There’s a lot of dialogue going on right now in America over who “deserves” or “gets” to be our neighbor.
But God has already settled this debate, decisively.
“Teacher,” a man described by Luke as an “expert in the law” asks Jesus in an exchange immediately preceding the parable of the Good Samaritan, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What is written in the Law?” Jesus replies.
The man answers, “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.”
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus says. “Do this and you will live.” But the man in the passage wants to justify himself, so he asks Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:25-29, NIV)
The question implies there is an answer that would include a person or group outside of the neighbor category, inferring there exist people of lesser status or value. It’s a question many of us ask still today—and a question still more believe they know the answer to!
But Jesus answers in an interesting way. Within the parable that follows, he makes the hero of the story a Samaritan. This was a person who was not welcomed within the local Jewish community, someone who cultural norms would suggest should not be treated as a neighbor.
As I consider the question and response, it occurs to me that Jesus makes a statement that challenges the morality of the greatest of societies, past and present. It’s a response that introduced an ethic unthinkable at that moment in history and perhaps still today.
Jesus takes us to the very end of the line of those who would be recognized as a neighbor and leaps over it with a new proclamation, “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.”
God loves my enemies?
For some, this alone is difficult enough. It’s certainly counter-cultural. But what feels even more radical is the exhortation to us, personally, to love our enemies.