Luke 10:25-37

Luke 10:25-37 (NRSV)

²⁵ Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” ²⁶ He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” ²⁷ He answered, “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.” ²⁸ And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

²⁹ But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” ³⁰ Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, 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 while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. ³⁴ He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. ³⁵ The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ ³⁶ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” ³⁷ He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Luke has structured 10:29 - 11:13 as an exposition of the command to love, in chiastic order. The parallels in Matthew and Mark to the dialogues are set amid stories of the controversy between Jesus and the Scribes, both set in the temple in Jerusalem (Mark 12 and Matthew 23). In contrast, Luke’s account takes place during the long travel narrative, extending from Luke 9:51 to 19:28. In this section of the gospel, Jesus instructs his disciples about the kingdom of God: what it means and how to enact it. Thus, the overall placement of the interchange between the lawyer and Jesus is in a different context than its synoptic parallels. In Luke 10:25-28, we have a controversy dialogue concerning love of God and neighbor. The source is Mark. 

According to the spiritual master, human beings are here to be happy and to learn.^[1] I like the simplicity of it. We tend to make religion complex. We also have a responsibility to get to the point where we can identify the heart of a religion. In these too long remarks, I am concerned with the heart of Christianity. We often think we must produce something new and creative. Sometimes, however, the answer to what appears to be a puzzling question is the time-tested answer of the tradition. The new is not always better. Fred Craddock once put it that “There is power in the familiar.” Yes, laugh often and much. Win the respect of the intelligent and the affection of children. Earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends. Appreciate beauty. Find the best in others. Leave the world a better place, even in small ways. Make sure that at least one person has breathed easier because you lived. Such simple things mean success in life.[2] Karl Barth has a long section of his theological work dealing with the life of the children of God. Where does he go? Right here, to these verses. We are not to look for anything more impressive than to find our being in the love of God and our doing in the love of neighbor. Pretty simple.[3]

 

A lawyer tests Jesus with a question.  ²⁵ Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” The question regarding eternal life receives much attention in Jewish literature of the late Second Temple period, with the conclusion that observance of Torah was essential.[4] ²⁶ He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” The lawyer articulates the two commandments that Jewish scholarship and tradition felt represented the ultimate distillation of the 613 points of the Mosaic Law.  ²⁷ He answered, quoting from Deuteronomy 6:5, “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. The first tenet, to love God, was Hebrew shorthand for insisting that the totality of all that makes up a human being must be involved in loving God.  That most basic, essential confession of an observant Jew is a prayer and confession at both morning and evening prayer. The Shema of Israel identified the uniqueness of the Lord and the requirement of total commitment to the Lord.[5] The uniqueness of the God who comes to rule excludes all competing concerns. To those who open themselves to this summons, God already comes to rule. The rule of God is imminent, but it also emerges from its future nature as present. The basis is that oneness of God is the content of this future. The divine rule is the outworking of the divine claim to the present life of the creature.[6] In reciting the shema, we learn that the God of Jesus is none other than the God of Jewish faith, in according to the witness of the Old Testament, the God whom Israel confesses in the shema.[7] First, it confesses a profound personal response on the part of each who would confess this truth — to love this God. The shema confesses a profound personal response on the part of each who would confess this truth — to love this God.  The original Hebrew had no need to designate both “heart” and “mind.”  “Soul” is spirit, self, will, need, desire. “Strength” is physical.  The separation of the faculties is not the key, but a complete response to God.  To love God is to obey God in Deuteronomy 13:3-4, 30:16-20, Joshua 22:5, I John 2:4-6, and 5:3a. Loving God with all the heart and soul receives emphasis in Deuteronomy 4:29 (=Jeremiah 29:13), 10:12, 11:13, 30:6, 10, and Joshua 22:5. The point of loving God is to honor God by the way we live in harmony with the will of God. One is to love God with the whole self and being. The demands of this command take on life in every aspect of human life ‑‑ heart, soul, mind and strength ‑‑ and are to permeate "all" (repeated each time) corners of that part of human existence. Along with the Jews of his day, Jesus undoubtedly recited the Shema. According to the Mishnah, every Israelite male should recite this verse twice daily.[8]

The New Testament is uncompromising in its monotheism. When Christians hear the accusation from both Jews and Muslims that they are tri-theists, to put it bluntly, they show they have not even tried to appreciate the Christian notion of God, for whom the Trinity is precious in its affirmation of both the transcendence and immanence of God. God is Father of us all, who has communicated to humanity what God is like in the Son, and who remains among us through the energy of the Spirit. 

            “O For a Heart Praise my God,” a hymn of Charles Wesley, is instructive here. He wants a heart set free from sin so that his heart can praise God. He wants a heart “resigned, submissive, meek.” He wants a “humbly, lowly, contrite, heart, believing, true, and clean.” 

The love of God summarizes the being of the children of God. [9] This commandment is given to the people in covenant with God. It presupposes that God is one, and thus the commandment is for humanity. Love alone corresponds to the uniqueness in which god is the Lord. Love is the one choice in which a human being chooses God as Lord. It is a command that moves against legalism. Jesus is not reducing the number of commandments to this, but inviting us beyond a legal approach to being the people of God. Yes, love is a command, which may feel strange to us until we realize that only love can make a meaningful demand of us. This command invites into partnership with God, for as we love God we partner with a God who love us. To love God is to choose God as our Lord. Love embraces the future, for God is for us and this God who loves us and whom we love is our future. Even in our love for God, we are conscious of sinfulness and inability to offer anything to God. Such love of God means that our being and activity are directed toward seeking God. We need to be careful of the deception of the way we seek God. We do so through spiritual discipline, through the practice of the means of grace. We pray, meditate, study, give generously of time, talent, and treasure, open ourselves sin worship privately and corporately, and witness in the world. We need to exercise great care that we not become good at practicing spirituality as an art. The flowering of such piety will be brief. Our best thoughts and actions can be deceptive in that they become a mask of who we are. Our seeking of God in the practice of such disciplines could be another form of rejecting the genuine experience of God. The point is not how well we practice such disciplines but the God whom we seek. Our seeking of God needs to be total, of our mind, heart, soul, and strength. Such seeking will result in finding, but never fully, so we must keep seeking. Even such finding will lead us to feel, touch, and taste of the world differently than before. In finding God we find the grace of God, the unmerited love of God. This grace reminds us of the rebel and imperfect person we always are. Grace does not allow arrogance. Grace reveals our slothful approach to life. Grace points us away from self and toward God, who has shown us what we can become in Christ through the power of the Spirit. By this grace we find true life. In seeking God with all the heart, mind, soul, and strength, we seek God without reservation, without division, and voluntarily, in a way that touches every part of who we are. Such love of God is the only praise we can offer to God.

