Luke: Who is my neighbour?

Living the Faith in Luke: Who is my neighbour?

“Who is my neighbour?” This is a question I hear Christians agonising over all the time!
We don’t say so in so many words but it is the meaning behind the sigh when we hear of yet another group in need or in trouble and we feel the obligation to do something but feel stretched too thin.

It is easy to be critical of the Pharisee who tries to justify himself to Jesus by asking, “Who is my neighbour?” We know that he is really trying to put limits on who he has to love. By limiting his love to only those people he can now happily say that he has met God’s requirements and can go to bed happy at night.

In Jesus’ time when most people lived in the same neighbourhood their entire lives, you could put a boundary on your love literally at the town boundary! How convenient!

But Jesus will have none of this neatly boxed lifestyle. Life is messy and so he tells a very messy parable- the Good Samaritan. Jesus is trying to teach the Pharisee (and you and I) a more useful way of thinking for those in a world that constantly changes.

The easy part of the parable deals with the issue of ‘who is the person God approves of?’ (i.e. the righteous person) Is it the ones who know God’s will such as the priest and the Levite? Or is it the one who does God’s will such as the Samaritan even with his wrong beliefs (according to Jesus in John 4:23)? Clearly ‘doing’ wins over ‘right beliefs’.

But Jesus goes further and challenges us to go out of our way to make people our neighbours.
The commandment is to love those who are “nearby” – a neighbour.

The priest and the Levite keep away from the man who has been mugged. They do not walk nearby to the man and therefore he is not their neighbour.

The Samaritan is filled with compassion and moves nearby to the mugged man and therefore makes him his neighbour.

Jesus makes this his focus: Who will you make your neighbour? Who will you draw near to so that you can give them your love?

The Pharisee was trying to reduce his obligations by limiting who his neighbour was. Jesus turned the whole thing on its head and asked how many people can I add to my neighbours? How many more people can I love?

But still you and I have a dilemma. In a world of instant communication and quick reports of every bit of human suffering on the planet, we feel overwhelmed by having too many neighbours we feel obliged to love! We feel weighed down and often guilty about who we have failed to love.

As a defence we find ourselves doing what the Pharisee did in Luke; we try and limit our obligations so we can feel ok about ourselves.

Jesus does not want you to do that. He has a different solution. His death on the cross means that all your sins and failings have been erased in the sight of God. You are perfectly acceptable to him as his dear child right now. You don’t have to justify yourself for what you can’t do. You are free from all obligations. You are free to do simply what you can do and God will take care of the rest. But Jesus is insistent that we don’t close our hearts to anyone even if there is not a single thing we can do to help them beyond praying for them.

Don’t close your heart to relieve guilt and obligation, but leave your heart open and receive God’s pleasure in you instead.

Here is another way of putting it: ‘Make everyone your neighbour and love them, do what you can, be free of guilt for what you can’t do, and let God take care of the rest.’

Peace be with you and your neighbour. Shalom.

Graeme