The Zone Gathering

A savvy lawyer asked Jesus what he must do to be saved. Jesus told him to love God and love his neighbor. The man then asked who his neighbor was, and Jesus told the following story:

Jesus said:

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of 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. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 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, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

Moral of the story: even the dirty, rotten, stinking Samaritan is our neighbor. So love everyone. We all know this story and the point that Jesus was making. When most people study this parable or teach on it, they focus on the history of the Samaritans and why the Jews hated them so much. And we have heard the story, seen the flannelgraphs, and heard the sermons so many times that we tend to miss some of the drama.

Today, I want to focus on the other two people in the story: the priest and the Levite. Both the priests and the Levites were religious leaders who were given several important responsibilities in the Temple. In NCC nomenclature, they might be small group leaders and ministry leaders. That’s us.

Let’s be fair, if the priest and Levite stopped, it would have been extremely inconvenient. If the man were dead, then touching him would have prohibited them from performing their job requirements in the Temple and they would have been responsible for burying the corpse. You could argue that they passed the man by out of a genuine desire to obey God’s rules and in order to fulfill the role that God had given them.

Here’s the thing we have to face: two leaders passed by a wounded man for the purposes of being able to fulfill their leadership responsibilities. And Jesus cried foul. He did not approve of their actions and pointed all of us to a life of sacrificial service to others that we meet on journeys.

It’s about leading from the heart and the hand.

We are called to lead, and in God’s leadership school that means we are called to serve. Jesus said in Matthew 20:26-28:

“Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must become your slave. For even I, the Son of Man, came here not to be served but to serve others, and to give my life as a ransom for many.”

For the next few months, we are going to focus on service here at Thursday Leadership Lesson. We will explore topics such as servant leadership in small groups, developing an attitude of service within your group, appointing a service coordinator for your group, and service project ideas for your group.

We believe that serving together is one of the fastest ways to build community, and we want our groups to serve their neighborhoods together. In fact, we have set a goal that every NCC small group would participate in a service project together during the Fall Semester. We will help you make that happen.

Let’s follow Jesus. It will be messy and inconvenient and take us outside our perceived leadership roles and responsibilities. But it is the most important thing we can do.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 7th, 2006 at 10:07 am and is filed under Leadership Lessons, Service. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.