Who Is My Neighbor?

Introduction

Last week, we started a new series called Love Thy Neighbor and our very own Mr. PV Rogers came out in his red cardigan and talked to us about what it means to Love Our Neighbor, because that is one of the two greatest commandments that Jesus cites. It’s where we get our purpose as a church to Love God and Love People. And PV talked about some of the ways we love and some of the barriers we have to truly loving people well: how we get caught up in our feelings and how we need to choose love daily. And today, we’re going to continue on this theme by asking a fundamental question, one that we have to answer before we can truly learn to love our neighbor.

My youngest son is 2 and he’s really learning all he can about the world and how it works. His favorite phrase right now, other than “I wanna go outside,” is “What’s that?” So, he points at something and says, “What’s that?” and then I explain it to him and then he asks me again before I’m even done explaining the first thing. So, the other day, we went on a walk and he pointed at the house next to ours and said, “What’s that?” So I said, “that’s our neighbor’s house.” We walked a little farther and he pointed at the next house and he said, “what’s that?” So I said, “Well, that’s another neighbor’s house.” Then, he started to get it, so he pointed at the next house and said, “that’s a neighbor’s house?” I was like, yeah you got it. And then all the way down the street, he pointed at houses and asked if they were neighbor’s houses, and I told him yes. And then we turned a corner and went down a different street and then we walked around the little pond in our neighborhood and he saw more houses and asked again. And it got me thinking about how we define neighbor. We were all the way on the other side of the neighborhood and Eli was pointing at houses of people I’d never seen or talked to. Was it still a neighbor’s house? What if we kept going a little and crossed over into another neighborhood? Are those still neighbor’s houses? At what point would I be like, “that’s a stranger’s house, don’t go there!”

When we talk about what it means to love our neighbor, it’s important to define who our neighbor is. So that’s the question I want to ask today: who is my neighbor?

Main Question: Who is my neighbor?

Now, Here’s the good news: Jesus actually answered this exact question in Luke 10. (Turn there now.) You know there are a lot of questions I don’t have an answer to and sometimes there are questions even about the Bible that for whatever reason, God didn’t see fit to answer explicitly, but it’s always nice when we have a question and Jesus literally answered it.

PRAYER - Center your heart to hear from God’s word.

Luke 10:25–29 NLT

One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: “Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus replied, “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?” The man answered, “ ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ” “Right!” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live!” The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

This conversation is recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and as I mentioned before it’s where we get the concept of Love God and Love People. In the other gospels, the question is posed as what is the greatest commandment, but here it’s summing up the Old Testament law as the pathway to eternal life. Jesus says, “do this and you will live!” Do you want true, real, good, life? Then love God and love your neighbor!

But here in Luke is the only place where we get the follow up question. The expert in religious law asks Jesus our question: “And who is my neighbor?” So Jesus answers:

Luke 10:30–37 NLT

Jesus replied with a story: “A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, and left him half dead beside the road. “By chance a priest came along. But when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by. A Temple assistant walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side. “Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him. Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins, telling him, ‘Take care of this man. If his bill runs higher than this, I’ll pay you the next time I’m here.’ “Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked. The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.” Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”

So, the man asks, “who is my neighbor?” and Jesus replies with a story. (Classic Jesus.) In the story, a dude gets jumped and left for dead, and a priest and a Levite see him and cross the other side of the road. What a detail! They said, nah I’m not even gonna get near him, and they crossed to the other side of the road and left him there. But finally, a Samaritan, who did not get along with the Jews, stops to help this man. He gives him some bandaids and ibuprofen, drives him into town, and sets him up in a hotel. Gives his card to the front desk and says, whatever he needs, hook him up—room service, spa—I’ll take care of it.

And then Jesus asks the expert in the law: who was a neighbor to the wounded man? And he says, the one who showed mercy.

