What I love about Jesus is that He was always teaching. If He was walking or talking, each moment was infused with wisdom and knowledge to nourish souls. Jesus is, after all, the Word come to life.
What I dearly respect about Jesus is that He was often teaching in a way that caused trouble with the religious authorities. It was for this purpose He had also come.
The examples Jesus used, the stories He told, and the message His students were sent out to share, called into question stale traditions and called out social boundaries that defied His new law to love.
Jesus’ ministry was dangerous, and His courage in the face of constant threats and schemes is some of the best evidence of Jesus the person’s heavenly perfection because when pressured or persecuted He never failed to speak or act according to what God placed in Jesus’ divine heart. The parable of the Good Samaritan tells us more about how we are called to live out our faith and shows us Jesus’ immense faith in the righteousness of His mission.
Jesus tells the story of a certain person who was accosted on the roadside, beaten, robbed, and left to die in a ditch. Three people came upon this bleeding body. Two were esteemed religious leaders, who saw the suffering and kept moving. The third was a religious exile, a cultural vagrant of whom nothing was expected but disrepute, and yet this is the one who moved with compassion, bandaged wounds, and paid for continuing care.
The lesson is that love leans in, and Jesus’ example transcends the parable, so it is important to understand why He was telling this story in the first place. By this point in His ministry, Jesus was attracting large crowds, and slithering among them were political adversaries lurking to catch Jesus in a trap. One of these “experts in the law” emerged from the crowd and asked Jesus how to inherit eternal life.
Jesus responded by asking what was written. “What is your reading of it?” Jesus asked.
He answered, “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.”
Jesus said, “Do this and you will live,” but the lawyer, seeking to justify his authority and out-wit Jesus, took it another smug step.
“And who is my neighbor?” he retorted.
Jesus answered by telling the story of the Good Samaritan and concluding with yet another question, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
“The one who showed mercy,” replied the expert in the law.
But the bigger message here is critical. Think about how many people were watching and listening. And Jesus not only tells them, this is how you enter the kingdom of heaven, by moving your hands and feet with mercy and compassion, He also calls out the hypocritical constructs of religion to the very face of the institution.
And what are we to do?
“Go and do likewise,” Jesus says.
Lord, have mercy on us.
How can we be Jesus’ hands and feet?
Courageous witnesses of history guide us to rid ourselves of spiteful intent and trickery, of saying one thing and doing another, of resenting that which blesses our neighbor, of weaponizing speech. This applicable wisdom means more than cleaning out the refrigerator; it instructs us to sow with what the taste buds of faith tell us is good and humbly acknowledge that what proceeds from our hearts has infinite potential and power.
Only that which is planted from above shall remain, and as all else fades away, let us prioritize the essence of our actions, the focus of our thoughts, and the tone of our words.
Love is what matters because it was there in the beginning and prevails in the end.