Then, the lawyer says, quoting from Leviticus 19:18, love your neighbor as yourself.” In other words, “Love your neighbor, who is a human being just like you are.”[10] As long as one broadly interprets “neighbor,” it means a tender regard for them.  Genuine fulfillment of the mandates of the Shema will issue in genuine love of neighbor. The parable of the Good Samaritan, from the source unique to Luke, becomes an answer to the scribes' question that Luke received from Mark. Within the parable itself, the description of the Samaritan, being compassionate and binding up the traveler’s wounds, echoes the words of the prophets of God’s care for Israel (Exodus 34:6-7; Isaiah 30:26; 61:1 and elsewhere). Many scholars note that Jesus might have affirmed the interpretation of the law given by Hillel the Elder, a famous rabbi who was a contemporary of Jesus: 

“A proselyte approached Hillel with the request Hillel teach him the whole of the Torah while the student stood on one foot.  Hillel responded, “What you find hateful (or, What you yourself hate), do not do to another (or, your neighbor).  This is the whole of the Law.  Everything else is commentary.  Now go learn that!” 

 

The first few verses of Leviticus 19 insist on Israel’s honoring their holy God with proper respect; verses 9-18a require that they show justice and respect to their fellow human beings as well. Offering one’s best to God is not sufficient to fulfill the heart of God’s commandments; one must also offer one’s best to others. Historically, the "neighbor" referred to in Leviticus 19:18 specifically meant "the sons of your own people." However, Jesus had expanded the definition of "neighbor" far beyond those borders (see Luke 10:25‑37, the parable of the Good Samaritan), erasing national and ethnic self‑centeredness as well as excuses for limits on loving one's "neighbor."

 ²⁸ And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, that is, if you live by these two commandments, and you will live.” By affirming his answer, Jesus agrees that Torah observance is indeed the way to eternal life. If we want to make a difference in the world, we have to be different.  The greatest danger we face in life is the loss of self. Yet, we can pass it off quietly, as if its loss were nothing.[11] Jesus is talking about those things that will help us truly live.  Are we ready to be alive to God and to one another?

Jesus lived his message before he spoke of it.  He preached it by his life before explaining it in words.  This was Jesus' method, and we too easily forget it. In many cases, catechesis in the church reduces to words rather than to life, to discussion rather than to the pursuit of Christian living. Moreover, here is the reason for the poor results, and still more, the reason for so much of the apathy and indifference among Christians today.  Teaching is ineffective because it is not life-centered; there is no life because there is no example; there is no example because empty words have taken the place of faith and charity. "I want to preach the Gospel with my life," Charles de Foucauld often said.  He was convinced that the most effective method of preaching the Gospel was to live it.  Especially today, people no longer want to listen to sermons.  They want to see the Gospel in action.[12]

Neither Hillel nor Jesus was by any means the first to tie together the poetic demands of Deuteronomy 6:5, known in the tradition as the Shema, and the compassionate command of Leviticus 19:18. 

[Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, around 137-107 BC)

Love the Lord and your neighbor;

Be compassionate toward poverty and sickness. (Testament of Isaacher 5:2)

I acted in piety and truth all my days, 

The Lord I loved with all my strength,

Likewise, I loved every human being as I love my children. (Testament of Isaacher 7:6)

They (what distances you from the Law) do not permit people to show mercy to their neighbors. (Testament of Judah 18:3)

Have mercy in your inner being, my children, because whatever anyone does to his neighbor, the Lord will do to him. (Testament of Zebulun 5:3)

Throughout all your life love the Lord,

And one another with a true heart. (Testament of Dan 5:3)

Now, my children, each of you love his brother. Drive hatred out of your hearts. Love one another in deed and word and inward thoughts. (Testament of Gad 6:2)

 

Of course, the New Testament shares this emphasis on the love of neighbor in Romans 13:9, Galatians 5:14, and James 2:8. 

At a practical level, most of us will freely admit the difficulty of loving the neighbor. In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, "Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less." 

How do you love your neighbor? Just as love for God is not primarily a matter of affection for God, we express our love for neighbor more by your caring/thoughtful actions than by whatever warm inner sentiments you might (or might not) have toward your neighbor. (Note how Jesus “defines” neighbor-love in Luke 10:29 ff., in the parable of the Good Samaritan, which immediately follows Luke’s version of this passage about loving God and neighbor.) Assuming that you have learned to love/respect yourself (an often-overlooked matter for renewed appropriate attention), you are to love neighbor in the same manner. (This roughly parallels another of Jesus’ summary statements, Matthew 7:12 —”The Golden Rule”: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.”) 

            Jesus grounds the command for love of neighbor, not in the authority of tradition, but in the goodness of the Creator and in the love of God shown to them in the coming kingdom. We can have a part in such love only as we are ready to respond to it and to pass it on. The twofold command of love is not so much a summary of the main content of the Law, but stands against it as a critical principle, which is why Jesus can say the scribe is not far from the kingdom of God.[13]

The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as oneself. It can be hard spiritual work to encounter another human being who needs to spring from the prison they may have built for themselves. We find it far easier to use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince, or control.[14] Largely, the capacity to love the neighbor depends upon our capacity to love ourselves. We need to learn to be as tolerant of the shortcomings of the neighbor, even as we tolerant of our own.[15] Granted, human beings are generally undeserving of such love. We may well find it easier to imagine love for humanity as a whole rather than love for the individual who stands before us.[16] Yet, the command of Jesus does not carry with it an exception clause. The reality of a human life is complex. Yet, theologically, we are to think of their creation in the image of God. Since we owe honor and love to God, we also owe such honor and love to that which God has made.[17]

We misunderstand the creative nature of love if we think of Jesus as abrogating the Old Testament law by a new Christian law. All law seeks to make a form of life that achieves permanence, and may even declare a regulation to be normative, so that it has to deal with new situations by casuistic extensions or expositions. Freedom characterizes the work of love. Love does not despise orientation to given rules. Yet, agreement with them is always a free act because one does not accept them in every situation. For love, each new situation is an appeal to its inventive powers. In this fact, we find the contrast to the mere following of a law.[18]

We love to think about love. We think love is the answer. We can sing that love makes the world go around. We can sing that all we need is love. We search for love. We seem convinced that love can save the world and make life worth living. Yet, we have a looser grasp on love than we think.  Love springs from awareness of the other. When you genuinely see the other, you have the potential to love. Without seeing truly, we will love only the person of our memory and imagination.[19]

