We’ve been talking over the last month about what it means to see our neighbor - to really recognize them as individuals beyond the contexts and situations we meet them in. But we’ve known all along that merely seeing people isn’t enough. At some point, we must translate our seeing into doing.
But what does that look like? How can we know how to act - and have the courage to do so? And why, in middle of the busyness that fills our lives, while we still honor our responsibilities to family and work and immediate community, would we bother?
This is where the parable of the Good Samaritan instructs us, as followers of Christ, to be different. To understand that we can’t demonstrate and experience the love of Christ on our own or in our isolated enclaves. To reverse the question.
It's possible that those men [who passed the wounded stranger by] were afraid….And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the 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 there for quick and easy seizure.
And so the first question that the priest asked, 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?"
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, 3 April 1968
When we reverse the question, we turn the corner toward authentic service. We are able to finally move beyond our comfortable isolation and into another person’s reality that we may not yet understand. We are placed in the uncomfortable place of asking a question to which we don’t know the answer. We move from merely seeing a problem, to knowing a person, to beginning to respond in love.
How can you reverse the question today?
How can you reverse the question today?
