Loving God, Loving Neighbors
What The Story of the Good Samaritan Asks of Us During Lent
Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Lasting six weeks, Lent ends with Holy Week, the crucifixion of Jesus on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday or Resurrection Sunday.
Lent is a season to remember “our creaturely mortality and moral culpability,”1 reminding us of our need for God’s grace. Lent is also an opportunity to reflect on the life of Jesus and the kingdom of God, asking ourselves what we need to let go of so that we might follow Jesus into the kingdom of God. We call this repentance, which is how we take the demand of Jesus seriously when he says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Lk 9:23).2
Following Jesus means letting go or denying ourselves of whatever keeps us from fully embodying the way of God’s kingdom. Fortunately, we know that loving God and loving our neighbors is at the heart of such kingdom living. When a Jewish lawyer asked Jesus about inheriting eternal life, Jesus asked him about what is written in the Law and how he reads that law. It’s like asking us what the Bible says and how we read the Bible.
The answer is easy. Like the Jewish lawyer in Luke 10, we know that the two great commands are “‘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.’”3 It’s worth noting that Luke doesn’t differentiate between which of the two commands are greater because such differentiation doesn’t matter. The way we love God is by loving our neighbors. We cannot claim that we love God but refuse to love our neighbors. If we love God, we’ll love our neighbors and when we love our neighbors, we are also loving God.
However, the question then is just who is our neighbor? But the question has nothing to do with knowing what the Bible says or even with who our neighbors are. In Luke 10, the question is motivated by the lawyer's desire to justify himself. That’s an important fact because it’s a hint about our problem. We are sinners. We like what the Bible says when it aligns with the way we live and, let’s be honest, when it critiques the lives of others. But when scripture wants to examine us, it’s tempting to find ways of justifying ourselves.
As Luke tells the story, Jesus won’t have any part in allowing any self-justification. Instead, Jesus responds with a clever story told in Luke 10:30-35…
“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity4 on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’”
Then Jesus asks the lawyer, which of these men was a neighbor. Just as surely as the lawyer knows the answer, so do we. The neighbor is the one who showed “mercy” for the victim.
As I said earlier, the problem isn’t knowing what the Bible says. Nor is the problem knowing who our neighbors are. The problem is us. For various reasons, we fail to see people as our neighbors and see them as an other—even an ominous other.
“Learning to love God by loving our neighbors raises the question for us of how we are living lives of love in our neighborhood, our workplaces, and the other social spaces we inhabit. What then do we need to let go of so that we can more faithfully follow Jesus in learning to love God by loving our neighbors?”
The Jewish people didn’t wake up one morning with hatred for the Samaritans. Such hatred was cultivated over time, slowly and in many ways that made the Samaritans into enemies rather than neighbors. Now we may not harbor any outright hatred but we are always in danger of othering people to the point that they are seen as a problem rather than a neighbor.
So I’ve wondered how Jesus might tell his story, The Parable of the Good Samaritan, for our context. Perhaps the story might go like this:
A man was walking in a Milwaukee neighborhood one night, somewhere along Center Street, between Fondulac Avenue and Interstate 43.5 Some thugs, members of a street gang, viciously assaulted this man and left him for dead after robbing him. Shortly thereafter, a Pastor came along, saw the man but was too busy and so he just kept walking. Then came along another Christian who also saw the man but fearful of the neighborhood, he kept walking too. But finally, along came a man of Hispanic descent and a questionable immigration status, who saw this man and began helping him, even calling 911 knowing that calling the police could mean trouble for himself.
And then Jesus would ask that very important question about who the neighbor is. Knowing that the neighbor is the one who showed mercy, the moment becomes a discipleship matter as we hear Jesus also say, “Go and do likewise” (Lk 10:37).
I began this post with a word about Lent as an opportunity for us to reflect on what we may need to let go of so that we might go forward on mission with God. Well, learning to love God by loving our neighbors has everything to do with the mission of God.
Learning to love God by loving our neighbors raises the question for us of how we are living lives of love in our neighborhood, our workplaces, and the other social spaces we inhabit. What then do we need to let go of so that we can more faithfully follow Jesus in learning to love God by loving our neighbors? As we ponder the question, we will do well to recognize that loving people whose beliefs, values, and lifestyles are vastly different than our own can be difficult. Sometimes people do things that anger and repulse us but we’re called to love them as our neighbor anyway. So the question at the beginning of this season of Lent remains: What do we need to let go of so that we can more faithfully follow Jesus in learning to love God by loving our neighbors?
Bobby Gross, Living The Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God (Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2009), 127.
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.
These two commands are found in Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18.
To have pity is to have compassion. If you read the old King James Version (KJV) or the Common English Bible (CEB), both translations use the word “compassion.” It’s probably a better translation because this Samaritan didn’t just take pity on the victim as in feeling sorry but was willing to suffer with the battered man. Etymologically speaking, compassion means to suffer with and the Samaritan does just that. He sees the battered man and begins tending to his wounds, then takes the man to an inn to recuperate and promises to pay the inn keeper for the expenses.
This is one of the more violent neighborhoods, if not the most violent, in Milwaukee.