world’s narrative that I’ve believed about them?
The Kingdom of God does not belong to the ones “on the right side of history.” It does not belong to the church leader who passes the theological purity test. It does not belong to the church member who made the politically expedient choice.
It belongs not to the conspiracy theorists nor to the “truth tellers.”
It belongs to the one who kneels.
Which are you? Which one will you be?
*This blog is a part of a series of Lenten reflections. I encourage you to go back and start with the Ash Wednesday reflection for context if this is the first one you’ve read.
