Summer Travels With Jesus: The Samaritan Out There
Sometimes we can be so knowledgeable about the various parts of a thing that we lose sight of how it’s actually supposed to work. Doctors become specialists in kidneys, hearts, lungs, blood, muscles, bones and brains, but sometimes forget there’s a whole patient sitting in front of them. Mechanics can tell how every part in the car works and how to change each part out, but when they are done tinkering they still can’t say why the car doesn’t “feel right.” And some people move through the seconds, minutes, hours, days and years of their lives, fully present from moment to moment, yet are still unable at the end to locate any sense of the purpose for all of it.
Jesus has taken his message to “repent, and belief in the gospel” out of his home region, that it might be shared with the the rest of the world…starting in Jerusalem. The narrative of our summer travels with Jesus continues this week as Luke offers his readers a story within a story. Despite the name by which this familiar passage is most commonly known, the “Story of the Good Samaritan” is actually a story about the love of Jesus for a lawyer; a story that Jesus told him to help him find his true self. Sometimes, after all, we can know all the various parts of God’s word inside and out, and still not know where we stand with God until Jesus shows us.
