Prayerful Clobbering the Clobber Texts

Father, when the lawyer stood before Jesus and asked, "Who is my neighbor?" he expected a safe answer — someone from his own synagogue, his own bloodline, his own side of the theological debate. Instead, Jesus told him about a Samaritan, the very person that lawyer had been trained to dismiss.

We do the same thing with Scripture. We approach passages like soldiers approaching a battlefield, arming ourselves with verses to win arguments rather than kneeling before the Word to let it win us. But the Parable of the Good Samaritan reminds us that God's love has always been wider than our categories. The priest and the Levite — men who knew their Bibles cover to cover — walked past the bleeding man in the ditch. It was the outsider, the one they would have "clobbered" with their theology, who stopped and poured oil on wounds.

Lord, forgive us for the times we have used Your Word as a wall instead of a bridge. Teach us to read Scripture the way the Samaritan read that broken body on the Jericho road — not asking "What does this person deserve?" but "What does love require of me right now?" Give us the courage to bind wounds even when our tradition tells us to cross to the other side.

Today, before you open your Bible to prove a point, ask the Holy Spirit this: "Am I reading to be right, or am I reading to be Christ to someone lying in a ditch?" The answer to that question will change not only how you read — it will change who you become. In the name of Jesus, who knelt to wash the feet of the one who would betray Him. Amen.