Have you ever received the totally unexpected?  Perhaps you’ve been in a circumstance that started out familiar and then became a complete surprise.  Maybe you were led unsuspectingly to a surprise birthday party or an unannounced celebration.  Sometimes, gift-giving opportunities deliver the unexpected.  The Christmas setting where your third cousin once removed gives you a beautiful watch and all you give him is a card that says, “Thanks for stopping by this year.”  That might leave one feeling surprised.  Indeed, not all surprises are necessarily good events.

   There is the surprise where we misread situations and think one outcome is certain and then the total opposite happens.  When this happens in a conversation, I call it the “Bad Chess Player Syndrome.”  That’s because a poor chess player may stare an oncoming assault in the face and smile a victorious grin thinking that he will certainly prevail, only to fall victim to the cunning of his much wiser opponent. 

   This happens sometimes in our conversations with others.  Usually, a danger signal in such conversations is when one party says, “I know good and well that I did such and such.”  Then other person (usually the wife) says, “No, honey, I don’t believe you did.”  (The use of the affectionate diminutive “honey” should be a real strong clue to back off but it is rarely heeded in such situations.)  So the first person will now consummate his “Bad Chess Player Syndrome” faux pas usually by declaring an intractable position, such as, “I am so sure that I did what I was supposed to do that I will take you out to dinner if I am wrong.”  This is when the second person tells the kids to get their shoes on cause Daddy, I mean the first person, is taking the family out tonight, and while she says this she quietly produces incontrovertible evidence of the “Bad Chess Players” error.  “Checkmate.” Surprise!

   Interestingly enough, we can also be surprised in our relationships with God.  Yes, most of the time it is pleasant because God is so awesomely caring and gentle in his love for us.  But sometimes when we go to God with our minds made up, when we are certain that we know what is best, when we are bound and determined to convince God that things should go our way and we are set in our “Bad Chess Player” mindset, then sometimes God surprises us with some stinging realizations.

   This is the situation we see in the passage of scripture today.  In verse 25 of chapter 10, we encounter a lawyer, a person well practiced in the religious law of the day.  This person is also known as a Scribe in other places of the New Testament, and this very well educated person has a question for Jesus.  It is an important question and one, which if asked appropriately would almost certainly have received challenging yet helpful instruction from Jesus.  The question is, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”  Nicodemus discussed this very same topic with Jesus in the third chapter of the Gospel of John and Jesus clearly taught to believe and obey the Son of God.  But Jesus’ interaction is quite different with the lawyer of the land.  This is not because he was a Scribe and Nicodemus was a Pharisee but rather because of the way the Bible indicates that the Scribe approached Jesus.  Verse 25 indicates that the “lawyer stood up and put [Jesus] to the test.”

   Can’t you just tell when someone is challenging you.  You can see it in their eyes, feel it in their demeanor, and hear it in their voice.  It is an attitude that says “Come on, let’s see what you’ve got!”  Now here is lesson one for today, “It is not wise to play the “Let’s see what you’ve got” game with God.”  He’ll always win.  But unbelievably the lawyer throws down the gauntlet and challenges Jesus to some witty repartee.  “How do I live forever?” he questions. 

   “Let’s talk about things philosophical or things spiritual if you are so smart Jesus.  Let’s see what kind of theological training you’ve got regarding our religious practices Oh WISE TEACHER.”  The Scribe invites Jesus to ramble around in a conversation where no one can be quite sure what may be proven.  But look my friends at where God goes.  He does not stay in the impractical.  He does not waltz around the esoteric, but he brings the battle right where the lawyer lives.  He goes to the law.  When we chase after God for answers we can rest assured that he will respond.  When we need to hear a Word from the Almighty we know that he will reply.  But beware, he knows us better than we know ourselves.  Hebrews 4:12-13 declares, “For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  And there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.”  So Jesus challenges the lawyer in his own arena the Law and he asks him, “What is your understanding of the law?”  How does it read?  What is written?  When the lawyer responds with the correct answer, Jesus dismisses him with a plaudit and a direction.  “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” 

  One can almost feel Jesus pat the Scribe on the head and dismiss him.  But now the Scribe is on his heels.  He has been bested in his own field.  He can almost hear the onlookers saying under their breaths, “Why ask the question if he could answer it?”  “Isn’t he the foolish one to question the teacher?”  Some damage control must be done, and quickly.  So he blurts out, in an ill-advised attempt to justify himself, another question, “Who is my neighbor?”

   One can imagine the mood of the moment change, as Jesus, who until this point had given only passing credence to this heckler, now turns his full attention to the man.  I wonder if it was at this point that the Scribe thought to himself that he might have misplayed his hand.  I wonder if he suddenly realized, as he gazed into the same eyes that would cleanse the thieves from the Temple and rebuke self-serving religious hypocrites, that he was no longer a simple member of the debate team, but that he was about to receive a private lesson in faith.

