I’ve always loved games and trivia.  One unique kind of trivia game is where the task is to figure out what an object is from looking only at a zoomed in picture of the object.  You just see a few grains or a small piece of the object and in order to be successful at the game you have to picture it zoomed out in your mind to figure out what it might be.  It helps to know what the full scale object looks like so that you can identify a small piece of it.  When you see and know the larger perspective, you can understand what you are actually looking at.  Here are some examples: (answers at the end)

Clarity and understanding can come from viewing something from a different angle, from a different perspective, or having a more full perspective.  In Luke chapter 10 Jesus shifts the perspective of an ‘expert in the law.’  Let’s see how he does it, and what this might mean for our own perspectives today.

This law expert comes to test Jesus.  He’s trying to trap him into saying something that the other religious leaders can then use against Him.  But he does ask Jesus a very important question, one that many of us have asked as well, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  It could mean something like, “How do I live a life that honors God?” Or put simply, “How do I live the good life?” 

This man may have already had in mind what the “correct” answer was, and he’s waiting for Jesus to give the “wrong” answer and then he would pounce.  But Jesus always had incredible presence of mind to be able to see what people were trying to do, and answer in a way that took them a little bit off guard.  Like He often did, He responded to the man’s question with a question.  “What is written in the Law?  How do you read it?”  After a short back and forth where Jesus affirms that loving God with all our being and loving our neighbor as ourselves is the way to live the good life, Luke reveals that this man doesn’t really want to learn from Jesus, he merely wants to justify himself.  You see, he’s already been put on his heels a bit, so much so that he might not be able to take Jesus down, but he at least wants to do the next best thing, to lift himself up.  So, seeking to justify himself, he proposes one final question here for Jesus – “And who is my neighbor?” 

Can you sense the tone in that question?  I believe that he’s wanting to see who he can exclude from his neighborly love so that he can look good being a neighbor to the “proper” people.  It’s at this point here that Jesus goes into this now well-known story that we commonly call, The Parable of the Good Samaritan.

You know the story well.  A man, who was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, gets attacked, robbed, and left for dead.  Two Jewish religious leaders came by and did not help the man, didn’t even go close to him.  But that it was a third man, a Samaritan, hated and seen as ‘lower than’ by most Jewish people, that came close to the injured man, cared for him, and went out of his way to aid him.  Regarding that point, it seems very likely that the Samaritan man spent the night at the inn with the injured man.  He didn’t just show compassion by bandaging his wounds, he disrupted his entire day, evening, and night caring for this man.

This outsider, this “other” was the one who had eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to feel the work of the Kingdom.  For all the religious fervor that the temple leaders normally had, the two portrayed here had eyes that did not see, ears that did not hear, and hearts that did not feel in the ways that God wanted them to. Many hearers of this story would have been on the same ‘team’ as the religious leaders and would have looked up to them and sought guidance from them.  There can be a tendency in us humans to protect and explain away the seemingly negative things in those in our group or who we think are on our side.  That is what is so striking about this parable – Jesus makes it clear who the ones who didn’t follow God in that moment were – their religious leaders.  And it was a hated Samaritan who did follow God in that moment.  He was the one who was actually living as a God-fearing person.

It is here then that Jesus drives home the perspective that needs to be shifted.   He undercuts and inverts the man’s question of ‘who is my neighbor,’ (Who out there is worthy of my attention?) which had a tone of self-righteousness and exclusion behind it, to forcing him to look at someone who he once hated (and perhaps still does) and admit that this man displayed Godly character.  Jesus turns the man’s question of “who is my neighbor?”  into “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

Do you see the difference?  Do you see the perspective shift? 

Shifting the perspective from being the kind of person who says things like “I’ll help that neighbor and this neighbor” (who I like and approve of), and then justify to themselves not doing any more, into now the perspective of being the kind of person who is neighborly in his/her lifestyle.  This new kind of person is one who is on the lookout for the needs around him/her.  Being the kind of person who has eyes to see, ears to hear, a heart to feel, and then does what he/she can do to help. 

Now, this can become another sort of religious duty and weighed-down practice, but it actually takes the focus off of religious duty onto being with God and being strengthened by Him to live well in this life.  For the good life begins with God’s love for us.  Believing and receiving His love deep within us begins to shape our eyes, ears, and hearts to see, hear, and feel what is going on in God’s Kingdom around us.  It helps build a sensitivity to the Spirit’s moving and direction to guide us and empower us each day.  For in loving our neighbor well, we are loving God, and our love of God spurs us on to love our neighbor, which includes all of the ones created in God’s image. 

Zoom picture answers: guitar pick, toothbrush, honey