Rochester, MN UCC - "And Who Is My Neighbor?" - Luke 10:25-37
“You shall 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 your neighbor as yourself." This is the response a lawyer gives to Jesus when asked what the law asks of him. To love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. That’s it. To inherit eternal life all you must do is love God and love your neighbor as yourself. It’s so simple a formula there’s not much room for questions, and yet, the lawyer finds one. He asks, “And who is my neighbor?”
The question “who is my neighbor?” is a question looking for qualifications. It is a question searching for the criteria for exclusion. If I know who my neighbor is, I also know who is not my neighbor. I know who I am commanded to love and who I need not love. The lawyer wishes to know under what conditions he is to love another, he wants to know what qualifications the other must have to receive his love. In response to his question, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, a parable of a traveler in need who receives mercy from an unexpected source. The love shown to the man in need in this parable comes without condition or qualification. The Samaritan does not ask where the man is from, nor what makes him deserving of mercy. The Samaritan has no expectation that his generosity will somehow be rewarded or repaid. The Samaritan chooses to love the one in need of mercy freely and unconditionally.
We are all the recipients of free and unconditional love. God freely chooses to claim us, to heal us, to forgive us, and to love us all without condition or qualification. This free and unconditional love is the kind of love that changes lives, the kind of love that brings forth life from death. It is the kind of love that we all most need and desire. And if we are to follow the command to love others as ourselves, it is the kind of love which we are to show our neighbors. We are called to love others not because they are deserving, not because they qualify, but simply because they, like us, are children of God standing in need of mercy. We are free to love without condition because God has first loved us. Let us make the most of this freedom- let us shower one another with mercy and love.
Pastor Andrew Greenhaw