You’ve heard of the Parable of the Good Samaritan before. It rings a bell, and echoes in your memory the familiar stories of Sunday school.

Yet, it cannot be limited to a child’s tale, it was never intended to. It defines who our neighbors are, and what it means to be a good one.

We might not ask the question out loud, but too often we are all thinking it. What is the secret for escaping death? We might not directly ask it in that way, but in our actions and society we are constantly asking it. By our obsessive desire for the glow of eternal youth, doing everything possible to escape our age. We fret over sickness, we are consumed by fear and anxiety, and medicine is have advanced that our lives might be sustained longer.

Same as back then, the young man looked to Christ, and said, “Sir, what can I do to inherit eternal life?” He asked the same question we are asking today.

Jesus asked him what the Scriptures said. The man, looked up to him, responded truthfully with the command to ” love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence—and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself.”

But, the man was stumped. He did not know who his neighbor was. So, Christ had to explain in further detail. This is where he unravels the story of the Good Samaritan. A man travelling home, attacked by thieves and left on the road half dead. Two religious men turned up, at separate occasions, and left the man as he was. They avoided him because they were in a hurry and it was inconvenient. The religious men were late to preach that Sunday. The irony was he was preaching on the same passage, loving the neighbor, the very thing he had just neglected to do.

But, when the Samaritan came by, who was hated in the community at the time. He saw the man’s condition and his heart went out to him. He gave him first aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. He lifted him onto his transport and went out of his way to take him to hospital. The injured man was cared for at the Samaritan’s own expense.

When asked with the question, of who was the neighbour to the injured man?

They replied, “it was the one who treated him kindly.’

For the truth is, what does the law really matter if we neglect to obey it? It’s all religious nonsense if we fail to genuinely care for one another. This is the secret of life everlasting, and God’s good intent.

Our neighbor is both our friend and foe, our family and community. It is the person who meets your path each day. For, perhaps you were chosen to be there at that exact moment?

Maybe the moment we truly care for one another is the moment a life is saved?