Jesus and the Neighbor 2

Since I'm titling this series "Jesus and the Neighbor," it makes sense to look first at the passage where Jesus defines "neighbor."  In Luke 10:25-37 Jesus addresses this question: "Who is my neighbor?"

A lawyer asks Jesus how to inherit eternal life, and Jesus affirms that he should observe the two "greatest" commandments - love God and love your neighbor.  The lawyer, in an effort to determine the bare minimum he can do to be "saved," asks who he should consider his neighbor.

Jesus responds with a story.  It's probably familiar to everyone, but just in case I'll summarize it.  A Jewish man is beaten, robbed, and left for dead on the side of the road, and several religious leaders pass him by without helping him.  Finally a Samaritan stops, bandages the Jewish man's wounds, takes him to an inn, and pays for his care.  After telling this story, Jesus asks, "Who was a neighbor to the beaten man?"  The obvious response is the Samaritan - and Jesus tells the lawyer, "Go and do likewise."

First, a historical note.  From a Jewish perspective this story would have been shocking.  Samaritans and Jews did not get along.  At all.  There was a significant amount of animosity between the two groups, to the point that they avoided any association with one another.

What is most significant about this parable is that it really does not answer the lawyer's question: "Who is my neighbor?"  The lawyer was attempting to limit the circle of people he was responsible to help.  Jesus effortlessly correct the question - the appropriate question is not "who is my neighbor?" but "who can I be a neighbor to?"  Jesus does so by choosing the most unlikely person to help the man who had been robbed (the Samaritan), after the most likely people (Jewish religious leaders) and already passed him by.  Despite the hatred that both men would have felt toward the other, the Samaritan helps someone who by anyone's definition would have been outside the group of people who might be called his "neighbors."

Who, then, is our neighbor?  Anyone who is in need.  That is the way Jesus answers the question; it is the way we must answer it as well.

Jesus & the Neighbor 1

I'm going to start a new series of occasional blog posts.  The impetus for the series came out of a series of emails between myself and a couple friends about an email forward that touched on political issues.  I used to consider myself strongly conservative from a political perspective, but that's changed over the past 5 years - if you've talked to me about politics, you know that I would consider myself a political "moderate" or "independent."  I'm absolutely convinced that neither the Republicans or the Democrats is the "Christian" party, and that both parties have elements that are worth supporting, and elements that are problematic from a Christian perspective.  As a Christian, I believe my role in politics is to try and have a "prophetic voice," calling both parties to account when they advocate policies that cause our country to act in unjust or immoral ways.

This series is not about politics though.  As we emailed about our thoughts on this email forward, I expressed that everything about my political views that has changed over the years has done so as a result of my reflections on the Bible's teachings about justice, standing up for the oppressed and downtrodden, and especially Jesus' teaching about how we're supposed to treat other people.  In order to explain this idea better, I'm starting this blog series to explore different gospel texts in which Jesus tells us something about how we should treat people in the Kingdom of God.

I'm throwing in this term "Kingdom of God," which I believe is an important one.  I would suggest that everything Jesus said and did was an attempt to reveal the Kingdom of God, and define "Kingdom of God" very simply: living as if God is in charge.  Thus, anytime we behave in a way that acknowledges God's sovereignty, we are living in the Kingdom of God.  It is pretty common to speak of the Kingdom as having an already-but-not-yet tension - what this means is that the Kingdom of God is present now (insofar as we live as if God is in charge), but that it will not be fully present until Jesus' return and the restoration of heaven and earth.  However, this should not prevent us from doing all we can to make the Kingdom more fully present in this life - in fact, I believe that we are called to do exactly that.

So, a part of Jesus' teaching on the Kingdom of God is how we treat other people.  That is what this series will be about.  Next post will start with a foundational text that is familiar to many - the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which Jesus responds to the question, "Who is my neighbor?"