Who Is Your Mission?

There's a question that haunts many well-meaning believers: "I know I'm supposed to share my faith, but do I just walk up to random people and start talking?" It's the practical tension between calling and action, between knowing we should do something and understanding exactly what that something is.

The answer might surprise you. Your mission isn't somewhere exotic or far away. It's someone near you.

The Lawyer's Question

In Luke 10, an expert in religious law approaches Jesus with a loaded question: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus, in His characteristic wisdom, turns the question back: "What does the Law say?"

The lawyer nails the answer: Love God with everything you have—heart, soul, strength, and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.

"Correct," Jesus affirms. "Do this and you will live."

But the lawyer isn't satisfied. He wants boundaries, definitions, limitations. So he asks the follow-up question that reveals the condition of every human heart: "And who is my neighbor?"

In other words: "Who exactly do I have to care about? Where does my responsibility end? Can I draw a circle around my obligations?"

Jesus responds with one of the most subversive stories ever told.

The Road to Jericho

A man is traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho—a notoriously dangerous seventeen-mile descent through rocky, isolated terrain known as "The Way of Blood." Robbers attack him, strip him, beat him, and leave him half-dead on the roadside.

Then come three travelers, each representing a different response to human need.

The Priest: Religion Without Compassion

First, a priest comes down the road. He sees the wounded man and... passes by on the other side.

Perhaps he thought about his temple duties. Maybe he worried about ritual purity—touching a dead body would make him ceremonially unclean. He had important religious work to do, after all.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: **Religion without compassion is like a car without an engine.** It might look polished and perfect on the outside, but it has no power to move, to go where it's needed, or to carry anyone anywhere.

You can know every verse, sing every song, attend every service, and still completely miss the heart of God. The priest valued his purity over the man's pain. If our faith makes us step around the hurting, we've stepped out of the footsteps of Jesus.

Mission begins when your heart breaks for what breaks God's heart.

The Levite: Awareness Without Action

Next comes a Levite—a religious assistant, someone who served in the temple. He gets a little closer. He sees the man, maybe even feels something, perhaps whispers a prayer. But then he too passes by.

The Levite represents something painfully familiar: the believer who is moved but not motivated. He feels bad, but he doesn't do anything.

**Awareness without action is like a diagnosis without a treatment.** Knowing what's wrong is useless—perhaps even cruel—if the cure is available but never given.

We live in an age of unprecedented awareness. We know about poverty, injustice, loneliness, and suffering. We nod our heads in church, feel stirred by worship, get emotional during altar calls. But by Monday, the feeling has fizzled out.

Compassion that never crosses the street is just a feeling. Mission starts when you say, "I'm done watching. I'm going to walk toward the need."

The Samaritan: Grace That Goes Where Religion Won't

Then Jesus drops the bomb. A Samaritan comes down the road.

To understand the shock value here, you need to know that Jews and Samaritans hated each other with a deep, generational, racial, and political passion. Samaritans were despised as ethnic "half-breeds" and religious "heretics." They were the enemy, the outsider, the last person anyone would expect to do the right thing.

But this Samaritan saw the wounded man and felt compassion. And then—critically—he acted.

Look at what he did:
- He went to him, crossing the road and entering the mess
- He bandaged his wounds using his own supplies
- He put the man on his own donkey, meaning he now had to walk
- He took him to an inn and paid for his care
- He gave the innkeeper two days' wages with a promise to cover any additional expenses

This wasn't a token donation. This was messy, inconvenient, costly, and dangerous. The Samaritan didn't ask for a background check. He didn't wonder about the man's denomination or whether he deserved help. He just saw the need and moved toward it.

**The priest represents law. The Levite represents tradition. But the Samaritan represents grace.**

Grace will go where religion won't. Grace will touch who others avoid. Grace will pay what others won't.

The Challenge That Changes Everything

Jesus ends the story with a question: "Which of these three proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among robbers?"

The lawyer can barely bring himself to say "the Samaritan," so he answers, "The one who showed him mercy."

Then comes the punch line: "You go, and do likewise."

Not "go and think about it." Not "go and post about it." Not "go and attend a conference about it."

Go and DO it.

Your Mission Field Is Closer Than You Think

Mission isn't primarily a sermon—it's a lifestyle. It's not about where you go overseas; it's about who you cross the road for today.

That coworker nobody talks to. That neighbor who never smiles. That friend who's fallen on hard times. That family member everyone else has given up on. That's your mission field.

God has strategically placed you where you live, work, and play to join Him in His mission. The question isn't whether you have a mission. The question is whether you'll recognize the people right in front of you as your mission.

Your mission is not somewhere else. Your mission is someone near you.

The wounded are all around us—not always bleeding physically, but bleeding nonetheless. Lonely. Broken. Desperate. Passed by. And the question Jesus asks through this ancient story echoes into our modern lives: Will you cross the road?

Will you be the priest, too busy with religious obligations? Will you be the Levite, moved but not motivated? Or will you be like the Samaritan, allowing compassion to become action, even when it's costly and inconvenient?

The world doesn't need more people who know the right answers. It needs more people who will cross the road.

Who is your mission? Look around. They're closer than you think.