In last Sunday's sermon, Mother Storm preached about "dangerous roads," inspired by the road from Jericho to Jerusalem that Jesus set the parable on. From near the end of the sermon:
As I always do when I preach this parable, I went back and re-read King’s sermon on it--significantly, preached the night before his assassination in Memphis. As I mentioned earlier, he picked up on the danger of the setting, the road. He was on a dangerous road that night, with that trip to Memphis. One of the things that’s so powerful about it was how he was living out the Samaritan’s example that very night, helping those abused sanitation workers when no one else would. Surely all this was on his mind as he put pen to paper to prepare what would be his last sermon.
And it’s the end of his reflection on this passage that’s so incredible.
The first two men, King says, walked by and asked: if I stop and help this man, what will happen to me? The third man, the Samaritan, walked by and turned that question on its head: if I don’t stop to help this man, what will happen to him?
There’s risk in giving, in helping. Whether it's financial, personal, physical, a seeming small inconvenience or possibly your life--if not your actual, physical life, then maybe the life you knew, or the life you were comfortable with. Three men passed by, only one asked: if I don’t stop to help, what will happen to him?
