A legal expert stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to gain eternal life?” Jesus replied, “What is written in the Law? How do you interpret it?” He responded, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus said to him, “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.” But the legal expert wanted to prove that he was right, so he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:25-29)
Why did the legal expert ask that last question? Why do we still want to ask the same question? It seems he (and we) are interested in limiting the definition and thus limit who Jesus is calling us to love.
Jesus responds with the parable of the Good Samaritan. We know the parable well and have likely heard many sermons on the passage. We know Jesus’ audience would have expected the priest and the Levite to stop and have mercy on the man, beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. And we know they might have been equally shocked that a Samaritan stopped, saw the man in need, and went out of his way to care for the person in need by sacrificing time and money.
The parable began as an answer to a question about the definition of neighbor, but in telling the story Jesus changes the question: What do you think? Which one of these three was a neighbor to the man who encountered thieves?” (Luke 10:36).
Mike Slaughter, Lead Pastor of Ginghamsburg UMC in Ohio writes, “To welcome the displaced, the hungry, the sick and the dying is to affirm a worldwide neighborhood. We welcome others as God welcomes us, unconditionally. In the story of the Good Samaritan, our hero chose a response of involvement and compassion. It may have been safer and more convenient to walk on by . . . but the Samaritan took that risk because he saw the injured man as his neighbor. He looked beyond color, language, and religion to see a human being in need. He saw a child of God in trouble, struggling for life. Pity made him stop. Love caused him to act.”
We should spend less time worrying about “who is my neighbor” and more time being a neighbor to those in need. All across the globe, including right here in Gainesville, people are in need of a neighbor to reach out to them, to welcome them, to bandage their wounds, and care for them. The two qualities in Jesus we need to imitate are his compassion and his courage. Compassion means to suffer with those who are hurting – our hearts need to break at what breaks the heart of God. And we need to courage to stand for justice and to act with faith without worrying about what it will cost us.
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:37b)
