Week 3 - March 8 - The Wide Embrace Of Love

Luke 10:25-37

An expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”
But wanting to vindicate himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and took off, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came upon him, and when he saw him he was moved with compassion. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, treating them with oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him, and when I come back I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

By this point in the gospel of Luke, the religious leaders were getting feisty. They are fascinated by Jesus, inviting him to dinner and engaging him in conversation. But they were also worried about his growing influence amongst the people. A lawyer, a religious professional who was an expert in the Law, representing the religious elite, all of a sudden pipes up to test Jesus’–faithfulness? knowledge of the law? loyalty to the socioreligious power structure? Probably all of the above. And his question is meant as a challenge. What, he asks, must I do to inherit eternal life?

Of course Jesus answers with a question. What is the law?, he asks. He follows his response with another question, asking how the lawyer interprets, or “reads” it himself. The lawyer responds by quoting part of the Shema, a daily Jewish prayer, from Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and adds the commandment from Leviticus 19:18. One must love God and love neighbor in order to have eternal life. Jesus indicates he is correct and the conversation seems to be over. But then the lawyer doubles down and ups the potential conflict by asking a hotly debated question: who is my neighbor?

While first century Judaism was inclusive in some ways (“Love the alien as yourself,” Lev. 19:34), it also had strict boundaries around how people could behave towards themselves and one another, who could do what to and with whom. These boundaries supported power dynamics and determined who was in and who was out. The lawyer was pushing Jesus to see where he would draw the boundary for how far his love should go.

And then Jesus proceeds to tell a story that pushes the boundary so much farther than anyone hearing could have ever imagined.

A man is beaten and left for dead, and, as Jesus tells it, has absolutely no identity. No way of determining if he was an Israelite or not, wealthy or not, a foreigner or not, employed or not. He has no social or political or religious qualifier that would make him a more sympathetic victim. He is simply a stranger, grievously wounded. The location of his attack would have been familiar to the crowd. The road down from Jerusalem to Jericho was notoriously dangerous, with lots of places for bandits to prowl. The man’s only hope is that someone will pass by to help him.

And someone does! But the priest, who by tradition would have had a duty to bury a corpse if he had seen it, does not stop. He goes down, away from Jerusalem, with no religious excuse for avoiding help. A Levite, a lesser temple worker, also passes by, ignoring the man. The third traveler stops though, finally someone who will help this poor man. Shockingly though, it is not an Israelite (which would have added an anticlerical tint to the story, showing an average person doing what the religious leaders would not). It is a Samaritan.

Samaritans were a group of people who were ethnically related to Jews, but they were considered unclean as they were descendents of Israelites in mixed marriages with Assyrians, and significantly, they did not center their worship on Jerusalem. Sometimes when we are similar to someone, it is the differences that stand out and offend us even more. And that seems to be the case between the Jews and Samaritans. It would have stunned the Jewish hearers that the person who came near to the wounded man, was moved with compassion, and went above and beyond to heal and help was not one of their own, but was, in fact, their annoying, unclean, offensive neighbor.

And yet, when the story concludes and Jesus asks which of the three travelers was the neighbor to the wounded man, the lawyer says, the one who showed mercy.

At this moment, even he no longer identifies the characters by their outward differences. The neighbor is characterized by his loving and gracious actions. The one who shows mercy, the one who acts with compassion, the one who gives without expectation of repayment or reward–that is your neighbor. The boundaries that we so often set up are defined by who we are willing to love, and we often start with who we do not. Jesus desires us to love much more expansively, without any boundary.

The question is no longer, who is your neighbor? The question is, will you be a good one?

Who is being redefined as your neighbor?
What does it mean for you to be a good neighbor?