The love of neighbor summarizes what the children of God are to do. [20] Our praise of God is serious when we take the command to love the neighbor seriously. If we are to love God we are to love the world God has made. We honor and love God as we honor and love the world God has created. The one God who love us and commands us to love God with the whole person is the same one who commands love of the neighbor in the time and world that now is and is passing away. It is a command to lov amide the finitude and transitory character of our lives. Such love of the neighbor is the way we maintain our faith in God. The neighbor is the person within the circle of significant relationships. The neighbor is the stranger within the gates, the ignored by our circle of significant relationships. In the context of Luke’s version of the two great commandments in Luke 10 and 11, we have the example of the love to neighbor in the story of the Good Samaritan. My neighbor is an event that takes place in the existence of a definite person marked off from all other people. My neighbor is my fellow human being acting towards me as a benefactor. Every human being can act towards me in this way in virtue of the fact that he or she can have commission and authority to do so. However, not everyone acts towards me in this way. Therefore, not everyone is a neighbor to me. My neighbor is the one who emerges from among all human beings as this one person. I must hear a summons from Jesus Christ. I must be ready to obey the summons to go and do likewise. I have a decisive part in the event by which a human being is my neighbor. That suffering human being in need of help directs the children of God to the task that God has appointed for them. God does not will the many griefs, sufferings, and burdens under which we people must sigh. God wills their removal. God wills a better world. Therefore, we will this better world, and a true worship of God consists in our cooperation in the removal of these sufferings. Therefore, our neighbor in his or her distress is a reminder to us and the occasion and object of our proper worship of God. To love the neighbor is to enter the future God has determined for us in and with our neighbor. God gives us the neighbor so that we are not alone. We reconcile ourselves to the presence of the neighbor and to being children of God in the manner of those who love the neighbor. We accept what the neighbor gives, and we accept the limitation the neighbor places upon us. We discover ourselves in relation to the neighbor. Only to great harm to our being children of God do we use love of neighbor to flee from love of God. We need both. The fulfillment of the life of the children of God is in a rhythm of this twofold love, and there is nothing more senseless and impossible than to play off the one against the other. The children of God abide in love. We live out our faith by our witness to the neighbor who has a claim upon us. Witness is the greeting with which I must greet my neighbor, the declaration of my fellowship with my own brother or sister. I simply live the life of my faith in the specific encounter with the neighbor. In my testimony I cannot follow out the plan of trying to invade and alter the life of my neighbor. A witness is neither a guardian nor a teacher. A witness will not intrude on the neighbor. A witness will not handle the neighbor. The witness will not make the neighbor the object of activity, even with the freedom of the grace of God. The witness will respect the other person who can expect nothing from me but everything from God. The witness shares the faith one has in Jesus Christ and that the witness does not meet a stranger, but rather, meets the brother or sister, even though the other may not live with such a recognition. A true witness directs the neighbor to the source of help in God. Thus, our personal story risks making the focus of the witness us rather than God. We offer what assistance we can as a sign of the promised help from the God who has helped us. In such ways my witness displays my mood or disposition toward the neighbor in word and deed. Our subjection to Jesus Christ will permeant such words and deeds toward the neighbor, especially as I live in the comfort of the forgiveness I have received from God. Finally, to love the neighbor as oneself acknowledges that love of self is natural.

Jesus is speaking of his own harmonious orientation. The commands are not identical, but Jesus does join them together. God expects one love but expressed in two spheres of life. Such love finds in the Creator One who points the creator to the neighbor, and in the neighbor, the one who points the individual to the Creator.[21] One cannot withdraw from the neighbor to some special religious sphere. Nor can we allow love of neighbor to absorb love of God, thereby taking away its independent quality.[22] Love to others cannot exhaust itself in love to God. Nor can love to God exhaust itself in love of others. One cannot replace the other. Love to God evokes love to neighbor. One cannot have Christ and not have the neighbor. Therefore, one cannot have God without also having the neighbor. Such love is obedience to the direction God wants to take you.[23]

Jesus says that these two commandments are the lens through which we are to read the law and the prophets. They provide a coherent principle for appreciating and observing the other commandments.[24]They provide us a lens through which we read Scripture. Jesus understood the prophetic tradition and ethical demands in light of these two commands. He is aligning his ministry and mission throughout the gospel of Matthew. 

Are we here to find happiness? In a certain sense, we can answer positively. Love is a relationship, and relationships take time. John Wesley connected happiness, holiness, and love, based on the text before us.  What is the source of unhappiness?  It may well come from setting our love of creation above our love the creator, our love of self above our love of neighbor.[25] If so, the source of unhappiness is misdirected love. Thus, genuinely following Jesus is neither more nor less than love, for love fulfills the law and is the end of the commandments. Genuine religion is the love of God and the neighbor, by which we mean, every person under heaven.[26] If we can properly understand Christian perfection, love will sum up such a life. Of course, love to God with all that we are, and then love of neighbor in inseparable connection with the first. [27]  

Here Jesus stresses if not the equality, then certainly the dynamic interrelationship operating between the commands to love God and to love neighbor. Accountability to one is meaningless without accountability to the other. The point is the contrast between Pharisaic legalism and the ethics of love for God and neighbor. The two commandments are not identical. At the same time, the second is not simply appended, subordinate, or derivative. The second is like the first. The passage has reference to God, but also to the neighbor. It has the one dimension, but also the other. It finds in the Creator the One who points to this creature, the neighbor.[28]

Since fellowship with God along the lines of the love of God commanded in Deuteronomy 6:4-5 is possible only in connection with personal participation in the movement of love of God toward the world, Jesus could directly link the command to love our neighbor in Leviticus 19:18 with the love for God that is the supreme commandment.[29] We find here two commands, but primarily, love is not commanded, but living reality, an impulse proceeding from the love of God for the world that lays hold of us and catches us p into its movement. Participation in the kindness of God as Creator ought to be the natural consequence of thankful acceptance of this kindness. To command love and to practice it as the fulfillment of a command is thus self-contradictory because free spontaneity is a constituent of all turning to others in love. With Augustine, love is a motivating force that differs in nature from a command and its observance. Love is a gift of grace that enables us for the first time to respond in our own conduct to the kindness of God as Creator and to the redeeming love of God to participate in them. Yet, if Christian love is participation in the love of God for the world, then we have to ask whether we can distinguish at all between love of God love of neighbor. Does not true love consist of sharing in the love of God for the world? In the depth of turning to the co-human Thou do we not also love God?[30] The Scholastic thesis concerned the unity of the act of love in such a way that one primarily sees love of God as an implication and transcendental basis of love of neighbor. Categorically explicit love of neighbor is for him the primary act of love of God, which in love of neighbor God in supernatural transendentality always has truly if nonthematically in view, and even explicit love of God is still carried by that trusting and loving opening up to the totality of reality that takes place in love of neighbor. This does not mean reduction of love of God to love of neighbor. Instead, we free explicit love of God from falsely seeming to represent an exceptional phenomenon of only marginal importance. Because God as silent incomprehensibility is at work in all the relations of humanity, however secular, we can see thematically in the explicit act of love of God what is always already the concern in all human life in co-humanity. The question remains, why this reference has to become thematic in and for itself.[31] In any case, many voices in Protestant theology have tended to answer affirmatively that one can identify love of neighbor with love of God. The problem with this is that equating love of God and love of neighbor can easily lead to a moralistic interpretation of Christianity. The relation to God can fade out as a distinct theme and be entirely lost in co-humanity. With Jesus in this statement, one can find no support for absorbing love of God into love neighbor.[32]

