Do What?

Luke 10:36-37-- "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

Sarah at Dylan's Lectionary Blog wrote this past week:

The people who pass by the injured man are NOT portrayed by Jesus as the heartless jerks a lot of people today make them out to be. The priest and the Levite were on their way to serve in the Temple. It was service commanded by God, and touching a corpse (which, for all they knew, is what the injured man was) would have rendered them unclean and therefore unable to serve. ...

Before we point to them as nasty hypocrites, we ought to think long and hard about the roles we embrace (voluntarily, even) that obligate us to particular sets of people in ways that leave us less flexible to respond to the needs of others. If a mother with two-year-old twins in the car pulled over and got out of the car to see whether a man lying at the side of the road needed help was a robber (or worse) faking it, would we say that she was a "Good Samaritan," or a foolish person? ...

The point of our gospel for this Sunday is not that Samaritans can be nice and priests and Levites can be jerks. The point comes as Jesus turns the lawyer's query ("Who is my neighbor?" -- i.e., "To whom am I obligated?") on its head. Jesus asks, "Who was a neighbor to the injured person?" ... The question as the lawyer asks it is one that seeks the limits of compassion: "Whom am I obligated to help?" The question that Jesus invites him to ask himself is one that seeks actively to expand or erase those limits.

As I read that I thought how interesting to switch things around like that. We always do focus on the Samaritan (for good reason) but miss the possible other questions like:
Would I allow the Samaritan to help me? (i.e. to be a neighbor to me?)
Would I stop what I was doing to be a neighbor to someone else?
Would my mission, like that of the priest and Levite, keep me from being a neighbor?

Tough questions. The more we seek to be missional, paradoxically, the more we find ourselves being pulled in different directions. The more we try to live out God's mission, the more the daily mission of life may get in the way. And there is no "solution." There is only moving forward with the awareness that we are called to live in the power and will of God.

Perhaps at that moment there are many ways to follow the will of God. All equally God's will, all good and right and true. Perhaps if we walk and work with God the things we must do might very well turn into the thing we are supposed to do. As some of my friends in the 12-Step fellowship describe it, God's will is "simply" doing the next right thing.

Like the Samaritan.