The Name He Could Not Say

"He said, The one who showed him mercy. And Jesus said to him, You go, and do likewise." (Luke 10:37)

The lawyer cannot say the word. Look at his answer. Jesus asks which of the three was a neighbor, and the man does not say the Samaritan. He says, the one who showed him mercy. He will not put the word in his mouth. He has just heard a story in which the hero is a man from a people he was taught his whole life to despise, and he can see exactly where it lands, and he answers correctly while carefully avoiding the name.

That is so human it hurts. He got the theology right and could not say the name. And Jesus does not miss it. He hears the whole thing, the correct answer and the small withheld thing inside it, and he lets it stand, and he says only, go and do likewise. Because doing it is what will eventually change what the man can say. Not the other way around.

You will not think your way out of a prejudice. You will love your way out of one, slowly, and probably against your will, by doing the neighborly thing for the very person your heart has quietly filed under enemy, until one day the category cracks and you find you can say the name. So do not wait until your heart is clean toward them to act kindly. Act, and let the acting do to your heart what argument never could. The deed comes first. The changed heart follows it home.