A law expert asks Jesus the eternal-life question and answers his own quiz perfectly: love God, love your neighbor. Then, wanting to justify himself, he asks the question that produces the most famous story ever told: and who is my neighbor?

Jesus answers with a road, a beaten man, two religious detours, and a Samaritan with oil, wine, and a donkey. Read it again like it is new. It still is.

The priest and the Levite had reasons, purity rules, schedules, safety, and the Samaritan had only a neighbor bleeding on his road. Jesus deliberately cast the hero from the group His audience despised, because mercy that stays inside our approved circles is not yet the mercy of God.

Notice, too, that Deuteronomy was already training this reflex: shelter the runaway, leave grapes for the hungry, guard the foreigner's gleanings. And behind the parable stands its Teller, the One who found us robbed and half-dead and paid the whole bill. You have been the man in the ditch. Now go and do likewise.