Now, notice how he flips the question. Because if I’m Jesus, and obviously I’m not, and I’m telling this story, I would have made the wounded man the Samaritan and the point at the end would have been: even this man is your neighbor, so love even people like him. But that’s not what Jesus does.

Because I think Jesus knew the heart behind this question, that “who is my neighbor?” is really the same as “Who do I have permission NOT to love?” And Jesus isn’t interested in that question at all. What he is interested in is the heart of the man asking the question. So he changes it from “who is my neighbor?” to “how can I be a neighbor?” It’s not about anybody else and how they are defined or not defined; it’s about me and the kind of person I choose to be.

That’s the main idea for today: I can be a neighbor by choosing love

Main Idea: I Can Be A Neighbor by Choosing Love

As we go throughout this series about loving our neighbor, we should be considering ourselves and how we can be a neighbor. You may have heard the saying, “If you want to have a friend, you have to be a friend,” and I think that applies to neighboring as well: If you want to have neighbors, you have to be a neighbor.

the way that we can be a neighbor is by choosing love

Look more closely at this story

Love is inclusive

When Jesus told parables, he often included something unexpected, a twist that forced the people listening to hear it in a new way. The big twist in this parable is in the identity of the man who helps victim. It’s not the priest, someone familiar with God’s law, whose entire job was to worship God. It’s not the Levite, someone from the tribe who took care of God’s home. For those listening to Jesus tell this parable, this was the tribe and the occupation who would have been most likely to have helped the man. It was the people most easily considered neighborly. In our modern context, we might say that Mother Teresa and Ghandi passed by the man. But even that doesn’t quite capture it because there was also the national aspect of it. This was a Jewish man and these were Jewish leaders. These are the man’s people. The law expert who asked the question, these are his people. These are the people he wants to love, and who he would want to love him. And, honestly, it’s somewhat reasonable.

When Jesus talks about the second greatest commandment being to love our neighbor, he’s pulling from Leviticus 19, where that phrase shows up multiple times. And in the context of Leviticus 19, it is talking about Israelites loving other Israelites:

Leviticus 19:17–18 NLT

“Do not nurse hatred in your heart for any of your relatives. Confront people directly so you will not be held guilty for their sin. “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against a fellow Israelite, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

The Jewish leaders operated on the assumption to love my neighbor meant to love MY people. And it’s easy to define MY people smaller and smaller. My nation is my people. Or maybe just my region. Or maybe just my city. Or maybe just the people who look like me. Or think like me. Or act like me. “My people” can shrink and shrink until it’s just me and everyone else is excluded. I don’t have to love them, because they’re not my people.

But Jesus blows up “my people” by using a Samaritan as the neighbor in the story. The divide between Jews and Samaritans was racial, religious, and had a long history. It’s difficult to express the extent of the animosity between these groups. It’s another example of Jesus’ command to love our enemies.

Emmanuel AME forgivers??

The command to love our neighbor is not limited by who we decide is our neighbor or not. The command to love our neighbor is inclusive of everyone. On the other hand, it’s hard to love everyone because everyone is a lot of people.

One thing that I like about this story is that it’s a great example of how God places people (sometimes literally) in our path. God wasn’t calling the Samaritan to take care of the needs of every person in the world—but God placed this man in the Samaritan’s path and God was calling him to be a neighbor to him by showing him love.

And ultimately, I think that’s what Jesus is getting at here: when we act like a neighbor, we choose to love whoever God puts in our path. We don’t get to decide who God puts in our path; we only decide whether we will respond in love. God placed this man in the path of the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan, but only the Samaritan chose to be his neighbor.

So, the question is: who has God placed in your path? Who are the people you see everyday or every week? Your literal neighbors, whether at home or at work, are a great place to start. Maybe you’re a regular at a coffee shop or restaurant.

The other question I think we need to ask ourselves is if we’re creating our own path to avoid certain kinds of people. The priest and the Levite crossed to the other side of the road to avoid the wounded man. It was common at that time for Jewish people to take a huge detour around Samaria to avoid even seeing Samaritans.

