Ever left your cell phone on grocery store counter? Your wallet in a cab? Your purse on the floor of the department store? If you have, you probably can viscerally remember the sense of panic that kicked in the stomach feeling.

For a lot of us, our cell phones are a microcosmic representation of our whole lives. Think about all the phone numbers and contact information, pictures, calendared appointments and text messages you have stored in there. Granted, if you back it up often on your computer or with your wireless carrier, it shouldn’t be a big deal. But, given the fact that many people are too busy to make a backup plan and too cheap to buy the phone insurance, losing one’s phone is still the equivalent of leaving one’s life on a subway seat.

Ashton Giese knows this. The Defense Department analyst was on his way home when he inadvertently dropped his cell phone on a Washington, D.C., street. When he discovered that his electronic life was missing, he frantically began dialing the cell’s number from another phone. He didn’t even know what time it was because, like a lot of 21st-century people, he kept time with his phone rather than a watch.

Finally, a voice answered. "Yeah, I got your phone," said the voice. "But what’s it worth to you?" "Twenty bucks," said a frantic Giese. It was all the cash he had on him at the time. "My phone is my life," he says. "If I’d needed to, I would have paid a lot more."

What’s it worth to you? That’s certainly not the first thing you want to hear out of a "good" Samaritan. Many of us assume there’s a kind of unwritten agreement between losers and finders, and when we’re on the finding end we get a special kind of rush when we’re able to unite someone with their lost valuables. The gushing gratitude of the recipient is enough reward for most of us.

But, clearly, not all of us. Some people look at the misfortune of others as an opportunity to make a quick buck. Maybe you could call them "bad Samaritans."

Bad Samaritans are focused primarily on maximizing their reward or, in some sense, recouping something of what they believe society owes them. Take the case of Los Angeles-based writer Andrew Cohn, who was cleaning up after a backyard party and found a wallet on the ground with $40 in it. "I’d just spent $500 on the party," says Cohn. "I figured the money was the girl’s contribution." He kept the money and left the wallet, with ID and credit cards, on the ground.

How did Cohn justify his actions? Well, he says, "If you expect someone’s going to return your wallet with all the cash, you’re probably a little delusional." Davy Rothbart, who edits a magazine called Found, which features photos of lost objects, agrees with Cohn. "Really good Samaritans, if they find a wallet, they return it intact," he says. "Some people find a wallet, take the money, but return the important stuff." He says "That’s not evil."

So, what does that make someone such as Cohn — a semi-good Samaritan? And what if you find a wallet but really need the money right now; does that make it okay to keep it as long as you give back the "important" stuff? Is "finders-keepers" an ethical escape clause?

One would hope that most of you sitting here would probably say "no" to all of the above. After all, we’ve been schooled in Scriptures such as the Ten Commandments and Deuteronomy 22:1-4, which instructed the Israelites on precisely what to do when they find a stray sheep or ox: You take it back to the owner with no expectation of, or provision for, any kind of reward. Whether it’s sheep or cell phones, demanding a reward from a vulnerable person is nothing less than extortion.

The lesson here would seem to be obvious, particularly when we compare the behavior of "bad" Samaritans to the Good Samaritan in Jesus’ famous parable. When we read this passage a little more closely, however, we begin to see that the story has an even deeper dimension to it than just the ethics of helping. It really has to do with how we view people and, more specifically, whether we believe in the kindness of strangers.

Psychologists say that how you perceive strangers is a microcosm of how you perceive the world. If you believe that most people are intrinsically unethical and that they’d put the screws to you if given a chance, then you’re much more likely to put the screws to someone else if, say, you find a wallet or a cell phone or, as in Jesus’ story, if you find him or her battered on the side of the road. People who see strangers as outsiders, as enemies or as something less than themselves will default to treating them that way, rather than as equals, or, to use Jesus’ term, as "neighbors."

The key to this parable then is the question that prompts it. A lawyer asks Jesus, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" This is a question about ultimate rewards. For a first-century Jew, "eternal life" meant the life of the age to come, the ultimate covenant blessing that was in store for God’s chosen people. The lawyer perceived himself to be a member of the covenant community who, like many of his people at the time, held clear ideas about who was within the covenant boundaries set by the Torah and who was outside — who were friends and who were strangers.