Yet, in this command to love God, is faith implicit already, the emphasis that Paul would bring to light? Ritschl thinks so based on the idea that faith is itself a form of love. He did so because he moved critically against Pietism and the medieval Catholic theology that had defined the relation of faith and love. Yet, in doing so, he did not want in the least to say that love of God must merge into love neighbor. His point was to make a careful distinction between our religious relation to God in faith on the one said and love as the essence of moral action on the other. Yet, the act of trust does not contain all aspects of love, for love does not just link up with the object of trust as trust itself does, but is also the power of recognizing what is different. In this way, it makes fellowship possible.[33]

            Luke 10:29-37 is a parable concerning the Good Samaritan. The source is the material unique to Luke. Often when I am wrestling with a biblical story, especially a familiar one, I like to read what has come before and what takes place after. This story takes place during Jesus' journey to Jerusalem, a journey characterized by a sense of urgency. The urgency is not so much to arrive at his destination, but of proclaiming the nearness of God's presence and of responding to that presence. So when one would-be follower rushed up to Jesus as he was on the way and said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home" (Lk 9:61), Jesus answered very abruptly, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God" (Lk 9:62). That is rough. Uncompromising. Urgent. No excuses. The kingdom is near. Something is at stake. No second thoughts. Jesus does not sound very pastoral, does he? He does not sound very understanding.  In the latter part of Chapter 10, we find two encounters between Jesus and people who are slow to grasp what he is about. The first is with a lawyer (10:29). The second is with two sisters, Martha and Mary (10:38-42). 

It is fascinating that Luke puts these two stories right up against one another. They have such different messages, such different words to speak. To the lawyer, who wants to turn the kingdom of God into a discussion group, Jesus says, "Go and do." However, to Martha, who is a doer and gets upset that Mary is not, Jesus says, "Sit and listen." We wonder, "Which is it, Jesus?" We thought the message was "go and do." Is that not the message of the parable of the Good Samaritan? Go and do likewise? Yet, a few verses later, the message seems to be different. "Sit and listen." Maybe there is more to this than we thought. 

For now, we focus on the lawyer. Maybe he was out there in the crowd, listening to this rabbi talking about God's wisdom revealed to the simple but hidden from the wise. Maybe that pushed the lawyer's buttons. After all, he was among the wise. ²⁹ But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” The context of the parable provided by Luke has the parable answering the question of which the neighbor is, the second commandment identified in 10:27. What a stingy question.  The question assumes that Jesus has replaced the many Jewish laws with two. If Jesus answers it, then it will be all right to parcel out our love to others only to certain individuals. Instead of a definition, in 10:29-37 we hear the story of the Good Samaritan. 

³⁰ Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Travelers in first-century Palestine rightly feared attacks by highway robbers.[34] 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. It has often been tempting to interpret this story with respect to concerns for ritual purity among the priestly and levitical Jewish classes. One strain of interpretation notes that the priest and Levite both have concerns for their laws of ritual purity, which mandate that a priest should not touch a corpse, except that of a family member, and even then he was unclean for seven days (Leviticus 21:1-2; Ezekiel 44:25-27). The Levite too, might have been concerned for his purity, since any Israelite who touched a corpse was considered unclean for seven days (Numbers 5:2; 19:11-13). Therefore, if the priest and Levite could have considered the man to be dead on the side of the road, they would have had an excuse to pass him by. However, the logic of this interpretation is skewed by the fact that all three passersby are described as “seeing” the man, and it was completely clear to the Samaritan that this man was not dead but might soon die without help. If the passersby could clearly see that the man was not dead, they had no excuse in Jewish law to leave him, since saving a life overrides any other mandate of the Jewish law (Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 82a). In any case, some criminals rob and beat a man along a country road.  Religious leaders, the priest and Levite, see the man in distress.  These people believed all the right things.  They obeyed all the ethical laws.  Yet, they refuse to help.  They had the chance to help face-to-face. Instead of taking the time to trouble themselves about the other fellow’s troubles, they gave him a quick glance and a wide berth and walked on. We know that the robbed and wounded man was Jewish. So was the priest; likewise, the Levite. This means they were of the same community. The priest and the Levite both have the chance to do what the situation demands, but they do not. Their misunderstanding of what is important, of what matters, gets in the way of their compassion, their humanity and their faith.  ³³ But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. The Samaritan takes seriously the question of what happens to this man if I do not stop to help. The story has another powerful element in overcoming the historic hatred between Judeans and Samaritans.  In other words, help may come from a quarter you least expect. Thus, ethnic controversies underlie this parable.[35] Issues of ethnic identity were critical to Luke’s community. This parable emphasizes and indeed engineers the reversal of attitudes that Jesus demands. The parable calls upon the Jewish people to love the reviled but compassionate enemy, the Samaritan.[36] In our post-modern setting, we might think of tribe. If you are among the progressive tribe, for example, it might be helpful to think of help coming from an unexpected quarter, such as an evangelical, a political conservative, a Republican, or a supporter of Donald Trump. ³⁴ He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. The Samaritan stops to assist. He puts in face time. He stops by for a helpful visit. He shows Samaritan behavior that we know should really be “Christian behavior.” The Samaritan stopped, got off his donkey, and used his own olive oil to pour on the man’s wounds. He used an expensive type of oil, oil that fueled the Roman Empire. It lit oil lamps and soothed cracked, sore feet. It was the prime commodity, the petroleum of its day. On top of this, the Samaritan used his own wine as an antiseptic. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. He lifts his human burden, risking his own back. ³⁵ The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ All of this for a man he does not know; for a man who was, until that moment, not his neighbor. For the story, it was helpful that he had some wealth. We Jesus would not have praised one who only had good intentions![37] The blessings of life are a gift from God. God entrusts us with them, in part, so that we may benefit our neighbors.[38]

