When I came to Springwater four years ago, my first hospital visit was to Good Sam. Now, you and I know that when someone says they’ll be at Good Sam, they aren’t talking about a camping group or shopping opportunity. We know it’s about medical care. Just weeks after I arrived at Springwater, Nona called to tell me that her father was in the hospital—at Good Sam. So I got out my Thomas Guide and looked up Good Samaritan Hospital. It was not listed. I panicked, because I had just spent a morning with Uncle Bill, going over the Shearer/Shibley/Beck family tree and how it manifested itself in our congregation, and I knew I needed to be with this man at Good Sam—wherever that was. Eventually I decided to read through the entire hospital index in the Thomas Guide, and there it was, under “L” for Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital.

This wasn’t exactly a dirty trick on the part of the Thomas Guide, but it reminded me that wherever you go, there are things the “in group” knows and that newcomers don’t. This week, the secret code by the map people seemed an ironic insight into how Christians read this parable so famous that both hospitals and laws are named after it. Good Samaritan. Which means everyone knows what this parable means. A fresh take on this parable is not only hard to find, but people are suspicious of it when it comes. I heard a sermon on this parable that did not say that good Christians are supposed to be good Samaritans. Instead, the preacher invited us to recognize ourselves in the guy in the ditch. Which made Jesus the Samaritan, offering healing and much-needed grace. New meanings to familiar texts emerge as our lives change and as we grow in our faith. So, where do you find yourself in this parable today? Are you the one in the ditch? Beat up by the unfairness of living, robbed of joy by bad habits and bad relationships. A victim of your own decisions. So much dirt done to you that it feels like your pain is the only treasure you’ve got. So stuck in hopelessness that this isn’t so much a ditch, as it is a bottomless pit.

If this is where you are, this parable holds good news, because it is about love. The lawyer—so anxious to get right the details of eternal life—finally asks Jesus the question that matters. “Who am I required to love?” The answer to this question lies in the one rescues. Remember the end of our reading from Romans: nothing can separate us from God’s love. But Jesus’ answer was so offensive to his hearers. The volunteer paramedic was a Samaritan—inferior, heretic, outcast, unclean, socially unacceptable. If we heard this today, we would hear, mixed-race, disabled lesbian welfare mother, HIV-positive Jehovah Witness. This is the chick who anonymously pulls you out of the ditch, cleans you up, gives you coupons for McDonalds, and gets you a room at the Residence Inn. And this is the one who rescues you, at great personal risk, the one who loves you unconditionally.

Are you still the one in the ditch? Who else could you be? Even kids know we’re not supposed to be those other two who failed to rescue. But don’t be too quick to judge. These two so-called heartless religious people hurried by because if they touched this guy and he turned out to be dead, they would have to stop being who they were. The law said if a person touched a corpse they were cut out of society completely until they got right again. It was a long, difficult process of isolation. It would be as if your pastor tried to help some stranger who turns out to be dead, and then you can’t even talk on the phone until she’s pure enough again, even though your wedding or your mother’s funeral is the next day. These so-called bad guys were choosing between doing their duty and doing their duty. Which is the greater good?

What “duty” does Jesus call us to? Perhaps the answer is in where we locate ourselves in the story. We’re Presbyterian and “being saved” isn’t an ordinary part of our vocabulary, but that is essentially what we are claiming every time we say, “In life and in death, we belong to God.” And every time we hear the words of assurance after our corporate confession, and when we insist that something really does happen when we are baptized. When we say and do these things, it means we think we are saved, not stuck in that ditch. Your momentary misery notwithstanding. To stay in the ditch, to treasure our misery and remain a victim, means to stay a spiritual child. It’s time to receive your salvation. It is time to say “thank you, Jesus” and get on with the business of growing up spiritually. It is time to say, “Yes, I want to be a disciple. Yes, I want to grow in faith. Yes, I want to participate in the coming of the kingdom.” And then go about the hard business of being a Christian seven days a week.

When we are out of the ditch, the great thing that shapes us is our baptism. When we are baptized, we promise to try to be like Jesus. You remember Jesus—the storyteller who portrays himself as our Samaritan, a misfit and outcast. This means that for us to “go and do the same” is not particularly attractive in the here-and-now sense. But the lawyer put this story in a larger context when he asked about eternal life. Suddenly we’re on a bigger scale, part of God’s salvation plan for people stuck in the ditch. Which is scary, this being part of God’s plan. God knows we need something simple to do. The radical, outrageously simple thing we are asked to do is to be present. Be present and listen for God. Be present, just be as Jesus to people. Jesus takes it from there. The bad news, of course, is that then the plan is not in our control, and there’s nothing for us to manage or accomplish or manipulate. We’re just asked to show up, receive our own salvation, and to live loving others. This is how the gospel is spread, how the kingdom comes. God’s plan for spreading salvation isn’t about being right or working smart or staying busy. It’s about being loved and loving each other.

Think about when you feel loved. Do you get a sense of love when someone can squeeze you into their calendar for twenty minutes a week from Tuesday? I just came back from four intensive days with my family in Minnesota, and I know who loves me, because they were the ones who asked about me and my life and my congregation and sat down and listened to the answers. They were interested in me and what I said was important.

Love is about relationship, and the gospel happens in relationship. People grow and are transformed in relationship. The mission of the church and the healing of its people happens in relationship. That’s what this parable is about. Jesus tells this parable because someone has finally cut through all the posturing and asked a question that means something. “Who am I supposed to love?” Am I supposed to love only the people who are just like me—the holy, the pure, the stylish, the easy to hang around? Do I have to love the creeps, the politically incorrect, the socially deadly, the just plain wrong? Worse—am I required to let them love me?

Today you are asked to choose. If you define your choice as the priest and Levite did—a choice between duty and duty—then it will be a hard one to make. But if you really meant it when you said you wanted to try to be like Jesus, then the choice is not about duty. The choice is about relationship, about love. “Gospel” asks us to choose love and says that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Now, go and do the same.