A man was traveling from Oscoda to see some family in Chicago, and as he traveled down-state through Detroit he ran into some problems. He stopped at about 1am for gas and some gang kids knocked him on the ground, kicked him unconscious, took his wallet and peeled out in his car, leaving him bleeding and lying in puddles of snow sludge and gasoline.

The gas station attendant, seeing the whole thing, was too scared to come out of his cage since he had been robbed before by the same youths he just witnessed. His fear crippled him, and there were other people out there too, and since he no longer trusted the police in his neighborhood, he stayed put.

A few minutes later a car pulled up to the pump opposite the man lying on the ground. The driver didn’t notice him lying there until after he had finished hurriedly pumping his gas. He was an hour behind schedule traveling to a pastor’s convention at which he was engaged to speak later on the next day.

Surely the gas station attendant had seen him.

Surely the police would be by soon.

So, the pastor turned the ignition and drove away to his conference.

Not long after, another man approached, having observed all this from a building across the street. He was wearing a long robe and a black turban. Sayid Hassan Al-Qazwini, the imam of the Islamic Center of America in Detroit, approached the bleeding, unconscious victim, picked him up, carried him to his car and drove him to the hospital. Al-Qazwini paid the medical bills.

In the words of Jesus, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” (Luke 10:36)

This is a parable. Obviously it’s not a true event, but it reflects a true teaching. When Jesus told this parable, the man who had mercy on the victim was a Samaritan, those who, in Jewish eyes, were politically off, racially half-breeds (Jewish intermingled with Assyrian), ceremonially unclean, and to be avoided. In the chapter just before this event (Luke 9), some Samaritans were not accepting Jesus’ message so his disciples ask if they should call down fire from heaven to destroy them. All it says is that Jesus rebuked them and they continued traveling.

Jesus is, in chapter 10, approached by a lawyer, an “expert in the law,” who knows God’s law says he will have eternal life if he loves God supremely, and loves his neighbor as himself, but “seeking to justify himself,” he asks “Who is my neighbor?”

The part I think that’s often overlooked is that when Jesus gives the punchline to the parable He does not ask, “Which of these three loved his neighbor as himself?”

He asks “Which was the neighbor?”

Not only is Jesus pointing out the utter hopelessness of trying to love God supremely (only Jesus ever did that) and loving neighbors as ourselves (only Jesus fully did that, shown in his self-humiliation to the form of a servant and dying for our sins on the cross), but Jesus is also pointing out that very often those we look down on, and those we are afraid of, or otherwise those we simply do not love as ourselves are those who do what we do not.

Jesus was not justifying the Samaritans any more than I am justifying Muslims. He was simply saying “Go and do likewise.”

So which are you in the story? Are you the victim, broken and in need of God’s mercy and healing? Are you the pastor or the gas station attendant, too busy or comfortable to stop and take a risk to help? Are you the imam…the unlikely and undesirable)?

Or are you the Israelite, thinking you are righteous before God, but failing to love certain others the way He loved you? In a way, we are all of them. I can identify as any of them when I read it.

The more I meditate on the words “love your neighbor as yourself,” the more I am convinced I cannot do it. It is too difficult. It is impossible to do what only Jesus can do. I must die to myself and let Jesus raise me up moment by moment and live His resurrection life in me moment by moment. I must let Jesus love others as Himself through me…I must let Him do it through me to those we least WANT to love, because I am no better than any “undesirable,” any Muslim, any meth addict, any homosexual, any murderer, any abortionist, any alcoholic or abuser. We are all the undesirable before God…but He desired us anyway. Those we would never want to pursue in this life…the way they look to us is the way we should look to God, and He relentlessly pursues us anyway.