Some thoughts on being a neighbor on a non-preaching Sunday.
The lectionary readings for today are here.
This past week, I posted some thoughts on my personal facebook page in which I invoked the story of the Good Samaritan without looking ahead to see that this parable is the Gospel reading for today. I’ll take a bit from that post and put it in a slightly different frame.
The Gospel reading for today begins with a lawyer testing Jesus. “Just then” we are told, a lawyer stands up. It’s unclear just where Jesus is. He’s been speaking both publicly and privately to the disciples and so this ‘just then’ is an abrupt interruption that makes us pay close attention to what comes next. One of the things we tend to overlook in the stories of our scriptures is the motivations of the people. And yet, the authors make the effort to write them. Motivations matter. The lawyer wanted to justify himself, as many do when they are looking to validate their own way of being rather than to learn from a wise teacher how to grow and be a better human.
The lawyer could quote the great commandment to love God with our whole being and love our neighbor as ourselves, but he wanted a loophole, a way to justify not loving his neighbor. In response to the lawyer’s test, Jesus tells a story of a man who most Jews would not claim as a neighbor, a man from Samaria.
With the parable, Jesus turns the understanding of ‘neighbor’ on its head. Jesus makes it clear that who we define as our neighbor is about how we treat others, not the proximity or origin of the ‘others’. Jesus tells the story and then asks ‘which of these was a neighbor to the man who was robbed and beaten?’ He didn’t ask was the man robbed and beaten a neighbor and should the samaritan have done what he should. Jesus takes away the possibility of a loophole. The point of the parable is determining whether or not I am behaving as a good neighbor not who I do or do not put the label ‘neighbor’ on.
The point and purpose of God’s commandments is to shape our hearts to be like God’s heart. As we live into God’s commandments we are continuously transformed as God’s beloved children; it’s a lifelong growth journey. When we see life with the lens that God’s commandments are a checklist to earn our way into the Kingdom, we are motivated to look for the loopholes that justify how we already are. Love is the lens through which Jesus teaches us to see. When the lawyer answers that the neighbor is the one who shows mercy Jesus tells him to go and do likewise.
It should be the constant question for ourselves: am I revealing God’s love with my whole being, heart, soul, mind, and strength? Am I loving my neighbor as myself? Am I living into God’s commandments or looking to earn my way into the Kingdom? Jesus came to live and die as one of us so that we don’t have to justify ourselves, to show us in flesh and blood that God doesn’t operate transactionally but covenantally and redemptively. God desires to be in relationship with us not to do business transactions with us. God invites us all to participate in the building up of the Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven.
The stories we have in our Holy Scriptures are to help us grow into who God calls us be to, not to justify ourselves. If we approach scripture looking for weapons to dehumanize others we will find them because that is what we are looking for. When we approach them as a means of opening ourselves to God’s transforming love, our hearts will be shaped by God’s heart so we are equipped to share the good news of God’s love with our hurting world. Amen.
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