What Neighbor Am I?

Text: Luke 10:25-47 Other texts: Deuteronomy 30:9-14

When we pray to do God’s will, our prayer contains two parts. One part is that may have the courage, focus, and compassion to do God’s will. That is, that we are able enough. The other part is that we may know what God’s will is, that we may know what God wants. That is, that we have enough knowledge. Often, both parts are wanting. The Bible is as full of prayers saying “make me strong so I can do what you want” as it is full of prayers saying “tell me what you want me to do.”

The law, the law of Torah, the law referenced in the reading today from Deuteronomy, is a list of things God wants people to do. Such a list is one way of making sure we have God’s will straight. The law is a form of grace, meaning a gift from God to people to help them know what to do.

The lawyer who greets and tests Jesus is an expert in this law, this list. Of course, the list of things to do and not do is not always clear in every situation. The list is a code of law, and like the civil code of law that we live by, it needs to be interpreted. The lawyer would have known not only the code, but how the code had been interpreted so far, and would have speculated on how it might be interpreted in the future. When he comes to Jesus, he comes seeking an interpretation.

Both the lawyer and Jesus would have known the summary or the basis of the law. From Deuteronomy, Love your God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind. And from Leviticus, Love your neighbor as yourself. But what, asks the lawyer, does this mean? What does it mean for me? asks the lawyer.

The law, it says in today’s reading, is in your heart. But in many ways, relying on a code of law is easier that relying on the urgings of one’s heart. It is not that the heart is an unreliable guide. On the contrary. It is that the heart is a strict and stern judge. The heart knows when we are loving our neighbor, the heart knows when we are loving God. Or not. The scope of our heart’s critique is unbounded. Some things that we do that our hearts would condemn are just fine according to the law of the land. The letter of the law, as we say.

Though Luke says that the lawyer is testing Jesus, his question is not frivolous. The lawyer is not being a jerk here. The answer is important. Rules of culture and law define a society. They reflect back to us who we are. In our society, it is not OK to shoot someone, usually and it is OK to carry a gun. It is OK to limit highway speeds and not OK to limit the production of fast cars. It is not OK to drink in public and it is OK to pass by someone lying by the side of the road. These distinctions are not arbitrary, they reflect what we value. And laws change when cultures and conditions change.

The lawyer asks Jesus to help him define the boundaries of compassion. He wants to know in particular what people are outside those boundaries, people to whom he need not be compassionate. He is not trying to expand the envelope to include more people. He wants to be safe with God and with his nation, his people. The lawyer wants to know who deserves his compassion and, more important, who does not. Whom he can safely ignore when thinking of the law and its requirements of love. He wants to know not so much whom he should love but whom he does not need to love.

In response to his question, Jesus tells him a story. The story is an interpretation of the law that both Jesus and the lawyer agree is fundamental. You are familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan. I won’t repeat it. But there are two things that you should know. First, the characters who pass the man by—the priest and the Levite—are not meant to be seen as somehow lacking in character. These would have been the most respected and honored people. They are chosen not because they are the worst sort of people in the culture, but the best. Even the best pass the man by. And second, you should know that the man in the ditch and the Samaritan who helped him were deadly enemies. Samaritans and Jews had a history of violent strife that would match conflicts in our own time, with village-burning, mass crucifixions, and beheadings.

The Levite and the priest pass by the man who had been beaten and left for dead by the side of the road. For whatever reason, they did not stop to help.

But the Samaritan did. The Samaritan stopped to help. What makes the Samaritan different from the other two is what he did. Not what he believed, or what he figured out. He helped the man. The Samaritan first came up to the man, Jesus tells us. And by coming near the man, he then was moved by compassion, and his compassion led him to extraordinary service. Who cares what he believed? This story Jesus tells is about doing.

The lawyer wants to know who his neighbor is. Who qualifies as neighbor and who does not. Who deserves to be treated as neighbor and who does not. The story does not answer the question. Jesus does not tell the lawyer who his neighbor is. Instead, Jesus tells the lawyer what a neighbor does.

Who of the three, asks Jesus, is the neighbor to the man in the ditch? The answer is obvious. The man who helped him. The Samaritan. Do the same, Jesus tells the lawyer.

The lawyer’s question has a dark question inside of it. And that question, which the lawyer does not state but which he does imply, is Who is my enemy? But Jesus will not answer that questions, because he has already made it clear in Luke’s gospel. The answer is: Nobody. Love your enemies, he has said, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you. The lawyer wants to demonize a group of people—how far does love reach: where can indifference or hatred start—but Jesus will not indulge him. There is no such border.

The lawyer hopes in his question that Jesus will make the law clearer by enumerating cases. Your neighbors are the persons in your town, your church, your office, your nation, your race, your class, some grouping we can distinguish. But Jesus will not do so. The rules of law and culture limit some of the wickedness that we do. And they obligate us to do some good. But how we love God with all our hearts and souls and strength and mind and how we love our neighbors as ourselves cannot be based on limits or obligations. Our love for God and neighbor stems from our compassion, from our wise and knowing hearts. It will not do for us to be like the lawyer, seeking to be good by making lawful distinctions.

Show me your ways, prays the psalm. Teach me your paths. Lead me, prays the psalm.

We can get trapped as the lawyer does when we try to differentiate between love for one people and another. Whose suffering do we relieve and whose can we cause? Whose cries do we heed and whose can we be deaf to? Whom do we come near in compassion and whom do we feel comfortable passing by? We ask these kinds of questions all the time. But there is no answer to them from Jesus, our teacher and our lord.

The question we get an answer to is not: What kind of person is my neighbor? but: What kind of person am I? Not: what must my neighbor do for me to love him? But: What shall I do, having loved him? Not: Who is my neighbor? but: Who am I?