Love for Neighbor
Last week, I discussed God’s love for us and the greatest commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul,and with all your mind.” Then if you remember, Jesus mentioned a second commandment: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
In Luke 10 Jesus tells this to a lawyer, and then the lawyer, “desiring to justify himself”, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” The Lawyer simply wanted Jesus to say, “ Your neighbor includes all your friends!” But instead, Jesus replied with this parable:
30 ... “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. 34 He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ 36 Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” 37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”
We all know this story as the parable of the Good Samaritan. You see, the Jews and Samaritans hated each other, and no one would ever think either would do good for the other. So to make His Jewish audience really think, Jesus didn’t talk about a poor Samaritan who was robbed, beaten, left for dead, and then helped by a nice Jew. No, by making the Samaritan the good character, his audience would have been taken surprised and maybe even scandalized. After all Jesus was a Jew. Why would he make the Samaritan “the good guy?”
But the point Jesus was making wasn’t about good guys vs. bad guys. He was responding to the question, “Who is my neighbor?”, and His response was basically, “the person you least expect to treat you nicely.” That would have shocked His audience as much as it shocks us!
It’s easy to love people like ourselves. It’s easy to love those who love us back and treat us nicely. But when it comes to people that are not like us or people who don’t like us, we tend to gather in our own little groups and treat everyone else as if they were not as good, or smart, or cool as we are.
So Jesus is telling us we have to love everyone, those like us and those not like us, and the love to which Jesus refers is still agape - gift-love. Gift-love doesn’t set conditions on love. It doesn’t say, “I’ll be your friend if…” or “we will make you our friend if…” or “you can be in our group if…”
No, Jesus is telling us we are to say to all people, “I will give you what you need. You need friendship? I’ll be your friend. You need help? I’ll help.” Jesus tells us that loving our neighbor is about being generous to others with our time, our abilities, and even our money.
Sometimes we have to get over our fears of people unlike us before we can love them and show them generosity. Jesus doesn’t say so, but the Samaritan may very well have needed to get over his dislike of Jews in order to do the right thing for the poor man at the side of the road. Then he took the time to help the man, bind his wounds, take him to an inn, and even pay for the poor man’s stay there. The Samaritan was very generous with his time and money by caring for this Jewish stranger.
Francis Bernadone, a young man who lived in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, knew he could not love God completely without loving his neighbor. Francis was a very good looking, vain young man. He was the life of the party; he also had a great fear of lepers. Leprosy is a very contagious, disfiguring, and debilitating disease. But Francis knew in his heart that according to Jesus lepers were his neighbors just as much as his friends were.
One day Francis saw a leper coming down the road. His first instinct was to keep his distance, but realizing this was his chance to show his love for God and neighbor, he overcame his fear and revulsion, went up to the leper, hugged him, and kissed him on the cheek.
Now, suddenly, Francis was truly free to love God and neighbor. He was able to conquer the one thing that held him back. Through an act of kindness to a leper who craved the friendly touch of another, but never got it because of his disease, Francis became so generous he no longer wanted anything for himself but depended totally to take care of him. We know Francis Bernadone now as St. Francis of Assisi.
We cannot love our neighbor the way God loves us without first loving God. Because God is very generous to us, and we must in turn be generous to others.
And what are different ways we can show generosity?
- We can offer to meet other people’s real needs.
- We can put our talents at the service of others
- We can do things for others, even when it’s inconvenient
- We can listen to others without being judgemental.
- We can do good for others without expecting or asking for anything in return, for example when we participate in Operation Christmas Child.
- And finally, we have to forgive others. Don’t hold grudges! As we say every day in the Lord’s prayer “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” If we want God’s forgiveness, we must absolutely offer our forgiveness to those who sin against us.
If we can do these things daily, if we can be generous with all people, we are on the path to loving “our neighbors as ourselves.”
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