What if the Good Samaritan was gay? I mean seriously, what if the heart that showed compassion to the wounded man was someone we despised? You see so often we love to connect this story from Luke 10 with the hypocritical Jews, we love to box them off as hateful bigots. After all who were they to hate a person who was in need of the gospel.
We like to think we would be right by Jesus’ side with the women at the well, we love to believe that we would stand up against the KKK in the deep south during the 1960’s, we always envision ourselves as the heroes of any story, except our own. In our day to day life we so often neglect to reach out to those who hurt.
I work at a Fast Food Restaurant. Every day I hand food out of our drive through to our customers and I always ask them the same question: ‘How is your day?’ and the answer is most always ‘Good.’ Good? Are they really? Studies show 16 percent of young people contemplate suicide, 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, and nearly a tenth of people are so engulfed by depression they seek medical help for it. And yet their answer remains the same ‘Good.’
All this is to say this. Do you want to be a hero? You don’t need to right a falling building… you can save a life. Say something nice, reach out in love, and show the Love of Jesus to this lost and dying world.
So you say, what does this call to action for myself have to do with a homosexual Good Samaritan? And my reply is, you can never reach out with love until you remove the stigmas surrounding people. If the Helper is a Samaritan, despised by others, that is all well and good, we have nothing against the Samaritan. But what if the helper is gay? A heroin addict? Covered in graphic tattoos? Curses a lot? Is a drunk? A prostitute? A child molester?
Repeat the categories I just named. Turn them over in your mind. What do you envision? Chances are it isn’t pretty. Now I want you to go get a piece of paper (seriously go do it)....
Now write each of these categories down and draw a box around each one… now around your many little boxes draw a bigger all encompassing box… this box represents SIN. And guess what? You are in that box. See friends the gospel is about a perfect God coming down into a dirty box called humanity, sharing our lives with us, eating with us, and dying for us, rising from the grave for us, and advocating for us, interceding for us, and imminently returning to gather everyone of us to Himself.
If we wish to model our Savior we need to dispel with the boxes. We need to look at people as what they are: PEOPLE in need of Love and fulfillment only found in Jesus! Gay or Straight, Samaritan or Jew, we ALL need Him in our lives.
We like to think we would be right by Jesus’ side with the women at the well, we love to believe that we would stand up against the KKK in the deep south during the 1960’s, we always envision ourselves as the heroes of any story, except our own. In our day to day life we so often neglect to reach out to those who hurt.
I work at a Fast Food Restaurant. Every day I hand food out of our drive through to our customers and I always ask them the same question: ‘How is your day?’ and the answer is most always ‘Good.’ Good? Are they really? Studies show 16 percent of young people contemplate suicide, 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, and nearly a tenth of people are so engulfed by depression they seek medical help for it. And yet their answer remains the same ‘Good.’
All this is to say this. Do you want to be a hero? You don’t need to right a falling building… you can save a life. Say something nice, reach out in love, and show the Love of Jesus to this lost and dying world.
So you say, what does this call to action for myself have to do with a homosexual Good Samaritan? And my reply is, you can never reach out with love until you remove the stigmas surrounding people. If the Helper is a Samaritan, despised by others, that is all well and good, we have nothing against the Samaritan. But what if the helper is gay? A heroin addict? Covered in graphic tattoos? Curses a lot? Is a drunk? A prostitute? A child molester?
Repeat the categories I just named. Turn them over in your mind. What do you envision? Chances are it isn’t pretty. Now I want you to go get a piece of paper (seriously go do it)....
Now write each of these categories down and draw a box around each one… now around your many little boxes draw a bigger all encompassing box… this box represents SIN. And guess what? You are in that box. See friends the gospel is about a perfect God coming down into a dirty box called humanity, sharing our lives with us, eating with us, and dying for us, rising from the grave for us, and advocating for us, interceding for us, and imminently returning to gather everyone of us to Himself.
If we wish to model our Savior we need to dispel with the boxes. We need to look at people as what they are: PEOPLE in need of Love and fulfillment only found in Jesus! Gay or Straight, Samaritan or Jew, we ALL need Him in our lives.