Domes - Our Monthly Newsletter
Dunbar UCC
July 15, 2007
Luke 10:25-37
Neighbors
- We’ve heard this parable many times. “Good Samaritan” is even in the dictionary: “somebody who voluntarily helps others who are in trouble.” Jesus told this story because a lawyer agreed with him that loving God and loving our neighbor as we love ourselves are the greatest commandments in the Bible, but he wanted to know who his neighbor was. But Jesus turned the lawyer’s question around. He didn’t care about the “who.” Jesus showed the lawyer “what” a neighbor is: one who shows another mercy -- even if the other is an enemy. And he told the lawyer: “now go do this.” Jesus changed the command in Leviticus, from “love your neighbor as yourself” to “be a neighbor to everyone -- show mercy to everyone.”
- According to Jesus, we’re to show mercy to everyone. We’re to treat everyone as the good Samaritan treated his enemy. The Samaritan paid for the victim’s room and treatment, and didn’t care that the the man wasn’t from his village or country.
- Most people are probably not Good Samaritans. Generally, people have a tribal mentality: they might show mercy to their family members -- or friends -- but often the mercy stops there. Many don’t believe that mercy should be extended to inmates on death row, or to immigrants who are here illegally. Even Christians don’t want to show this mercy and compassion -- though that’s what Jesus taught.
- In Huckleberry Finn, there’s a passage that one English scholar described as the highest point of all American literature. Huck was traveling down the Mississippi river on a raft with an escaped slave, Jim. Huck, like Jim, had also run away, but he felt guilty because he was harboring an escaped slave -- a criminal -- a piece of property owned by a white man. “Good Christian people” told him that if he didn’t turn in Jim, he’d burn in hell for eternity. To save himself, Huck had to betray Jim. But he decided that he’d rather break the law, and go to prison, and hell, than do that. Huck risked his life and his soul to protect another human being. Huckleberry Finn is the American version of the Good Samaritan. Mark Twain got it right. Everyone is our neighbor. And our duty is to treat every human being with mercy and love, regardless of who they are or how they treat us.