The Story Jesus Told
About 2,000 years ago, a lawyer asked Jesus a seemingly simple question: "Who is my neighbor?"
Jesus didn't give him a definition. He gave him a story.
A man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho was attacked, robbed, beaten, and left for dead. A priest came by — and passed him. Then a Levite came by — and passed him too.
Finally, a Samaritan came upon the injured man.
That was the twist. The Samaritan was the last person Jesus' audience expected to become the hero. Jews and Samaritans had deep divisions between them. Yet the Samaritan didn't ask who the injured man was, what he believed, whether he deserved help, or whether helping him was convenient.
He simply had compassion.
He treated the man's wounds, put him on his own animal, took him somewhere safe, and paid for his continued care.
Then Jesus turned the original question around. Instead of answering "Who qualifies as my neighbor?" He asked, in effect, "Which person became a neighbor to the wounded man?"
The answer: "The one who showed him mercy."
Jesus replied, "Go and do likewise." — Luke 10:37
Nearly 2,000 years later, we still call someone who stops to help a stranger a "Good Samaritan." And remarkably, the expression made its way into our laws.
California enacted laws intended to encourage people to help others during emergencies. Then came an extraordinary California Supreme Court case in 2008, Van Horn v. Watson. After an automobile accident, a woman attempted to rescue another woman from a crashed vehicle. The injured woman alleged that being pulled from the vehicle worsened her spinal injuries and left her paralyzed. The court concluded that the Good Samaritan statute, as then written, protected emergency medical care — but not necessarily this kind of nonmedical rescue.
The case exposed a troubling possibility: could someone who stopped to rescue another human being face liability precisely because they chose not to pass by?
California lawmakers responded. The law was broadened to protect people who, in good faith and without compensation, provide emergency medical or nonmedical care or assistance — subject to important exceptions such as gross negligence and willful misconduct.
And that brings us right back to a road between Jerusalem and Jericho.
A priest passed by.
A Levite passed by.
A Samaritan stopped.
Two thousand years later, we are still wrestling with the same question: when we see someone hurting, will we pass by — or will we stop?
Maybe that's why Jesus never really answered "Who is my neighbor?"
He asked us to become one.
Life will give every one of us opportunities to be the person who stops. We may never know how profoundly a simple act of compassion will affect another person's life — or how far that act of kindness might travel.
One Samaritan stopped to help a stranger in a story Jesus told 2,000 years ago.
We're still talking about him today.
Go and do likewise.
The Lesson: The question was never who qualified as a neighbor. It was whether we would become one.
Two thousand years later, we are still deciding which side of the road we will stand on.