He Paid the Innkeeper and Said He Would Be Back

Everybody remembers the roadside. Almost nobody remembers the invoice.

A man is beaten and left half dead on a road. Two religious men see him and cross to the other side. And a Samaritan comes along, and the text says he had compassion, and then it lists everything he did.

Went to him. Bound up his wounds. Poured in oil and wine. Set him on his own beast. Brought him to an inn. Took care of him.

That is already more than most people would do and it is not where the story stops.

The next morning he took out two pence and gave them to the innkeeper and said: take care of him, and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.

Two things in that sentence. He paid in advance for a stretch of time he would not be present for. And he committed, with no cap on it, to whatever the rest of it cost.

That is the part of the parable I cannot get past, because it is the part I am worst at.

The open ended clause

Read what he said to the innkeeper, because the second half of it is remarkable.

And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee. (Luke 10:35, King James Version)

Whatsoever thou spendest more.

He did not set a limit. He handed over an amount that covered a couple of weeks and then told a stranger to keep spending and that he would settle up on his return.

And he had no idea what that man's recovery would cost. He could not have. He had found him on the road that morning and had no information about how badly he was hurt or how long it would take.

He committed to an unknown number.

You are able to commit before you know the cost, and He has never once asked anybody to sign only for what they could calculate. That is not me making the parable heroic beyond the text. Luke 10:35 has an open ended promise in it, and it is the Holy Spirit who supplies the willingness to say yes to something with no number on it.

The second day is where help usually dies

Here is what I want to press on, because the roadside is not actually where most people fail.

Most people are good in a crisis. Something happens and everybody moves. There are meals and rides and phone calls and money, and for about two weeks the person in trouble is surrounded.

And then it goes quiet.

Not because anybody stopped caring. The crisis passed out of the news cycle of everybody's life and the recovery, which is much longer and much less dramatic, has nobody on it.

The Samaritan built for the second day. That is the design of what he did: he handled the road himself, and then he set up the long part with somebody else, and he stayed financially responsible for it while he was gone.

He did not choose between helping now and helping later. He arranged both.

You are able to build for the part after the crisis, and the loud stretch has never once been the hard one. Luke 10:35 has him arrange an absence rather than end an involvement, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a person's attention on a situation after everybody else has moved on.

He used somebody else

There is something practical in this that gets missed and it matters for a person with a real life.

He did not stay. He had somewhere to be, and he went.

That is important, because a lot of people avoid getting involved at all on the grounds that they cannot commit indefinitely. They see a need, they know they cannot solve it, and so they do nothing rather than start something they cannot finish.

He solved that by paying somebody who could stay.

That is not a lesser form of help. He did what he could do personally, and then he bought what he could not do personally, and both were part of the same act.

You are able to arrange what you cannot personally carry, and stepping back has never once been the same as walking away. Luke 10:34-35 has him do the roadside himself and delegate the recovery, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person the difference between their capacity and their responsibility.

Which of these three

And the whole parable exists to answer a question, so it is worth remembering what the question was.

A lawyer had asked, who is my neighbor. He wanted a definition, and a definition is a way of drawing a line, because every definition has an outside.

Jesus does not answer it. At the end He asks him a different question: which of these three was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves?

He turned the question around. The lawyer asked who qualifies as my neighbor. Jesus asked who acted like one.

So the parable is not a list of who is in and who is out. It is a description of what neighboring looks like when it is done, and the answer the lawyer gives is: he that shewed mercy on him.

And Jesus says: go, and do thou likewise.

You are asked to be one and not to identify one, and that question has never once been about drawing a boundary. Luke 10:36 reverses the lawyer's question on purpose, and the Spirit of God is the one who moves a person from defining a duty into doing one.