Go and do likewise

Who is your neighbour?

Photo by Roynaldi Fredynan on Unsplash

1. Who is your neighbour?

Who is your neighbour?

If you grew up in the 70s, as I did, the word ‘neighbour’ immediately triggers Sesame Street, and the song ‘Who are the people in your neighbourhood?’. The people in the neighbourhood are ‘the people that you meet each day’.

A neighbour is in your neighbourhood – the people we jostle up against. They cut us off in traffic, they lend us bowls of sugar, they complain about our overhanging trees, and they mind our kids for us.

But the Bible invites us to see our neighbours as the ones we are supposed to love as we love ourselves.

The Old Testament law boils down to two clear commands. We know them well: love God with all your being. No compromises. And love your neighbour as you would love yourself.

If you want to gain eternal life and a place in God’s kingdom, love God with all you have, and love your neighbour as yourself. That’s who belongs to the people of God.

Who is your neighbour then? My neighbour is the one I am supposed to love.

2. Who counts as us? 10:25-29

This question becomes the sticking point in Jesus’ encounter with an expert in the law – the Jewish law - in Luke 10. We know something of his intention here: he stood up to test Jesus.

And his question is loaded. It’s a test. It isn’t a sincere and humble plea, but a cross-examination.

That’s because the lawyer’s question - What must I do to inherit eternal life - is not just a question about behaviour but belonging. Who is a member of the eternal life club? Who is in the tribe? Who counts as us?

Jesus answers the question with a question. And the question says ‘you’re the expert in the law, you tell us: what does the Bible say?’

The lawyer replies with the same words that Jesus himself will use when he’s asked what the greatest commandment is. Love God and love your neighbour – that’s the whole of the law in a nutshell. If you want to belong to the people of God, these are the badges.

But then comes the question that reveals everything about the lawyer’s heart – and about ours, too – in vs 29. ‘He wanted to justify himself’, Luke tells. He wants an answer that will enable him to stand as his own judge, rather than God, and to declare himself righteous and saved.

And he probably notices that, though there are only two laws, they are vast in scope: love God with all you have. Love your neighbour as yourself. So he is looking for limits. He wants Jesus to define the circle of his responsibility. How far does love have to go? Who am I obliged to love?

Who is my neighbour?

What answer do you think he’d like?

He’d say: God is the God of Israel, and my neighbours are my Jewish neighbours. People like me: my family, my tribe, my religion.

3. The unexpected neighbour 10:30-37

But Jesus doesn’t argue with the man. Instead, he tells him a story.

It’s one of the most famous stories of all time - so famous that it’s almost become a meme. And because of that, we have to read it very carefully. We think we know what it means, but often we don’t.

It’s about a man who is travelling a dangerous road, known in those days as ‘the Bloody Pass’. It was full of bandits and robbers.

Anyhow, the man’s journey was brutally interrupted. Robbers jumped him, took what he had and left him for dead.

And as he lies there bleeding and naked – you know the story – two travellers come past. First a priest, and then a Levite. And you can imagine what went through their heads, because you’ve thought similar thoughts.

If he’s dead, there’s nothing I can do anyway, and I’ll be made ritually unclean for my work at the Temple.

I’ve got a deadline to meet, and helping this guy will be time-consuming.

What if this is a trick, and I stop to help, and I get jumped on? It’s not safe.

And the two men walk by on the other side.

But a third man walks up. Even today, we tell stories with three people in them. It’s the classic ‘an Englishman, an American, and an Australian walked into a bar’. Or ‘a rabbi, an imam, and a priest’.

Usually, the punchline comes with the third person. And usually we find that it is our person who turns out to be the hero of the story – or their person who turns out to be the butt of the joke.

Jesus has three characters, too. But the third man who walks up is not another Israelite, but, of all people, a Samaritan.

The Jews and the Samaritans were not just friendly rivals over sporting matches, like Australia and New Zealand. They were bitter enemies.

The enemy walks up. What is he going to do? Take whatever is left of the man’s possessions? Finish him off while he’s down?

But, says Jesus, he was moved with pity. He put aside his fear, as he was a long way from his own home. He strapped up the wounds of the man. He put him on his own donkey. Then, at great cost and inconvenience to himself, he tended to the needs of the stricken man at a local hotel.

So then, says Jesus, which one was the neighbour?

And notice that the legal expert can’t even bring himself to say ‘the Samaritan’. He just says ‘the one who had mercy on him’.

Who is the neighbour? Who is it that truly obeys the law of the God of Israel?

The hated enemy! The one that I would least expect to be counted as righteous.

The villain is the hero of the story.

Can you see what Jesus has done to the lawyer’s question? He asked: who counts as my neighbour? Jesus asks who acted like a neighbour?

Who then is my neighbour?

Jesus won’t have us draw a circle around that category. The neighbour is not the person who belongs to your group. Your neighbour may not share your politics, your religion, or your tribe.

