The point of Jesus’ story could easily be missed. It’s subtle, and it’s condemning. For the religious scholar asking the questions , Jesus’ answer easily could have made him squirm, or get angry, or be remorseful depending on just what mood he’d been in over breakfast that day. But for us, who are at least somewhat familiar with the text as some sort of great children’s message about caring for others when they’re hurt, we often fail to get the important nuances of its meaning.

Jesus read the pompous insincerity of the religious scholar from the get-go. He was looking for a “lowest common denominator” answer. Jesus understood the tone in his question, not just the words. Rather than dealing with someone sincerely curious about what is required to live out a good and faithful life; what Jesus heard underneath the question was, “What is the least that I have to do to get my eternal reward?”

We sometimes wonder about the same thing. If I work a long week, spend a little time with family and friends, eat, sleep, brush my teeth, exercise, and try to keep my house clean, there’s not much time left for working on my pathway to the eternal. It’s not a new problem. If I’m going to make my spiritual life count, I better get it in while I can in the appropriate times designated. I’ll write a check to the church, show up on Sunday, maybe serve on a committee, pray for a few minutes, or come to a work day. That’s what we really think about, but we also know the correct answer, don’t we? – just like the religious scholar did.

The religious scholar knew the right answer. The way to eternal life is to: Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence – AND to love your neighbor as yourself. We can spout off this answer too. It’s about love, love for God, and love for others, and loving oneself enough to care about both God and neighbor. Jesus has us cornered. We know what’s required of us to inherit eternal life, but it seems so ambiguous and so difficult to accomplish even though it can be said so simply. Instead, we’d prefer to do some stuff, to complete the spiritual check-off list, and then go home to our regular lives.

So we return to that conniving religious scholar, and he blurts out what we’re too embarrassed to ask ourselves, “So, just how would you define neighbor?” Who, exactly, do we have to love here? Again, we want to know the minimum requirements please. We’re busy people. Can I limit my love to just those people who live in my house? How about just my clique at church? How about just the families who live on my street? Or really Jesus, how about if I just focus my love on the people that I happen to like and who like me back? We also want to know what love really means. Does loving these neighbors mean saying “hi” or bringing a casserole when someone moves in across the street? Or does it mean something I’m not really willing and don’t feel particularly capable of doing?

Jesus answers the scholar and us with a story on what he thinks to be true about love and about neighbors. First off, it helps to know that someone traveling the road from Jerusalem to Jericho then, which is not all that different from now I guess, was probably asking to be beat up along the way. Immediately, Jesus confronts our senses with an image of a naked, injured, half-dead person thrown in a ditch along a seedy highway. And then we are to imagine that this guy probably either deserved it or was too stupid to know any better. Surely, this is not our neighbor!

Then, Jesus tells us, a pastor comes by traveling down the same road, sees the man, and walks away. Then another good religious man, probably an elder in his church, shows up, sees the injured man, and walks away. Perhaps we are off the hook. Two people who must also know this same truth about love and eternal life are perfectly fine with leaving the scoundrel there to die.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. A third person happens across the man. This time it is a Samaritan. So remember to muster up all your qualms about religious differences when you hear the word Samaritan. For us, it doesn’t ring much of a bell. But what if Jesus said that a member of the Taliban came upon the man? It would perk our ears up, right? That’s how the religious scholar and purist might have heard the word Samaritan. Well this third, non-religious or at least not the “right religion,” non-person comes upon the injured man and is moved by compassion. He gives the man first aid, bandages his wounds, takes him to an inn, makes him comfortable, and pre-pays for his stay there. He even tells the inn-keeper if the man runs out of money that he will come back and pay more.

“So,” Jesus says, “Which of the three became a neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?”

The wrong one! Hearing the story in this way, we want to say it was the wrong one. This story implicates us in our own apathies, and arrogance, and bad behaviors on so many levels that we want to deny the whole thing. In fact, we often do. We mis-tell this story all the time. We name charitable organizations after the Good Samaritan and we give Good Samaritan awards – all the time forgetting that it wasn’t any Christian who was acting so Christ-like in this narrative. We shower accolades on the good religious people for doing a plethora of good things, but we are reluctant to admit just how many times we have walked the long way around a painful situation that could have used our attention. Far too often, we play the part of the one who is so wrapped up in his or her own life, in being good and religious and a hard-worker and an attentive parent to see the glaring need happening right in front of our face.

Let me tell you, in case you haven’t heard, there’s a lot of bad stuff happening out there. But Jesus doesn’t take the time to tell us any details about the people who beat up and robbed the man to begin with. His story begins with that part already over. He’s telling us, the religious ones, the good ones, about a more insidious kind of evil, the evil that happens when good people harden their hearts and become indifferent to the suffering of others. He’s telling us, directly, “Don’t walk away.”

We walk away from our neighbor’s injury and pain when we go the long way around the homeless person, or for that matter around anyone who needs our help.

We walk away from our neighbor’s misfortunate circumstances when we ignore the buried pain of the addict and fail to go the full distance of time and money and energy that treatment can take.

We walk away from our neighbors in financial despair when our comfort levels haven’t changed and we fail to notice that theirs have. Remember the Samaritan opened his wallet as well as his heart.

And what’s been heavy on my mind lately is that we walk away from our Gulf Coast neighbors whose lives have been completely turned upside down when all that concerns us is the quality of our seafood and the price of gas. In that situation, I’m feeling completely and utterly helpless to be the neighbor I want to be.

Those are just a few examples. But in every case, Jesus pleads with us. Stop. Look. Don’t walk away. Be moved by love to be the unlikely neighbor.

Amen.