A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and took off, leaving him half dead. Luke 10:30

Ministry that costs nothing accomplishes nothing. – John Henry Jowett

This was a road that was infamous for having robbers who would mug you. The local people called the road “The Bloody Way” in the first century.

Jesus said that two religious pros went out of their way to avoid the broken man on the road. And it wasn’t a two-lane road with a wide shoulder. It was more like a mountain trail through rugged ravines and cliffs. To go around this guy meant that the two religious professionals had to leave the trail, and climb up a crag of rocks to get past him. It took quite some effort to avoid the bloody pile of a human on that road.

And then Jesus contrasts that with the figure of the Good Samaritan. Who comes near to this person, bandages their wounds, and puts them on their own animal. Takes him to a hostel in Jericho and essentially leaves his credit card with the clerk and says, “Whatever this guy needs to recover, put it on my card.”

In a very real sense, the Samaritan was putting life back into a person who was dying.

Nearly twenty-five years ago, my world came crashing in on me. Because of some selfish choices, I lost my position as a pastor and needed to move my young family to another state. Emotionally, I was as broken and battered as that man on the road called “The Bloody Way.”

Lynette and I were trying to get our house ready to be put on the market so that it could be sold, and we could move to the Pacific Northwest and start a new life. There were a thousand little things that needed to be done to the house to get it ready to be put on the market before we could move. But I was so broken that I couldn’t think straight.

I don’t know all the details, but one day my brother-in-law, John, showed up unannounced on our front porch. I asked him what he was doing, and he said, “I heard you were in trouble, and I came from California to help you get your house ready to sell.”

Those days are a fog in my memory, and I don’t remember everything he did, but he spent two or three days working on our house because I was too emotionally broken to do it. John Harrington entered into the brokenness of the broken and it marked my life in a deep and profound way.

That is what a burden-bearer does. That is the kind of church community I want to be a part of; a community of life-giving friends who bear one another’s burdens.

The Good Samaritan was willing to spend himself on behalf of the bloody stranger. This man allowed his schedule to be disrupted. He spent his time, his energy, and his own money. When we begin to fulfill the law of Christ that Paul talks about in Galatians, it will disrupt our schedule, cost us time, and energy, and often cost us money.

We do it because a man named Jesus left heaven’s glory for earth’s gloom to bind up our broken souls and anoint us with this love and great cost to himself.

Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows…

 But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed. Isaiah 53:4-5

Who is broken in your world that needs a burden-bearer? Are you that burden-bearer?