Our Neighbors
By Jack Wyman
It happened from time to time.
Someone in the audience would ask what he thought was a trick question.
This was supposed to be some kind of test.
The trap nearly always caught the trapper.
This man was a lawyer, and he considered himself an expert. The question he posed was broad and sweeping in its implications. It was what we’d describe as a general question.
It was a question anyone might ask, and many have.
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus replied, as he often did, with a question of His own.
“What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?”
The crowd looked at the man. He knew the law. He quoted it accurately.
“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.”
Heart and mind. Soul and strength. Love God with your whole being. There can be no inconsistency in our love of God. There can be no division in our devotion. No compartments of our lives kept from the divine presence and power.
When Jesus described this commandment as a summary of the entire law, He meant that our love for God must flow into every area of our lives. It must inform our view of the world. It must guide our understanding of science and the created order. It must animate our relationships with people. It must determine our politics.
We are new creations Paul tells us in his letter to the Corinthians. The old has gone, the new has come. We are, he writes in Romans, transformed. Radically changed. By being so categorical in describing our love to God—by encompassing the emotional, physical, moral, spiritual and intellectual parts of our being—Jesus is saying this to us:
There is no separation between the secular and the sacred. All ground is holy ground. Every question is a spiritual question. Every issue is first a biblical issue. Every place is a place of prayer and worship. What is gloriously heavenly is also profoundly practical.
There is no other honest way to live as a Christian. Our money doesn’t control our priorities; our priorities control our money. Politics must not mold our faith; our faith must shape our politics.
The lawyer includes the second greatest commandment, which is the unavoidable application of the greatest: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus agrees. “Do this, and you will live.”
People in the audience smiled and gently nodded agreement. But the lawyer, a bit flustered, wasn’t giving up. He’d corner this young rabbi yet. He asks a follow-up, “to justify himself” (Luke 10:29):
“And who is my neighbor?”
Ah, this will catch Him!
Jesus looked at the wily attorney and smiled. Then He told the story that forever entered the scriptures and history as one of the most familiar of all time and literature.
It’s about a man who is robbed, beaten, and left for dead along a mountainous, desolate and infamously dangerous road. The road to Jericho. We know how it goes. We learned about it in Sunday school, listened to it taught and preached a hundred times.
The religious establishment is represented by two temple officials passing hurriedly on the road, looking the other way, blind to the suffering victim of violence lying half naked and bleeding in the ditch. They’re righteous, orderly, upright, respected. But there is neither time nor concern for this bruised and battered man.
The traveler who stopped, Jesus says, was a “despised” Samaritan. Hated by the Jews, the Samaritans were scorned, condemned, ostracized by polite and respectable company; half-breeds they were called.
It was this racially-mixed Samaritan who “saw the man and had compassion on him.” He gently poured olive oil and wine on the man’s wounds, bandaged him, placed him carefully on the Samaritan’s own donkey, and took him to an inn. He paid the innkeeper; told him to let the man stay until he was well.
If the bill runs higher, he said, I’ll pay it the next time I’m here.
Jesus asked the lawyer, “Now, which one of these three men was a neighbor to the man who was beaten?”
“The one who showed him mercy,” the lawyer answered. Jesus paused. “Yes, now go and do the same.” Be a Good Samaritan. A practical illustration of a practical application of a practical command.
Buffalo has again left America groping for answers. Gun Control? Censorship? How do we defeat hate?
Hate is a poison, yes. It’s also a sin. Nothing more ravenously reveals the fallen nature of humankind. The more the world moves away from God and His truth, the more hate, violence and chaos tighten their grip on our society. We thrash about, grasping at wrong answers and perilous ideas.
There was scant public outcry when our federal government created something called the Disinformation Governance Board. Chillingly Orwellian, this new agency will decide what ideas, claims or arguments are a threat to our security, and it will stop them. We are assured by nameless, faceless bureaucrats that this board will not in any way threaten free speech or impose censorship.
How do you and I know that? Do we really trust the government not to abuse power?
A twisted teenage miscreant dressed in para-military garb did this evil. No ideological purity tests or preventing of ideas will ever stop a demonic person. May Jesus yet enter his diseased heart and heal his soul.
When we are tempted to sacrifice liberty upon the altar of security, we will achieve and deserve neither.
Hate is strong. Love is stronger. Satan and his minions may dance around the bonfire, stirring the boiling caldron of hate and violence. Jesus tells us the world will identify us as His true followers by the love we show to all people, including our enemies.
The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ show us that love triumphs over hate.
Finally and forever.
The ten men and women shot and killed shopping at the Tops Friendly Markets grocery store in east Buffalo?
They were our neighbors.
To order Jack Wyman’s book, “Everything Else: Stories of Life, Faith and Our World”, go to amazon.com, Christian Book Distributors or barnesandnoble.com. It is also available on Kindle and eBooks.
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