Verses 36-37 provide the conclusion to the episode that Luke has introduced. Briefly, who is my neighbor?  Who in the story acts like a neighbor?  Luke has the parable become an example. ³⁶ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” ³⁷ He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” The point is that a ‘neighbor' is anyone in need that one meets.  The issue is not who the neighbor is. The issue is being neighborly to all.  It answers the question the lawyer did not ask, "What does it mean to behave as a neighbor?" This parable ignores the lawyer's question, revealing that the proper question is not who by how should I love my neighbor?  Priest and Levite had their love for God intact but were found wanting in love of neighbor. In responding that the one who showed mercy was a neighbor, we find an important connection with the character of God. To the lawyer’s question, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus responded with a story in which, for the moment, we assume that the lawyer identified with the victim of the beating. Jesus then turns the question around and asks, “Who was neighbor to the man beaten; neighbor to the one you identify with; really, a neighbor to you?” He responds, “The Samaritan.” By his own logic and understanding of the law, he must love the Samaritan. To behave as a neighbor is to show mercy, a notion closely related the goodness of God in creating and sustaining the world. The merciful turning of God to the needy, the suffering, and the helpless is one we must see as a specific expression of divine goodness and its practice.[39]

Such a parable explains an aspect of the message of Jesus concerning the nearness of the divine rule. In this case, it focuses on the right answer to its summons. Love has imagination that can create new forms that aptly meet new situations in their uniqueness, even if as a rule they must move within given forms of social life. The law binds one to a specific form of conduct. Love has the power to give new life to what is right by developing in extraordinary circumstances, and without disrupting the nexus of social life, fresh solutions and modes of action that do better justice to the situation. Love with its many creative possibilities thus stands in contrast to a legal form of life that is regulated in the same way for each case. Love is at work where the law leaves gaps and where those who are oriented to law ignore situations that they do not find in the precepts of the law. As an example, the priest and Levite passed by the one who had fallen victim to robbers, whereas the Samaritan, even though he had not known the man before, became a neighbor to him in this situation. Love is flexible and can bring new solutions to new situations.[40]

            “All the great Bible stories are in Luke.” At least it seems that way. This periscope has become paradigmatic for Christians. One of the reasons it is so universally recognized is that, like any good parable, it contains a variety of meanings, enticing the imagination to play in its world and to conjure up new worlds, new ways of being, and new ways of enacting the City of God. The humbled exegete bows to the power of the poet. 

            The imagery in the parable draws on the long-standing animosity between Judeans and Samaritans.  Historically, Samaritans were the remnants of Israel’s northern tribes that remained after all the tribal leaders were exiled when Israel fell to Assyria in 722 BC.  Samaria was the capital of the 10 tribes who broke away from the tyranny of the Judean king Rehoboam, son of Solomon. Jewish accounts emphasize the victors’ resettlement of several peoples from around their empire into Samaria, and the new settlers’ establishment of their own gods and rituals. When the Assyrian settlers moved in, these remaining Israelites eventually intermarried with the Assyrians, "diluting" their Jewishness. 109 BC, John Hyrcanus, then the Judean king, destroyed the Samaritan's temple.  

The biblical history of relations between Samaritans and Judeans is not completely one of bad feeling. II Chronicles 28:8-15 recounts the story of the Samaritans freeing Judean prisoners of war captured by Israelite and Syrian forces. 

8 The people of Israel took captive two hundred thousand of their kin, women, sons, and daughters; they also took much booty from them and brought the booty to Samaria. 9 But a prophet of the LORD was there, whose name was Oded; he went out to meet the army that came to Samaria, and said to them, "Because the LORD, the God of your ancestors, was angry with Judah, he gave them into your hand, but you have killed them in a rage that has reached up to heaven. 10 Now you intend to subjugate the people of Judah and Jerusalem, male and female, as your slaves. But what have you except sins against the LORD your God? 11 Now hear me, and send back the captives whom you have taken from your kindred, for the fierce wrath of the LORD is upon you." 12 Moreover, certain chiefs of the Ephraimites, Azariah son of Johanan, Berechiah son of Meshillemoth, Jehizkiah son of Shallum, and Amasa son of Hadlai, stood up against those who were coming from the war, 13 and said to them, "You shall not bring the captives in here, for you propose to bring on us guilt against the LORD in addition to our present sins and guilt. For our guilt is already great, and there is fierce wrath against Israel." 14 So the warriors left the captives and the booty before the officials and all the assembly. 15 Then those who were mentioned by name got up and took the captives, and with the booty they clothed all that were naked among them; they clothed them, gave them sandals, provided them with food and drink, and anointed them; and carrying all the feeble among them on donkeys, they brought them to their kindred at Jericho, the city of palm trees. Then they returned to Samaria.

 

In verse 15b, the chronicler recounts their ministrations: “and with the booty they [the Samaritans] clothed all that were naked among them [the Judeans]; they clothed them, gave them sandals, provided them with food and drink, and anointed them; and carrying all the feeble among them on donkeys they brought them to their kindred at Jericho . . . .” Notice what the Samaritan did 800 years later: “He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him” (Luke 10:34). Beyond the general similarity, particularly noteworthy are the specific mentions of anointings, and carrying of the injured on their own beasts to a place of shelter. 

Without doubt, Jesus urges the lawyer to assist the stricken, as did the Samaritan. At the same time, Jesus also forced the lawyer to make a revolutionary admission and to change his perspective on Samaritans. The admission is that a Samaritan can be good. Not just “good,” but in ways emulating God delivering from Egypt and Babylon. Such an admission would nearly choke a first-century Judean, since for the previous nine centuries Jews and Samaritans had been at enmity with one another. Both Samaritans and Judeans revered the Torah, but among the differences in their versions, the Samaritan version substituted Mt. Gerazim, in Samaria, for Mt. Ebal as the place God commands Moses to build an altar: perhaps an earlier version of Deuteronomy 27:4 than the canonical version.[41] John 4:20 remembers this difference. The Judeans therefore looked upon Samaritans as born of rebels, now of mixed ancestry, and practicing an unacceptably mixed and misguided religion. As a final indictment, note that in Luke 9:51-56, the Samaritans refuse hospitality to Jesus and his disciples as they journey to Jerusalem. Now this is the person, known only by his ethnicity, whom the lawyer must call “good.” 

