The First Misnamed Parable

What do you do with the people who make you feel unsafe?

In Luke 10, a religious expert asks Jesus a simple question — 'Who is my neighbor?' — hoping to draw the line somewhere comfortable. Jesus answers with a story so scandalous that we've spent two thousand years softening it: it's the 'first misnamed parable' (Copan). But, to the original audience, "good" and "Samaritan" didn't belong in the same sentence. The hero of the story is the person you were raised to hate. 

In this message, we walk the dangerous road between Jerusalem and Jericho, discovering why your brain is wired to see 'not like me' as a threat, and to sit with the question Jesus refuses to let us dodge: not who counts as my neighbor? But what kind of person am I becoming? Along the way — a conversation with a stranger, on a plane, that turned this whole parable inside out. 

You've heard this story. You haven't heard it yet.