The parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) is one of the most remembered stories of Jesus for a reason, because it’s such a brilliant story. Jesus starts with something everyone can identify. A man, most likely a Jew because he was coming from Jerusalem, was on a business trip and got mugged. It was a rough and tumble world and everyone had a fear of that.

Well, here’s where it gets interesting: two religious people walk by this man in his distress. Now, you would assume that these two would stop by, but they don’t. Now, in their minds, they have good reasons. Perhaps it’s because they have responsibilities and people waiting for them, and they can’t be late.

One big issue would have been ceremonial cleanness. If they stopped and took time to help him, it could have made them ceremonially unclean and could have impaired them from participating in all the religious rituals of the temple.

But I think the most likely reason they passed by and didn’t help was fear. Fear is the surprising reason why so many of us struggle to love our neighbors. And the person who I got this theory from, interestingly enough, was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in a speech he gave the day before he was assassinated in Memphis in 1968.

He said he’d been to Jerusalem and had traveled the road Jesus mentioned. There’s a sharp elevation change, lots of curves, lots of places to be ambushed. It came to be known as the Bloody Pass. So Dr. King suggested, and I agree, that a main motivating factor could have been fear. Fear that there were other robbers waiting to ambush them if they stopped to help, or perhaps fear that this man was just playing dead, and he was a robber himself.

How many times does fear stop us from loving our neighbor? Fear of what what we’ll be asked to sacrifice, fear that we’ll be obligated to help longer than is convenient for us, fear of going without if we give what we have to others. How often does fear keep you from loving your neighbor?