The man who was robbed in the parable that we read in Luke 10 wasn’t just beaten up or without his money and valuables; it's worse than that. The robbers treated him like trash. They left him hopeless, helpless, and hanging on by a thread. He was treated as though he had no value and was disposable. He was wounded and exposed.
The two men, the priest and the Levite, who first come across this robbed man are men with the supposed character and means to take care of this hurting individual. But they see him, and they don’t help. Why? Maybe they had things to do and didn’t think they had time to stop. Maybe they had traveled down this road and they just had seen so many people like this guy on the side of the road and figured they couldn’t stop for every poor soul who ended up a victim here.
So many times, we, as Christians, see people in need, but we just keep walking. We’ve all missed opportunities alongside the road. Stopping just seems complicated. It seems draining and costly. But, like the priest and Levite, we probably aren’t able to see these hurting people, walk past, and not feel some level of guilt inside. We know we were supposed to stop as ambassadors of Heaven. Jesus made sure to use two people in the parable that he knew, and everybody else would know, would feel guilty for not acting. Yet, guilt never gets you where Jesus wants to get you.
So, we try harder, make some different commitments, and create new to-do lists of how we can be the “Good Samaritan” to all those we encounter on our path. But this doesn’t work either for most of us, and we still miss opportunities for a variety of reasons. Maybe we aren’t meant to identify as the Samaritan though. What if we aren’t supposed to identify with the priest or the Levite? What if we are more like the man on the road than anyone else?
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