You know when you go into Walmart and you see that there is somebody at the exit door trying to sell something. I have to admit that, unless it’s the girl scouts, I usually walk to the other side of the store to go out that exit. And then sometimes there’s someone at that door, so I gotta pretend I’m on the phone or something. But what if God put them in my path for a reason?

Maybe there are other situations, more serious ones, where God has placed someone in our life so that we can show them his love. Maybe it’s somebody at your job that you tend to try to avoid. Maybe it’s somebody in your neighborhood or apartment complex. Or maybe it’s out of the ordinary, and random encounter that’s not random at all, because God put you there to be a neighbor and to show love, and we cannot exclude anyone from God’s love, because his love includes all people.

Love is defined by actions

Ultimately, this was the reason for the question. It says in verse 29, “the man wanted to justify his actions.” The problem wasn’t knowledge. In this passage, he never gives a wrong answer. Twice Jesus asks him a question, and the lawyer answers it and Jesus says, “Right!” The problem is in Jesus’ final command, “Go and do.”

Of course, this is not a struggle that is exclusive to the lawyer in this story. Here’s kind of a silly example: I love soda. Specifically, I love Dr. Pepper, but really any soda will do. If I take a moment to think about it rationally, though, all the reasons to not drink soda are stacking up against it. It’s bad for my teeth, it’s bad for my health, it’s significantly more expensive than water. (Especially when you go out to eat and it’s like $3.50 for a drink and you’re like???). And yet, there I am at McDonalds, buying another Dr. Pepper. My problem is not knowledge. My problem is “go and do”.

So, what we normally do is we try to come up with some kind of justification. That’s what the lawyer is doing here. He wants Jesus to justify not acting in love. And we can get really creative with this can’t we? [EXAMPLES] We can even get theological with it. “Well, thats’ not really what that says, or that doesn’t apply to me.” There’s this great passage in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s discipleship where he talks about this.

A father says to his child: go to bed! The child knows exactly what to do. But a child trained in fake theology would argue like this: Father says go to bed. He means you are tired; he doesn’t want me to be tired. But I can also overcome my tiredness by going to play. So, although my father says to go to bed, what he really means is go play. (Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 79)

It’s sooo easy to justify doing what we want when we start to determine what God really wants. God said to love my neighbor, but what God really wants is for me to not hate them, and I don’t hate them, so I’m good. God said to love my neighbor and what he means by loving my neighbor is to let them do their thing and they’ll let me do my thing. God said to love my neighbor, but he really wants me to make sure they’ve checked all their theological boxes first, so I need to correct all their wrong thinking. And on and on.

I was thinking about how often the prophets called out Israel for pretending to love God and others without that showing up in how they acted toward people. Let me read this passage from Isaiah 58.

Isaiah 58:5–7 NLT

You humble yourselves by going through the motions of penance, bowing your heads like reeds bending in the wind. You dress in burlap and cover yourselves with ashes. Is this what you call fasting? Do you really think this will please the Lord? “No, this is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help.

The Israelites acted like they wanted to worship God, like they were loving him, but the kind of worship God wants, the kind of love God wants is love that ACTS, that moves in love toward the people around us.

We talk a big game, but don’t back it up with how we act. You know the kid at school who could talk like he was Michael Jordan but you got out on the court and his ankle hurt or he was sick or whatever.

There’s another verse in Romans that says, “Don’t just say you love people; really love them.” It’s one thing to say we love God and we love people, but another one entirely to live it out. So, I’m encouraging myself and us as a church to the Go and Do Challenge. The Go and Do Challenge is something I totally made up from this passage. Here’s what it looks like:

CALL TO ACTION: “Go and Do”

Pray for an opportunity

Act in Love (Meet a need, provide encouragement, give a gift, invite for dinner, etc.)

