Loving Our Neighbors
The Challenge of Doing What Jesus Teaches
One of the most well-known parables that Jesus taught is The Parable of the Good Samaritan, found in Luke 10:25-37. Jesus tells the parable in response to a conversation with a lawyer regarding a question about what one must do to inherit eternal life. Once Jesus asked the lawyer about what the Torah teaches, the lawyer responded with the obvious answer:
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 love your neighbor as yourself.1
We know such instruction as the two great commands, which can only be done together. In other words, we love God by loving our neighbors.
The lawyer, who wanted to “justify” himself, had the audacity to ask Jesus who his neighbor was. I’ve never had anyone ask who their neighbor is but I’ve had more than a few people ask what it means to love our neighbor. Like asking about who the neighbor is, asking about what it means to love our neighbor can be a way of evading actually having to love our neighbor.
But Jesus, ever wise, refused to entertain any philosophical discussions about who our neighbor is or what it means to love our neighbor. Instead, Jesus tells the parable about the Samaritan who helped a man who had suffered a brutal attack along the road between Jerusalem and Jericho—a route that had a dangerous reputation.2 The whole point of the parable is to point out that the Samaritan, who had “compassion” (CEB) for the victim, is the neighbor who embodies what it means to love one’s neighbor. So when the Lawyer acknowledges that the Samaritan is the one who is the neighbor is the one who had “mercy” on the victim, Jesus says “Go and do likewise.”
The challenge is not understanding who our neighbor is or what it means to love our neighbor. What challenges us is loving our Samaritan neighbors, who are often those whose beliefs, values, and behaviors are very different from our own. Such outsiders are the ones we can exclude with our judgments, sense of superior knowledge, and spiritual pretense that just spells contempt without ever saying a word, and do so even without intending to do so.
So what shall we do? We know Jesus says “Go and do likewise” but will we?
“Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” - Theodore Roosevelt
In discussing the parable of the good Samaritan, the late Dallas Willard had the following to say:
In the United States, of course, he [Jesus] would tell about the “good Iraqi," "good communist,” “good Muslim,” and so on. In some quarters it would have to be the good feminist or good homosexual. In yet others the good Christian or good church member would have the appropriate shock value. Indeed, given some current secular attitudes, to speak of the good priest or good deacon might be very effective.3
So our neighbor may be the person to our political right or political left. Perhaps they have a Pro-Choice or Pro-Life bumper sticker on their car, or perhaps a Rainbow or NRA sticker stuck on the back window of their car, or perhaps the. Whatever the case may be, they’re still our neighbor.
The vision of Mission Alive involves equipping leaders to develop innovative communities of faith focused on transforming marginalized communities. It’s a vision that begins with learning how to love our neighbors, including our Samaritan neighbors.
It’s not enough to just say we love God and our neighbor, we must go do. Yes, we have good news to share but as Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Our neighbors will only know that we care to the degree that we learn how to love our neighbors as the Samaritan loved his neighbor. That is why Jesus tells a parable about the good Samaritan and finishes the parable with four important words, “Go and do likewise.”
K. Rex Butts, D.Min, serves as the lead minister/pastor with the Newark Church of Christ in Newark, DE, and is the author of Gospel Portraits: Reading Scripture as Participants in the Mission of God. Rex holds a Doctor of Ministry in Contextual Theology from Northern Seminary in Lisle, IL, and a Master of Divinity from Harding School of Theology in Memphis, TN. He is married to Laura, and together they have three children.
Unless otherwise noted, all scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 430; see also Josephus, Jewish Wars, 2.12.2 (228-230), who spoke of “robbers” on the road.
Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1998), 112.