Today’s Gospel includes Luke’s account of the well-known parable often referred to as The Good Samaritan.
Martin Luther King spoke of this parable in his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, delivered the day before he was assassinated. Talking about the need for us to “develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness,” he addressed the question of why the priest and Levite didn’t stop to help the man who fell among thieves. After cataloguing some of the answers often given to that question, he shared what his own imagination told him.
It’s possible that those men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, “I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable.” It’s a winding, meandering road. It’s really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 miles — or rather 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you’re about 2200 feet below sea level. That’s a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the “Bloody Pass.” And you know, it’s possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it’s possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked — the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
And that, King suggested, was the question his listeners needed to ask themselves:
That is the question before you tonight. Not, “If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job. Not, “If I stop to help the sanitation workers what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?” The question is not, “If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?” The question is, “If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” That’s the question.
It is the same question we need to ask ourselves today. What will happen if I don’t help those who are suffering?
Creo en Dios! 
Excellent! It’s so important to ask the right question.
Ironically, he was invited to a retreat at Gethsemani Abbey the week that he went to give witness to the sanitation workersâ strike in Memphis, before James Earl Ray/Eric Starvo Galt worked his dastardly deed.
Merton wrote a powerful poem on the assassination of Dr. King and wrote a lovely letter of consolation to Coretta Scott King.