The neighbour is the person whose needs you see. And that means that the neighbour might even be your enemy.

4. Go and do likewise… for it has been done for you 10:37

We need to let this land.

What is God asking of us? Love him wholeheartedly and love your neighbour as yourself. But who is the embodiment of neighbour-love? Jesus says: Look at the Samaritan, and copy him.

Go and do likewise.

Let’s not be evasive. That was what the lawyer was trying to do. We’re so used to domesticating this parable that we think that Jesus means something like ‘be kind’. Support a couple of charities, perhaps.

But there’s nothing limited about the kindness of the Samaritan, is there? He puts himself at risk. He takes time from his journey. He touches the Jewish man who has been taught to hate him.

So Jesus says: If you are my disciple, you are called to that kind of love. Do this, and you will live, he says. We cannot be Jesus’ disciples and walk past suffering – regardless of who it is who suffers.

But there’s another layer to this story. Jesus could have told a story about a Jewish man who discovers a Samaritan beaten and bleeding by the roadside. But the story is not how the Jew loved the Samaritan, but how the Samaritan loved the Jew.

The Jewish man is not the one who loves, but the one who receives love. As we hear the story, we ask ‘am I the Samaritan who comes down the road or am I the beaten man lying helpless?’

It’s a crucial twist because the story doesn’t allow us to feel proud, as if we are morally superior for dispensing our charity. Jesus won’t let us justify ourselves, remember.

Rather, grace comes from a completely unexpected place.

The longer I sit with this story, the more difficult it is for me to imagine myself as the Samaritan. I am only too aware that, if this is what neighbour-love demands of me, I fail. I have not always loved my neighbour as myself. The story of the Good Samaritan is a goad to wake me up, but it is also a mirror in which I find myself lacking.

I’ve not loved my neighbour as myself. My heart is more callous than I admit. I am stingy and unadventurous with my kindness.

But like the Jewish man in the story, I find myself shown mercy in my desperate need.

And this is the a-ha moment that Christian readers have noticed for centuries. The Samaritan puts oil and wine on the man’s wounds to heal him. He puts him own his own donkey to carry him in his place. He takes him to a safe place at the inn. And he pays the price of his recovery.

Christians have said: This scene looks very familiar. Because this is what Jesus has done for us.

Jesus himself is the Good Samaritan.

There was one who not only taught us to love our enemies, but who lived it.

As Paul teaches us: While we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son.

So the message is not just to be like the Good Samaritan, but that we will be like the stricken man in the story.

Who is your neighbour? Jesus says, ‘I am a neighbour to you’.

We love with our everything the God who first loved us, and we love our neighbours like the Samaritan because we ourselves have been loved by one who was a Samaritan to us.

5. Will you become a neighbour?

So the question comes back to us. Jesus says ‘Go and do likewise’. Will you?

a) dangerous unselfishness

Martin Luther King saw in the Good Samaritan what he called a ‘dangerous unselfishness’. He risks himself, he interrupts his journey, and he bear the cost of care.

Are you ready to be that kind of neighbour? My prayer is that people would say of St Mark’s not ‘that’s the place where Elton got married’ but ‘that place is filled with people who are dangerously unselfish’. They go the extra mile to show the love of Jesus. They are truly salt and light. You can see the love of God visible amongst them.

If I’m honest, I think we could really lift our game. Where is our boldness? Why are we so timid and half-hearted, or so defeated by the world’s problems?

Jesus says: Go and do likewise.

b) unexpected grace

The grace in the story comes from an unexpected place.

When I was growing up in Newtown, everyone knew about the Block on Eveleigh Street, near Redfern Station. It was a place where many Aboriginal people lived with deep trauma and hardship. If you walked past as a white person, you felt like you were trespassing. I used to just keep my head down and walk quickly by.

One night, a friend of mine was heading to Redfern station when a Sydney storm broke. Within minutes, she was soaked.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw an Aboriginal woman walking towards her.

Immediately, she felt afraid.
Am I going to be shouted at? Asked for money?

But the woman came up to her, handed her an umbrella, and simply said:

“Here you go.”

Can you show unexpected grace to someone who might think of you as an enemy or opponent? Surprise them with compassion. Do not repay evil for evil, but rather return what you’ve received with good.

It is this kind of grace that can fracture hatred and begin to heal our divided world.

Jesus says: Go and do likewise.

c) share the mercy you’ve received

But we’re not the heroes of the story. We do not love from a place of superiority. We’re people who’ve received mercy.

Jesus has been a neighbour to us. He found us broken by sin, helpless and afflicted. He lifted us up, giving himself on the cross to pay what we could not pay.

So – we now go and show others that same mercy. Yes, by helping the wounded, but also by sharing the good news that in Jesus there is forgiveness of sins, cleansing from shame, and peace with God.

Jesus says again: Go and do likewise.

This week, someone will lie in your path, in need of the love of Jesus Christ. Will you be a neighbour?