Stingy at heart...a look at the Good Samaritan

Stingy - always counting the cost, cutting a corner, leaving stuff behind, refusing to share....is a condition of the heart.   Stinginess like generosity has little do with the state of your wallet.

There are lots of ways to be stingy - with our love, in our relationships, with our commitment, in our service or care of others.  There are an equal number of ways to be generous - always looking for a way to do more, leaving more behind for others, using our resources to ease the burden of another.

Underneath the parable of the Good Samaritan is this contrast between stingy and generous.  The lawyer was stingy.  In asking Jesus, 'Who then is my neighbor?' he reveals a very narrow worldview, one might even say a 'stingy' worldview where he is looking for people he can eliminate from his 'obligation to love' list.

Jesus answers his neighbor question with the parable of the Samaritan whose great outpouring of care and concern has made him a literary icon.  This Samaritan not only cares for an anonymous stranger - he goes over and beyond anything expected of him.  He secures the beaten man's safety and then secures his healing with his own money.  The lawyer is left looking very, very small while the Samaritan becomes larger than life.

The Good Samaritan is one way that Luke demonstrates God's abundant, over-the-top, never stingy love for those God has created.  When Jesus asks us to follow him this is the way he is going...down that road of generous, over-the-top, overflowing store of mercy, thankfulness and forgiveness.  Let us follow where he leads.