Discovering an Unlikely Hero: A Religious Lawyer Read Luke 10:25–37 Go and do likewise. Luke 10:37 The government of South Africa instituted apartheid in 1948, which legalized the separation of people of different races and restricted some privileges for whites only. A young lawyer named Nelson Mandela joined with others to actively resist his country’s unjust policies of segregation. Arrested for his activism, Mandela was imprisoned from 1962 until his release in 1990. Four years later, in the country’s first multiracial elections, Mandela was elected president of South Africa. Just a decade earlier, such an outcome would be seemed not only unlikely but also impossible. Centuries earlier, another lawyer had asked Jesus how to inherit eternal life. After establishing the importance of the two great commandments to love God and love neighbor, the lawyer asked Jesus just who his neighbor was. The story Jesus told in the presence of a curious crowd challenged every assumption the man held about “neighbor.” Jesus’ description of the kind of neighbor to emulate would have come as a huge surprise to this lawyer, most likely a specialist in religious law. After all, the hero in Jesus’ story was both the “wrong” race and the “wrong” religion! To the lawyer, and to all of the Jews who had gathered around to listen, the idea of a Samaritan hero was nothing less than preposterous. It was a teaching that would have sounded shocking to religious insiders. It’s one of the reasons the first-century crowds who encountered Jesus didn’t describe Him the way some do today, as a “good teacher.” No, he was entirely unconventional! His convictions about who loved well, and who was worthy of love, were controversial. This particular exchange—surprising, offensive, risky—would have been remembered by the man, and by those who heard it, for years afterward. Jesus challenged the expert in religious law to imitate someone he would have considered to be an enemy. It is the same challenge extended to you today. Who is your unlikely neighbor? How are you being called to love others across boundaries of race and culture and religion by expressing genuine mercy and compassion in the name of Christ?
Posted on: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 10:07:05 +0000
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