Scripture
Luke 10:25-37

Session goal
To encourage youth to practice loving their neighbors by first accepting everyone as their neighbors.

Materials needed and advance preparation

• Have Bibles for each youth
• Have newspaper articles on Arizona’s immigration law and other, similar immigration laws that may be passed in other states.
• For a resource, download Mennonite Mission Network’s Missio Dei booklet on Immigration and the Bible.
• Optional: Have an adult who is a recent immigrant share their story.

Focus (10-12 minutes)
After snacks and a welcoming time, ask the youth to define the word “hospitality.” Then ask them to think of Bible stories that illustrate hospitality. Hopefully, they relate hospitality to both caring for people’s physical needs (such as food and lodging) and also to social justice. In both the Old and New Testaments, God’s people didn’t give food and lodging and their friendship only to safe or rich or acceptable people. God’s kind of hospitality is radical because it is most often extended to poor people or people who might seem like a threat. Point out these examples if the youth haven’t already mentioned them:

• Elijah receives hospitality from a foreigner (the widow of Zarephath was from enemy territory) and then, ironically, provides food for her (1 Kings 17:8-24).
• Paul encourages Philemon to forgive his runaway slave, Onesimus, and welcome him back. In doing so, he would by extension be welcoming Paul himself (Philemon).
• Jesus says that the good people, the sheep, are those who extend hospitality (providing food, clothing and visitation) to the “least of these.” Those who don’t provide hospitality to marginalized people are judged severely (Matthew 25:31-46).
• God’s people themselves are many times aliens in a strange land, and so God commands them to care for the aliens among them (Leviticus 19:34), and they are to see themselves as aliens (Hebrews 11). See how many displaced or immigrant biblical figures the youth can name. (Examples: Abraham, Joseph, Ruth, Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, Mary and Joseph in Egypt, etc.)

Transition into the Bible study by saying, “A big part of hospitality isn’t about giving people food and lodging. It’s about letting God change your heart about the way you see others who are different from you. The best definition for biblical hospitality is loving the stranger. That love must include confronting false attitudes we have about the stranger.”

Exploring the Bible story (20-25 minutes)
Ask the youth to turn to Luke 10:25-37. Read the story out loud and then ask them how this story connects to hospitality. Give some cultural and historical background on Samaritans. Make these points:

• Samaritans came into existence when Assyria conquered the Northern Kingdom, Israel, in 722 BCE. The Assyrians exiled 50 percent of the people and imported 50 percent foreigners. The foreigners intermarried with the Israelites and their children became known as Samaritans.
• The Jews in first-century Palestine hated Gentiles (anyone who wasn’t ethnically Jewish). But they hated Samaritans even more because they were “half-breeds.” Jews would walk miles out of the way to avoid walking through Samaria, and would refuse to touch or speak to Samaritans.

Ask them, “If Jesus were telling this story today, who would be the Samaritan? How would the story be different?” Divide the youth into groups of four to five people and direct them to come up with a contemporary Good Samaritan story.

Apply (10-15 minutes)
Have the youth read their contemporary parables or act them out in a dramatic skit. Then let the discussion flow. Talk about who we treat as Samaritans today. You can name the issues surrounding immigration and talk about the national discussion currently taking place. Ask the youth about the stereotypes they encounter when they hear about “illegal immigrants.”

If you have invited an immigrant to join you, invite them to share their story.

Respond (5-10 minutes)
Ask, “So, what are we going to do?”  Be prepared for a wide range of emotions and reactions from both the youth and maybe even from yourself. The immigration issue is complicated. Help the youth see that loving the stranger involves both physical care, like the Samaritan gave the dying man, and letting God heal the attitudes we have toward the other. Jesus didn’t choose to make a hated Samaritan the hero of the story by accident.

End in silent prayer, giving the youth time to confess their attitudes to God and ask for healing.