By Russ Johnson
There was a couple
who were going to fix things.
They had the résumé for it.
The right network.
The right language
for every room they walked into.
They knew which problems mattered
and exactly what needed to happen
if anyone actually cared.
Which they did.
More than most.
Which is why they worked the hours
they worked
and said yes
when the honest answer
was that they had nothing left.
They believed if they could just
be enough,
do enough,
show up enough —
the world would move.
And it did.
Sometimes.
In ways that were never quite
as permanent
as the effort required.
Which meant more effort.
Which meant less of everything else.
They weren't doing it for recognition.
That's the thing about people
who are genuinely trying to help.
They're not pretending.
They're often paying a debt
they believe they owe.
Which is its own kind of engine.
The crash didn't come dramatically.
It came the way
exhaustion always comes.
Quietly.
Until one evening they were sitting
across from each other
at a table
that used to have more conversation
and realized they were both empty.
The particular emptiness
of people who have spent everything
and can't find the account
they were supposed to be drawing from.
They had been so busy
being the ones who stop and help
that somewhere along the way
they forgot they were allowed
to need stopping for.
Which is exactly the question
a lawyer once asked Jesus
on a day he was looking
for the right answer
to a question
he thought he already knew.
He stood up to test Jesus.
Which tells you everything
about where he was starting from.
He was sharp.
Educated.
The kind of man
who had spent his life
getting the answers right
and knew it.
"Teacher, … what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Luke 10:25)
In our world
that question sounds like a question
about heaven.
What happens after you die.
But in their world —
eternal life —
was about a quality of life.
God’s kind of life.
Here and now.
Jesus answers with a question:
“What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” (vs 26)
The lawyer lights up like a kid
at a spelling bee contest.
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (vs 27)
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” (vs 28)
Then the lawyer,
knowing what the Law demands,
does what people do
when the answer gets too close.
"And who is my neighbor?" (vs 29)
Which sounds like a clarifying question
but isn't.
It's a management question.
If neighbor means those people —
that's unmanageable.
If neighbor means the people
in my approved circle —
that's something he can work with.
Define the term small enough
and suddenly
eternal life is achievable.
So Jesus tells a story.
A man goes down a dangerous road
from Jerusalem to Jericho.
He gets jumped.
Beaten.
Stripped.
Left for dead in the dirt.
A priest comes by.
Sees him.
Crosses to the other side.
A Levite comes by.
Sees him.
Crosses to the other side.
Not because they were evil.
Because touching a half-dead body
would make them ritually unclean —
would disqualify them
from their religious duties.
So in accordance with the Law
they protected their reputation
at the expense of a dying man.
Then a Samaritan comes by.
And here's where the crowd
would have shifted in their seats.
Samaritans weren't just
people from a different neighborhood.
They were the enemy.
Centuries of contempt
running in both directions.
If you were telling this story
and you wanted a hero —
a Samaritan
would be the last person
you'd put in that role.
Which is exactly
why Jesus put him there.
The Samaritan stops.
Bandages the wounds.
Lifts the man onto his own donkey.
Takes him to an inn.
Pays for his care.
Tells the innkeeper —
whatever else it costs,
I'll cover it when I'm back.
No conditions.
Just a man
from the wrong place
doing something
nobody expected him to do.
Jesus turns to the lawyer:
“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” (vs 36)
The lawyer can't even say Samaritan.
"The one who had mercy on him." (vs 37)
“Go and do likewise,” Jesus says.
And for centuries
people have read that
as the point of the story.
Be the good Samaritan.
Which turns life with God
back into a performance.
A standard to meet.
An identity to build
around being the one who helps.
Perhaps this is why Jesus
made the Samaritan's generosity
a program no one can replicate.
The tab he ran up
to nurse someone back
from death's doorstep —
in modern terms —
starts at six figures
and keeps going.
Do that every day
for every person you pass
who is in need
and you are bankrupt by Thursday.
Jesus wasn't giving the lawyer
a more demanding to-do list.
He was showing him
something he couldn't do
to expose something he hadn't seen.
The Law the lawyer was using
to measure his way to eternal life
has no finish line.
The Samaritan is the end of the road
for anyone still trying to reach it.
Because the point
was never the Samaritan.
It’s the man in the dirt.
Stripped.
Left for dead.
Unrecognizable.
That's Jesus.
“He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.” (Isaiah 53:3)
The one nobody wanted to stop for.
The one who turned out to be
the only person in the story
who can actually give
what everyone is looking for.
Which means the couple at the table
who had spent everything
and couldn't find the account
they were supposed to be drawing from —
they weren't empty because they failed.
They were empty
because they'd been trying
to be the Samaritan their whole lives.
And nobody had ever told them
they were allowed
to be with the one in the dirt.