Jesus asks even for more than admission of the goodness of the Samaritan. This parable draws the lawyer, those hearing the story with the lawyer and readers of the story two millennia later, into its world, luring the listener to identify with the characters involved. With whom would the lawyer identify? Certainly, he would not identify with the robbers, nor, probably, with the innkeeper. As a lawyer — remembering that the Greek word nomikoV may also be translated “conventional man” — the brigands would not be suitably conventional, and the innkeeper simply has an insufficient role to attract sympathy. Nor, one would think, could the lawyer identify with the priest and Levite who “pass on the other side” of the wounded traveler. They are too unfeeling and, again, only sketchily drawn characters. That leaves the Samaritan and the victim. It is very doubtful that at the inception of the story the Jewish lawyer could identify with any Samaritan, for all the reasons outlined above. Then is it possible that the lawyer, and the listeners to this story, would identify with the victim? For the lawyer it is well assured that he was meant to do so. Travelers in first-century Palestine rightly feared attacks by highway robbers.[42] The lawyer himself was involved in such a situation. Luke’s audience, too, might identify most with the victim, presumed to be a religiously observant Jew on his way home from a festival celebration in Jerusalem. 

The parable subverts the negative stereotype of the Samaritan and puts into question the conventional distinction between "us" and "them." The Samaritan who aids a Judean after being left for dead by two representatives of established religion has stepped across a social and religious boundary.  Jesus' audience would have viewed the story through the eyes of the victim.  It prompts them to think of the identification of their neighbor as a different ethnic group.  The possibility of another kind of social world has come into view. This is a good example of the provocative public speech of Jesus, redrawing the social and the sacred map. 

            It supplies a practical model for Christian conduct.  The Samaritan is the example one is to follow.  Note 1) the privileged status of priests and Levites, 2) defilement by touching a dead body, 3) conflict between Jews and Samaritans.  The point is that a 'neighbor' is anyone in need with whom one meets.  The issue is not who the neighbor is, but being neighborly to all.  It answers the question, "What does it mean to behave as a neighbor?" This parable ignores the lawyer's question, revealing that the proper question is not who by how should I love my neighbor?  Priest and Levite had their love for God intact but were found wanting in love of neighbor.  It is not anti-Semitic, and to suggest such is to allegorize it. The answer is to show mercy, a notion closely related the goodness of God in creating and sustaining the world. We must see the merciful turning of God to the needy, the suffering, and the helpless as a specific expression of divine goodness and its practice.[43]

            The parable of the Good Samaritan confronts the lawyer, and all those listening, with the challenge to go beyond a quest for simple obedience and instead, spontaneously, even recklessly, to care.  The road between Jerusalem and Jericho, about 20 miles, was a known haven for highway robbers.  Jesus clearly used persons we would immediately identify as moral and upright in order to demonstrate how much more is required than mere observance of and obedience to the law. Jesus' disciples and other listeners might have been secretly rejoicing at the audacity of using members of the religious establishment as the bad people, all were surely shocked when Jesus introduced as the hero in this parable, a Samaritan.  James and John had just recently asked permission to call fire down upon the Samaritan village that had rejected them.  If the Jewish priest and the Levite had every reason to stop and help the wounded traveler, the Samaritan had several good reasons not to stop.  First, the wounded man is not a Samaritan.  Second, this traveling Samaritan has a valuable beast of burden, a mule or horse or ox, and third, he has cash money on him, as well, enough to give two denarii to the innkeeper and promise him whatever more he may need.

            One of the most famous and best applications of this story was by Martin Luther King Jr. He referred to it during his last, and most apocalyptic sermon — the “I’ve been to the mountaintop” sermon — on the night before he was assassinated. King interprets the story to exhort his audience to overcome fear and cultivate “a kind of dangerous unselfishness.” His unique insight concerns the thought processes of the first two passersby. He thinks that they recognized the man was injured and probably even wanted to help him, but because of the dangerousness of the region, they were afraid for their own lives. Perhaps they wondered if the robbers were still around, hiding for their next victim. Therefore, the priest and Levite thought to themselves, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” However, the Samaritan reversed the question, and exhibited a dangerous unselfishness, asking, “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” That is the right question.

The community of the church would be guilty of too close conformity to the world if it were to exist within it for its own sake, refusing the active assistance that it ought to give. In fact, this world is hungry. The church must not be like the priest and Levite. Society awaits a Good Samaritan to appear within it whom will not act for himself, who not be how own neighbor, assistant, and helper. It awaits one who will relieve it of the burden of being left to itself and having to save and preserve itself. A community active only for itself, and inactive towards those around, conforms in its own way to the world. The Christian community cannot encounter the world in this conformity. The Christian community gathers and experienced edification by this Good Samaritan for active service on behalf of Christ and Christ sends it into the world in this service.[44]

To go back to what Luke places after this story, we might say that while the story of the Good Samaritan illustrated what it means to love your neighbor, the next story is Luke's way of describing what it might mean to love God completely.  Martha is busily engaged in her activity around the house, getting things ready for her guests, which included Jesus.  Mary wasted her time at the feet of Jesus, in the position of a disciple learning and listening.  Though Martha is upset about all this, Jesus says there is need of only one thing, and Mary has chosen the better part.  Take out time for God, to listen and learn.  Love God completely.  

Let us try telling this parable with a bit of humor. A man fell into a pit and could not get himself out.  A subjective person came along and said, "I feel for you down there."  An objective person came along and said, "It's logical that someone should fall down there."  A Pharisee said, "Only bad people fall into a pit."  A mathematician calculated how he fell into the pit.  A news reporter wanted an exclusive story on his pit.  A fundamentalist said, "You deserve your pit."  An IRS man asked if he was paying taxes on the pit.  A self-pitying person said, "You haven't seen anything until you've seen my pit."  A charismatic said, "Just confess that you're not in a pit."  An optimist said, "Things could be worse."  A pessimist, "Things will get worse."  Jesus, seeing the man, took him by the hand and lifted him out of the pit!

How kind the good Samaritan,

To him who fell among the thieves!

Thus Jesus pities fallen man,

And heals the wounds the soul receives.

O! I remember well the day,

When sorely wounded, nearly slain;

Like that poor man I bleeding lay,

And groaned for help, but groaned in vain.

Men saw me in this helpless case,

And passed without compassion by;

Each neighbor turned away his face,

Unmoved by my mournful cry.

But he whose name had been my scorn,

As he who many did despise

Came, when he saw me thus forlorn,

With love and pity in his eyes.

Gently he raised me from the ground,

Pressed me to lean upon his arm;

And into every gaping wound

He poured his own all-healing balm.

Unto his church my steps he led,

The house prepared for sinners lost;

Gave charge that I be clothed and fed;

And took upon him all the cost.

