Jesus was an epic storyteller.
He used stories, or parables, to explain the truth about God
to people in a way they could understand.
One of his most famous parables took place on a road in the middle of nowhere in Israel.
Let's go.
Religious experts were always testing Jesus.
They would talk about the rules in the Bible and how they were supposed to live.
Jesus tried to help them understand that following God was more than just following rules.
In one of these discussions, a man asked Jesus, "How can someone have eternal life?"
The man already knew the scripture that said, "Love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength
and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself."
The problem was the religious experts knew the words of the Bible,
but they didn't always know what it really meant.
But Jesus knew, and he wanted them to understand so he told them this story.
"A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho.
[This road right here] when he was attacked by robbers.
"They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away leaving him half dead.
A priest happened to be going down the same road.
And when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side."
There are a few important things to know about this.
If someone were to walk from Jerusalem to Jericho in Jesus's time,
they wouldn't have been walking on busy crowded streets.
The ground is rocky and mountainous,
and the paths were narrow - just wide enough for people to pass each other.
So when this priest, whose job was to help people, passed by without even stopping to help,
he would have seen the blood and bruises.
He might have looked him right in the eye.
He was right next to him,
and he chose not to help.
Then Jesus says,
"So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him passed by on the other side."
Another person who should have helped.
The Levites were also priests.
So two people who should have been the first people to help someone who was hurt
totally ignored him.
They might have known they were supposed to love their neighbor, but they weren't doing it.
"But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was and when he saw him, he took pity on him.
He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine.
Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him."
Now Jesus was Jewish, and he was talking to other Jewish people.
So they probably assumed the man in the story was Jewish, too.
And Jews and Samaritans did not get along at all.
In fact, they were enemies.
The Jewish people judged the Samaritans and thought they were stupid.
They didn't talk to them.
They didn't spend time with them.
And they definitely wouldn't have stopped to help one on a dusty, empty road.
So the fact that Jesus made the Samaritan the hero of the story was a big surprise.
Not at all what they expected, which is actually pretty normal for one of Jesus's stories.
He was always saying the thing no one had heard before or doing the thing no one expected
or talking to the person no one else paid attention to.
Jesus told these people, these religious leaders, that loving other people,
even people you may not like, or people who don't like you, is just as important as loving God.
When you do that, you become more like Jesus.
If we call ourselves Christian followers of Jesus, then this is something we're supposed to do.
So what about you?
Has there ever been a time when you helped someone even though it was hard to do?
Do you know someone who might need your help right now?
What about this, is there someone you'd rather not help but maybe God wants you to help them?
You don't have to go to a far off road in the middle of Israel like this one to love
your neighbor, you can start doing that today and that's true wherever you are.