Report back (Share in group, text a friend, tell me)

(The last one isn’t about puffing ourselves up or bragging about how awesome we are; it’s about accountability and testimony. I just know me and I’ll think something is a great idea and genuinely want to do it and then I’ll get caught up in whatever and forget. But if I know somebody is going to ask me about it—different story. AND it can be such an encouragement to hear how God is using our whole church to love our neighbors and “spur one another on to good works.”)

We want to go and do because that’s how we show love, through our actions.

Love is extravagant

Here’s the thing about the love we see the Samaritan show: it’s extravagant. Look at the lengths the Samaritan goes to: He uses olive oil and wine to soothe his wounds. Those were both signs of wealth and luxury in that time. I know if it was me, I’d be like, “you know I think I have some Great Value brand vegetable oil and grape juice around here somewhere, that’ll work right?” The man isn’t worried about how much everything costs or how much time it’s going to take. He gets the man set up in the inn, covers his cost and doesn’t give a limit. What if the wounded man racks up a huge bill? What if he takes advantage of his generosity? There’s no indication that the Samaritan is worried about this at all. He just shows extravagant love.

But not us. Or not me. I’m much more willing to show love at the minimum level. Okay, I can do this, but then I gotta pull back. And usually what I’m willing to do is what I consider extra. If I have extra time, if I have extra money, if I have extra emotional energy, then I’ll use that to show love to my neighbor. Of course, I never have extra of any of that, so I just don’t show love. That means two things: one, we need to create margin in our lives to better love people, and that’s what PV will be talking about next week, AND we need to be willing to sacrifice for the sake of others.

So, when you go to love, don’t be stingy with your love; be extravagant! Go above and beyond. Jesus said, if someone asks you to go one mile, go two. If someone asks for your coat, give them your shirt too. If you can love someone by spending some time with them, don’t say, “Ah, I’ve just got 5 minutes” and keep looking at your phone. Give them your full attention, listen, hear them out, show them extravagant love by giving them more time than they expected. If your neighbor needs to borrow some sugar, send over some brownies too. Whatever it is, do it extravagantly.

Now, I think obviously, there is wisdom and there is intention in all this and a place of security in God, but not necessarily a security in worldly stuff. We are secure in God because we trust God and we trust God because that’s how God loved us!

It’s interesting: When the expert in the law answers Jesus question, he says the neighbor is the one who showed “mercy.” This is a weird translation thing, because that word mercy is the word that is always used to translate a Hebrew word in the Old Testament word that specifically describes God’s special love. In the Old Testament, it’s usually translated as God’s faithful love or unfailing love. When God rescues Israel, he is showing faithful love. When God fills the temple with his presence, he is showing faithful love. When God provides the promised land for his people, he is showing faithful love. When he brings them back from exile, he is showing faithful love. And, when the Samaritan cares extravagantly for this man in need, he is loving in the way God loves. So we can love extravangtly b/c that’s how God loved us.

…because the Gospel is the truest example of love.

Which brings me to the last thing I want to point out from this passage.

(the band can come.)

Which is that this whole story mirrors the message of the gospel. Because of sin, we have been separated from God. There is division, just like there was division between the Samaritan and the Jew. Sin has also robbed us and beat us up and left us with no hope on our own. And Jesus came passing through, he crossed the boundary of heaven and earth to be on our path, and he found us and he cared for us and he healed us and he loved us extravagantly, at great cost to himself.

1 John 4:9–10 NLT

God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

This is real love: that God loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. That’s the gospel message and that’s what it means to love like a neighbor. Jesus love includes all people. It includes you and me and your next-door neighbor and your co-workers and your enemies. Jesus proved his love by his actions. He lived, he died, and he rose again for our salvation. Jesus loved extravagantly. He didn’t just do the bare minimum. He didn’t just bring us back to the start and say good luck, try again. He gave us eternal life, he gave us his spirit, he poured out every spiritual blessing on us.

DECISION TIME

So, as we take a moment to respond this morning, we’re going to sing…etc.