There through eternal boundless days,

When nature's wheel no longer rolls,

How shall I love, adore and praise,

This good Samaritan to souls![45]

 

The hymn by Newton (above) makes use of a common medieval allegory crafted chiefly by Saint Augustine, but by others as well. In this allegorical treatment of the story of the Good Samaritan, Jerusalem is both a literal site and a heavenly one — a spiritual state in which one may reside. The traveler is Adam (and by extension all of his descendants) who descends from Jerusalem to Jericho which represents the fallen world. During this descent, he is beset by temptation, sin and the devil. The priests and Levites who pass by represent the Old Testament with its rituals and laws that cannot save the victim. The Good Samaritan is Jesus Christ. It was thought that the meaning of “Samaritan” was Guardian or Protector, and so Jesus Christ is to fallen mortals. The Good Samaritan rescues him from sin and carries him to the church where the host is Saint Paul. And there, the poor sinner finds rest for his soul and healing of body.

Psychologists say that how you perceive strangers is a microcosm of how you perceive the world. If you believe that most people are intrinsically unethical and that they would put the screws to you if given a chance, then you are much more likely to put the screws to someone else. 

For example, suppose you find a wallet. I am thinking of the case of Los Angeles-based writer Andrew Cohn, who was cleaning up after a backyard party and found a wallet on the ground with $40 in it. “I’d just spent $500 on the party,” says Cohn. “I figured the money was the girl’s contribution.” He kept the money and left the wallet, with ID and credit cards, on the ground. How did Cohn justify his actions? Well, he says, “If you expect someone’s going to return your wallet with all the cash, you’re probably a little delusional.” Davy Rothbart, who edits a magazine called Found, which features photos of lost objects, agrees with Cohn. “Really good Samaritans, if they find a wallet, they return it intact,” he says. “Some people find a wallet, take the money, but return the important stuff. That’s not evil.”

For another example, suppose you find a cell phone. The Defense Department analyst Ashton Giese was on his way home when he inadvertently dropped his cell phone on a Washington, D.C., street. When he discovered that his electronic life was missing, he frantically began dialing the cell’s number from another phone. He did not even know what time it was because, like many 21st-century people, he kept time with his phone rather than a watch. Finally, a voice answered. “Yeah, I got your phone,” said the voice. “But what’s it worth to you?” “Twenty bucks,” said a frantic Giese. He had no other cash on him at the time. “My phone is my life,” he says. “If I’d needed to, I would have paid a lot more.” 

We might call such people “Bad Samaritans,” for they focus primarily on maximizing their reward or, in some sense, recouping something of what they believe society owes them. 

I now come to my final example. Suppose you find someone battered on the side of the road. You might hurry past to your destination. You might look a bit closer, decide that this is not your problem, and move on past. Of course, you might do the old-fashioned thing of being available for the stranger who hurts. You might opt for some face-to-face time with the stranger. If you start doing that, you might slowly become a person who knows no strangers. You know only neighbors. In fact, people who see strangers as outsiders, as enemies or as something less than themselves, will default to treating them that way, rather than as equals, or, to use Jesus’ term, as “neighbors.” 

You might want to read Luke 10:29-37, prayerfully considering how “merciful” we are in our lives.

Slurs and hateful language fill the air. Bullies push people around on playgrounds and in workplaces. Drivers cut you off … and then make obscene gestures. What in the world can you do? Be kind. To put it simply, many people would like to participate in saving the world. No one wants to help mom with the dishes.[46]

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.[47]

Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.[48]

 

Steven Petrow is a writer who lives in North Carolina. He was recently waiting in a lengthy line at his favorite bakery, a shop that makes amazing scones. Watching the people ahead of him pluck the delicious scones out of the glass case, he worried that the bakery would run out. However, when he got to the counter, he saw that there was one left, so he pointed and said, “I’ll take that.” No sooner had he spoken than the person behind him shouted, “Hey, that’s my scone! I’ve been waiting in line for 20 minutes!” Petrow knew that the man had been waiting, but a line is a line. What do you think Petrow said to the man? He could have declared, “Sorry, it’s mine!” He had every right to do so. Instead, he asked him, “Would you like half?” The man was shocked into silence, but after a moment, he accepted the offer and suggested of his own: “Why don’t I buy another pastry and we can share both?” Then they sat down on a nearby bench to share their pastries. The two men had almost nothing in common in terms of jobs, age, political views or marital status. They were strangers. Nevertheless, they shared a moment of connection and simple kindness. “I felt happy,” says Petrow, “and, frankly, wanted more of that feeling.”[49]

While most of us want to be good neighbors, the meaning of “neighborliness” has changed as the culture has changed from community to cocooning, from country to city, from slow food to fast food, from the dining room to the game room. People do not drop by or drop in as they used to — and, what is more, we do not want them to! Another way to put this is that being a neighbor calls us toward actual involvement with others. Mother Teresa once suggested that it is very fashionable to talk about the poor. Unfortunately, it is very unfashionable to talk with them. We could expand this to many areas of our community and world. There is just something about being with each other, about taking the time to talk, eye to eye, that makes such a God-graced difference.

This parable tells us that the life of a disciple of Jesus is about compassion. Our society is becoming increasingly secular. It turns its back on the church and on God. I believe that as more people go down this path, more pain will come. The church has an important question to ask itself. Some people refer to this as the culture wars. How the churches engage this battle is important. If the approach is to put up our fists and fight in that way, few will respond. We need the spirit of the Good Samaritan, extending the help and healing that we can. 

Compassion causes us to invest in the lives of people until they come to health and strength on their own. Of course, you do not have to go far to find opportunities for sharing this kind of compassion. Who are the people in your neighborhood whom you could work with to make a difference in their lives? Whom can you invest your time and resources in so that new hope and life can spring up? 

Compassion is the open heart meeting suffering, the deep wish for the removal of suffering. Compassion literally means “with passion”; it is the healing agent that makes it bearable to see the truth of suffering within us, around us. The Dalai Lama says, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”[50]

The question for us is: What do we pour on the wounds of the hurting in our community. Do we offer our time, the kindness of words, the thoughtfulness of right actions, the warmth of an embrace, the generosity of our resources — or do we offer indifference, ignorance, scorn, judgment? Do we pour salt in the wounds, or anoint them with the oil of compassion?

Being a neighbor can mean bringing us out of our comfort zone. It might mean crossing social lines, or cultural divides. It might mean figuring out who is our neighbor by simply sharing 15 minutes across the hedge, or lending a hand to a stranger, or talking at the bus stop to the face you see every day and never acknowledge, or making eye contact on the sidewalk, or in the hallway, or even stopping to save a life.  

