25 Just then a religion scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus. “Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?”
26 He answered, “What’s written in God’s Law? How do you interpret it?”
27 He said, “That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence—and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself.”
28 “Good answer!” said Jesus. “Do it and you’ll live.”
29 Looking for a loophole, he asked, “And just how would you define ‘neighbor’?”
30-32 Jesus answered by telling a story. “There was once a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he was attacked by robbers. They took his clothes, beat him up, and went off leaving him half-dead. Luckily, a priest was on his way down the same road, but when he saw him he angled across to the other side. Then a Levite religious man showed up; he also avoided the injured man.
33-35 “A Samaritan traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man’s condition, his heart went out to him. He gave him first aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. Then he lifted him onto his donkey, led him to an inn, and made him comfortable. In the morning he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take good care of him. If it costs any more, put it on my bill—I’ll pay you on my way back.’
36 “What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?”
37 “The one who treated him kindly,” the religion scholar responded.
Jesus said, “Go and do the same.”
The command to love our neighbor as ourselves is not a “fifty-fifty” proposition, as if we are to divide up our love like a pie. It is much more radical then that. The Greek reveals this deeper meaning: “Love our neighbor in place of, instead of yourself.” In other words, change plans with your neighbor. Let him/her enter the space where your love is and discover
God’s love in the process.
It is as Frederick Buechner has said:
“Of all powers, love is the most powerful and the most
powerless. It is the most powerful because it alone can
conquer that final and most impregnable stronghold which
is the human heart. It is the most powerless because it
can do nothing except by consent. To say that love is
God is romantic idealism. To say that God is love is either
the last straw or the ultimate truth. In the Christian sense,
love is not primarily an emotion but an act of will. When
Jesus tells us to love our neighbors, he is not telling us to
love them in the sense of responding to them with a cozy
emotional feeling. You can as well produce a cozy emotional
feeling on demand as you can a yawn or a sneeze. On the
contrary, he is telling us to love our neighbors in the sense
of being willing to work for their well-being even if it
means sacrificing our own well-being to that end.” (Listening To Your Life, p.242)
“When Jesus tells us to love our neighbors,
he is not telling us to love them in the
sense of responding to them with a cozy
emotional feeling… he is telling us to love our
neighbors in the sense of being willing to work
for their well-being even if it means sacrificing
our own well-being to that end.”
Frederick Buechner
Prayer thought for the week: “Lord, keep me from the indifference which keeps me from loving my neighbor as you loved me - sacrificially.”
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