Do You Know Me?

How old American Express card commercials and the Good Samaritan

Do You Know Me

Do you know me? So asked numerous celebrities in the late 1970s and early 1980s, touting the benefits of the American Express card. They ranged from voice actor Mel Blanc (who mostly used his real voice) and football coach Mike Ditka through flautist Sir James Galway and operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti to explorer Sir Edmund Hillary and circus star Gunther Gebel-Williams. We might not have known their faces, but we certainly knew who they were

Luke 10:25-37 tells the story of the Good Samaritan. Luke says an expert in the law asked Jesus how to get eternal like, and He answers with a parable. A man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho is robbed and beaten within an inch of his life. A priest and a Levite bypassed the man, but a hated Samaritan nursed him, and paid the innkeeper for his recovery.

He may not have been able to give the innkeeper his American Express card, but he could have asked the traveler, “Do you know me?”

The answer, of course, would have been no. But he didn’t. It didn’t matter to him. He saw a man in need, and acted accordingly. As a neighbor.

Then Jesus asked the expert in the law of the three, the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan, who was the neighbor. The expert said the Samaritan. Jesus told the expert that he was right, and that he should go and do likewise.

He is telling us to do likewise, too.