---

[1] Richard Bach, Illusions: Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, New York: Dell Publishing, 1977.

[2] To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you lived. This is to have succeeded. —Ralph Waldo Emerson.

[3] Karl Barth,Church Dogmatics, I.2 [18.2] 371-401], [18.3] 401-457.

[4] (See Sylvia C. Keesmaat, “Strange Neighbors and Risky Care (Matthew 8:21-35; Luke 14:7-14; Luke 10:25-37)” in The Challenge of Jesus’ Parables, ed. Richard N. Longenecker [Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2000], 276).

[5] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 330.

[6] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 2, 330. 

[7] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 1, 260.

[8] (Adela Yarboro Collins, Mark: A Commentary, Hermeneia, [Fortress Press, 2007], 573).

[9] Barth, Church Dogmatics, I.2 [18.2] 371-401], [18.3] 401-457.

[10] Amy-Jill Levine. If she is right, then we do not need to go down an explanation I have often heard, where people will say that the second half of Jesus' dual commandment meets us where we stand ‑‑ as self‑absorbed sinners. To "love your neighbor as yourself" means extending to one's neighbor the same self‑centered love and concern we all harbor.

[11] Soren Kierkegaard puts it this way: The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, can pass off as quietly as if it were nothing.  Every other loss - that of an arm, a leg, a spouse, five dollars, etc. - is sure to be noticed.

[12] (Carlo Carretto, Letters From the Desert).

[13] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 2, 333.

[14] Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith (HarperOne, 2010), 113.

[15] Eric Hoffer

[16] Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

[Ivan]:  "The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity. ... Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together."

[17] John Calvin, Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life.

[18] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 3, 76-7. 

[19]  Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love (Doubleday, 1992), 96. Everywhere in the world people are in search of love, for everyone is convinced that love alone can save the world; love alone can make life meaningful and worth living. But how very few understand what love really is and how it arises in the human heart. It is so frequently equated with good feelings for others, with benevolence or nonviolence or service. But these things in themselves are not love.

Love springs from awareness. It is only inasmuch as you see someone as he or she really is here and now and not as they are in your memory or your desire or in your imagination or projection that you can truly love them; otherwise, it is not the person that you love but the idea that you have formed of this person.

[20] Barth, Church Dogmatics, I.2 [18.2] 371-401], [18.3] 401-457.

[21] Church Dogmatics III.2 [45.1] 416-417.

[22] Church Dogmatics III.4 [53.1] 49.

[23] Church Dogmatics IV.1 [58.2] 105-107.

[24] Daniel J. Harrington, "The Gospel of Matthew", from the Sacra Pagina Series (The Liturgical Press, 1991),316.

[25] Albert Outler, Theology in the Wesleyan Spirit

[26] John Wesley, “Wandering Thoughts.” What is religion then?  It is easy to answer, if we consult the oracles of God.  According to these, it lies in one single point:  it is neither more nor less than love.  It is the love that is the fulfilling of the law, the end of the commandment.  Religion is the love of God and our neighbor; that is every person under heaven.

[27] John Wesley, “On Perfection.” What is then the perfection of which man is capable while he dwells in a corruptible body? It is the complying with that kind command, "My son, give me thy heart." It is the "loving the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind." This is the sum of Christian perfection: It is all comprised in that one word, Love. The first branch of it is the love of God: And as he that loves God loves his brother also, it is inseparably connected with the second: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself:" Thou shalt love every man as thy own soul, as Christ loved us. "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets:" These contain the whole of Christian perfection. 

John Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection. "(5.) This man can now testify to all mankind, `I am crucified with Christ: Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.' He is `holy as God who called' him `is holy,' both in heart and `in all manner of conversation.' He `loveth the Lord his God with all his heart,' and serveth him `with all his strength.' He `loveth his neighbour,' every man, `as himself;' yea, `as Christ loveth us;' them, in particular, that `despitefully use him and persecute him, because they know not the Son, neither the Father.' Indeed his soul is all love, filled with `bowels of mercies, kindness, meekness, gentleness, longsuffering.' And his life agreeth thereto, full of `the work of faith, the patience of hope, the labour of love.' `And whatsoever' he `doeth either in word or deed,' he `doeth it all in the name,' in the love and power, `of the Lord Jesus.' In a word, he doeth `the will of God on earth, as it is done in heaven.'

"(6.) This it is to be a perfect man, to be `sanctified throughout;' even `to have a heart so all‑flaming with the love of God,' (to use Archbishop Usher's words,) `as continually to offer up every thought, word, and work, as a spiritual sacrifice, acceptable to God through Christ.' In every thought of our hearts, in every word of our tongues, in every work of our hands, to `show forth his praise, who bath called us out of darkness into his marvellous light.' O that both we, and all who seek the Lord Jesus in sincerity, may thus `be made perfect in one!'"

[28] Barth, Church Dogmatics III.2 [45.1] 216-7.

[29] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 2, 333. 

[30] Pannenberg, volume 3, 78.

[31] Rahner, Theological Investigations, VI, 264ff.

[32] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 3, 189-192.

[33] Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, II, 103ff, 116ff.

[34] (Keesmaat, 278).

[35] (“The Language of Community: Metaphors, Systems of Convictions, Ethnic and Gender Issues in Luke 10:25-37 and 10:38-42,” Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers, no. 30 (1991), 698-713).

[36] Pamela Thimmes

[37] Margaret Thatcher

[38] All the blessings we enjoy are divine deposits, committed to our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the benefit of our neighbors. —John Calvin.

[39] Systematic Theology, Volume I, 432-3.

[40] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 2, 333; Volume 3, 76.

[41] (Robert T. Anderson, “Samaritans,” Anchor Bible Dictionary, v. 5 ed. David Noel Freedman [New York: Doubleday, 1992], 940-947.)

[42] (Keesmaat, 278).

[43] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume I, 432-3.

[44] Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV.3 [72.2], 778-9. 

[45] Hymn by John Newton (author of “Amazing Grace”), published in Olney Hymns, 1779. One of the tunes to which it can be sung is “O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee.”

[46] P. J. O'Rourke.

[47] —Marian Wright Edelman

[48] —The wizard Gandalf, in Peter Jackson’s 2012 film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

[49] Petrow, Steven. “How a ‘kindness contagion’ improves lives, especially now.” The Washington Post, October 27, 2018, washingtonpost.com.

[50] Dale Borglum, “Cultivating compassion,” February 1994, Breast Cancer Action Newsletter, Bcaction.org/Pages.