   “Who is my neighbor?” is the question on the table, and Jesus answered with a story.  “A certain man was going down from Jerusalem and fell among robbers.”  Perhaps we’d like to know a little more about this man.  I think the Scribe would have liked to know more about him, but Jesus does not give any more information.  He is just a man, and at the same time he is Everyman.  He represents the masses of people all around us.  He represents the wide world and all of its needs and wants, pains and sufferings.  He represents the arena in which the supposedly religious people walk and live and minister. 

   And in the story, it just so happens that a Priest comes strolling by the place where the now wounded man lies, and when he sees him, he passes by on the other side.  Shortly thereafter, a Levite approaches the same spot and does what the Priest does – passes by.  Now before we shake our heads in disgust at the happenings of this story, let’s realize that the point is not yet made.  For the Scribe would probably have seen nothing wrong with this circumstance.  You see, his religious society taught that the Priest, a minister, and the Levite, a helper in the Temple, actually did the right thing by passing by.  If they had stopped to help, the man in need may well have already been dead and by touching a dead body, the Temple workers would have defiled themselves and become unclean.  Then they would not have been able to serve the higher call of the piously needy in the religious society.  No there was nothing wrong with passing by.  So one more man is wronged, one more person suffers injustice and one more soul expires.  It is the way of life.  These things happen.  The Scribe is right onboard with Jesus, and if one looks closely enough, one may almost see the beginnings of a smug smile forming on the lawyer’s lips.

   Then, travelling down the road, comes a Samaritan .  Now you must picture the hatred this turn of events must have conjured up in the minds of the listeners.  Today we don’t feel sickened at the sound of the word Samaritan.  Indeed, partly because of this story we think of good things when we hear this name.  We even have Good Samaritan laws on the books, which are taken from this very story.  But in Jesus’ day, a pleasant mood would not have been the reaction the listeners displayed.  Samaritans were a hated breed, and they likewise hated the Jews.  Products from generations of some Jews who intermarried with non-Jews, the Samaritans were considered a wholly unclean lot by the Jews who remained pure in bloodline.  The Samaritans had an innate, unwashable, chronic and terminal taint of blood sickness upon them.  No Jew in his right mind would associate with them.  No Jew with any self-respect would speak to them.  No travelling Jew would wander through their territory, and certainly no pious Jew would worry if one worthless Samaritan more or less had some needs.  The Samaritans and the Jews didn’t just simply ignore each other, they hated each other with a venom whose toxicity lasted for hundreds of years.  So now Jesus introduces to the story this hated half-breed who could know nothing of God’s righteousness.

  You may know the story.  The Samaritan helps the man, binds his wounds, puts him on his own transportation, pays his deductible at the nearest healthcare facility and promises to pay whatever his HMO won’t cover.  And Jesus then asks a question to the lawyer, “Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?”  What is your learned opinion about the reality verses the law.  Ignore your books and inculcation with religious precepts and all the pious trappings with which you have decorated the comfortable churches of your lives and tell me who in this story truly proved to be a neighbor!

   And the lawyer, so much like us today, still unable to bring himself to break free from his prejudice and hatred, even when facing “Checkmate” could not bring himself to simply say the word the Samaritan.  Rather, he avoids that hated term and says obliquely “The one who showed mercy toward him.”  And Jesus said, “You go and you do the same!”

   Jesus’ words still ring clearly and powerfully in our day.  “You go and you do the same!”  It is not simply a call to stop and do a good turn to someone in need, but it is a command to tear down the walls of hatred and contempt that exist all around us.  It is a holy decree to turn our religion into something far more than the form and symbolism that we exude on Sunday morning.  It is the cry to us to make our Christianity mean something in this world, to let the laws, to which we cling so dearly, really have weight in our lives by putting them into action.

   Don’t misunderstand.  This is not a call to form another society or international organization, nor is it a rebuke of Christians for neglecting social action.  It is simply an appeal for each of us to move on an individual level to truly love other people.  Jesus asked the Lawyer, which of these three was the neighbor.  Which individual did the neighborly thing.  Jesus did not spend time bemoaning the state of affairs in Jerusalem, that no one could travel safely through the hills.  He did not decry violent crime or even rail against the blatant prejudice that was rampant in Judea.  Rather he taught and demonstrated individual neighborliness.  He advocated and displayed life-changing love.  He traveled through Samaria. He stopped to drink a cup of water with a Samaritan woman.  He ate with tax collectors and stood up for social outcasts.  Not by attending peace sit ins and not by giving to the local charity of your choice (both of which may be good things.) But Jesus did not choose this route, rather he chose to give of himself.  He chose to be an individual activist in the lives of those people all around him, and every action that he took he did in the name of his Father in heaven.

  How then ought we to live?  Shouldn’t we Christians live as our namesake lived and lives?  Perhaps what the world needs is not so many organized activists as it needs active Christians?  God’s question to each of us today is similar to the question his Son had for the lawyer.  Who is your neighbor? and do you love him as you love yourself?