Jesus questions him about the Torah law, and the lawyer gives the right answer — the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:5, which was about love for God, and its companion piece from Leviticus 19:18 about loving one’s "neighbor" as oneself. The definition of "neighbor" is the sticking point for this lawyer, so he presses Jesus for a legal opinion. Luke says the lawyer wanted to "justify" himself, which is a way of saying he was concerned about defining his "neighbors" as follows: "My neighbor is a fellow Jew, i.e., someone who lives within the covenant boundaries of Judaism."

Asking Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" was like saying, "You’re talking about our own people, right?" Like many of the people of Jesus’ day, the lawyer apparently had big issues with strangers.

Jesus responds with this story, one that has become so familiar to us that we miss the scandalous implications of it for people such as the lawyer. A man is on his way down the wilderness road from Jerusalem to Jericho, which implies that he is a Jew, when he gets set upon by robbers who beat him and leave him for dead.

A priest and a Levite, who should be obvious "neighbors" to their fellow Jew, both pass by on the road and refuse to help. Although Jesus doesn’t elaborate on their reasons for not wanting to get involved, the fact that these two are representatives of the Torah and its covenant rituals and boundaries is very significant. The priest and the Levite — and, by association, the Torah and the sacrificial system — failed to act in order to save one of their own.

So who does? A Samaritan, a stranger and an enemy of Israel. To most first-century Jews, "good Samaritan" would have been a laughable oxymoron, as these half-breed people with their own temple were considered somebody to despised and avoided. However, this Samaritan stops, renders aid and takes care of the Jewish victim’s expenses. He does what the victim’s "own people" won’t do for him.

Although we most often read and hear this story preached from the perspective of the Samaritan who helps, Jesus hammers home the point from the perspective of the victim in answering the lawyer’s question with a question of his own. "Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" The stunning answer was, of course, that the Jew in the ditch discovered that the Samaritan was his neighbor and that the others — those geographically, ethnically and religiously similar — were not.

"What must I do to inherit eternal life?" The lawyer’s question was the same as that of the rich young man in Luke 18:18-25, and Jesus’ answer is essentially the same: You must learn a new way to be God’s covenant people and a new way of understanding God’s kingdom. And, for starters, you must redefine your definition of "neighbor" to include the stranger and the outsider. Jesus would live that out by spending time with the outcasts and, interestingly, the tax collectors who made their living essentially by extortion! Following Jesus means we are called to "go and do likewise." We are called to see others not as good or bad Samaritans but as people who deserve our presence and our help.

God’s people are never to play "finders-keepers," nor are they to see themselves as being more deserving or better than anyone else. When it comes to the kindness of strangers, we tend to get what we expect. If we’re kind and helpful to people we don’t know or who are in trouble, in every circumstance, then we’re more likely to see that kindness returned. Even if we don’t receive reciprocal care and help, we know that God has called us to love the stranger regardless. That’s what it means to be God’s people.

After all, God set no limits on the love he showed us in the life and death of His Son on the cross for our salvation. The Good Samaritan certainly reminds us of Christ, who stopped to minister to our needs – our needs of forgiveness of sins which gave us peace with God because of that forgiveness. Jesus bound our wounds and poured in the oil and wine of his love, dying for our sins, covering the price of the sins of our past, and also the sins of our future, leaving nothing for us to pay, and nothing that we might be required to do.

We certainly can do nothing to justify ourselves like the lawyer thought you could. Only God can pronounce us justified and forgiven by his grace through faith in the atoning work of Christ. Like Paul wrote the Romans, "We are justified by faith without the deeds of the law."

Things do have a way of coming back around to justice eventually. Take Andrew Cohn, for example. A few hours after he replaced the now cash-poor wallet back on the ground, the owner knocked on his door. Cohn opened the door to find a drop-dead gorgeous woman standing on his porch. Although she was sad her money was gone, she was glad to have her wallet and credit cards back. She was so glad, thought Cohn, that maybe she’d agree to go out with him.

Problem is, he didn’t get her number, and a mutual friend wouldn’t give it to him. The friend’s reason? "You can’t ask out a girl if you just took her money."

You think?

Maybe this guy will someday get a life, find eternal life and be a good neighbor. Amen.