Relational Living

Some pondering thoughts on this Friday morning …

When Jesus says to love our neighbor he’s not just talking about the folks next door or across the street. In the story he tells of the man from Samaria tending to the needs of the wounded man, the answer to ‘who is my neighbor’ is ‘the one who showed mercy.’ Can you see how Jesus flips the order of thinking here? The answer doesn’t focus on who we decide are our neighbors but how we show we are a neighbor: by being merciful to others wherever we may encounter them.

The common definition in ChurchLand for mercy is ‘not getting what you deserve’. This definition comes from a transactional way of thinking, not a relational way of living. Jesus spends his entire ministry on earth showing us in flesh and blood that life in God’s kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven isn’t transactional. It isn’t a zero sum game of good and bad behavior. Our life following Jesus is a journey of relationship in which we continuously become more and more like Jesus every day.

God’s love for us isn’t about earning or deserving. God loves us. God loves all people. God loves all that God has made. God loves. Our love for others shouldn’t be about earning or deserving but about living righteously in God’s kingdom-on-earth. In his book 15 New Testament Words of Life, Nijay Gupta includes Mercy in his discussion of Righteousness instead of giving it its own chapter. Gupta describes Righteousness as God’s “dynamic activity of ‘right-making’”. For us as we follow Jesus, righteousness is about living as “a society and a people that are about righteousness—living rightly toward God and each other in honesty, fairness, compassion, and justice.” This is being a neighbor. This is love as God loves (or at least as close as we can come in our humanness). This is relational living.

God created the world and saves the world and will restore the world with, in, and through love. We participate with God in bringing about the kingdom on earth by loving God and our neighbors and ourselves. Love is the most powerful thing we have. Let’s love loudly, more loudly than those who are shouting revenge and hate and bigotry. Let’s follow Jesus.