And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. [Deuteronomy 6:5 (NLT)]
Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against a fellow Israelite, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. [Leviticus 19:18 (NLT)]
When a nomikós (Scripture lawyer, an expert in religious law) tested Jesus by asking what he must do to inherit eternal life, the Lord countered with his own question, “What does the law say?” When the man responds with the words of Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, Jesus says he’s answered correctly. Wanting clarification, he then asks, “Who is my neighbor?” His query tells us the nomikós is more interested in the letter of the law than its spirit. Apparently, he wouldn’t want to waste any love on someone who wasn’t his neighbor or miss loving someone who was! Jesus answers the man’s question with one of his best-known stories—the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
Since this expert in the law was testing Jesus, he probably wasn’t alone. His question was another attempt by the religious leaders to trap the troublesome rabbi into saying something that would get Him into trouble with the authorities or show His ignorance of Scripture and expose him as a Messianic pretender. They never seemed to understand that you can’t outsmart the one who wrote the Law!
Because we’re not 1st century Judeans, we fail to appreciate how shocking this story was to Jesus’ audience. Divided by racial, ethnic, and religious barriers, the Samaritans and Jews had a long history of enmity going back 900 years to the kingdom’s division. When the Samaritans’ offer to help rebuild the Temple was refused, they built their own temple on Mt. Gerizim which the Jews destroyed in 128 BC. In retaliation, Samaritans defiled Jerusalem’s Temple by throwing bones into it on Passover. The feud grew and, by the time of Christ, the Jews hated the Samaritans so much they crossed the Jordan river rather than travel through Samaria. The two groups fed their mutual hatred with insult and injury.
Even though Jesus’ audience would have been offended by the priest’s and Levite’s failure to help the dying man in the parable, they still expected the third man to be a Jew. Can you imagine the gasps when Jesus deliberately chose a Samaritan as the hero of His story? To a Jew, the Samaritans were a “herd” not a nation and, because of their mixed Jewish-Gentile blood, they were racial “half-breeds.” The worst insult a Jew could use was to call someone a Samaritan. A common saying in Judah was, “A piece of bread given by a Samaritan is more unclean than swine’s flesh!” Yet, in Jesus’ parable, it was a Samaritan who showed compassion for the nearly dead Jew when his own countrymen ignored his need. When Jesus asked the lawyer which man was a neighbor to the injured man, unwilling to say it was a Samaritan, he answered, “The one who showed him mercy.”
To the parable’s priest, the injured man was nothing but an inconvenience and, to the “rubbernecking” Levite, he was a curiosity. Their failure to help the injured man wasn’t because they didn’t know he was their neighbor; it was because they lacked compassion! To the Samaritan, however, the wounded man was neither Jew nor Samaritan. He was a person in desperate need of help and the Samaritan only did what a good neighbor does—he responded with love.
People today continue to be divided by racial, ethnic, religious, and political barriers. If Jesus were telling this parable today, He’d have no difficulty finding people who define “neighbor” by skin color, language, rituals, values, ancestry, history, customs, or politics. The lawyer asked, “Who is my neighbor?” The question we should ask ourselves is, “Am I a good neighbor to everyone?”
Brent Askari’s play, The Refugees, begins with an unusual premise. Because of a violent civil war in the United States, an upscale American family become refugees in a Middle Eastern country. When the family’s Arab social worker referred to the American refugees as “you people,” the once suburban housewife’s expression spoke volumes. In her previous Connecticut life, anyone who wasn’t white and upper middle class had been “those people” but the tables have turned and the roles reversed. Instead of being the ones with the money and advantages, her family and others like them are “those people:” a minority, seeking asylum in a new country, unfamiliar with the customs, and unable to read, write, or speak the language. Wearing clothes they once would have sent to Goodwill, they need government assistance to survive. Her once high-priced lawyer husband is now a stock boy whose boss takes advantage of his immigrant status. This family and other American refugees are as unwelcome in the unnamed Arab country as are the refugees at our border.
A century of dike-building, agricultural development, and population growth has destroyed much of Florida’s wetlands and threatened the survival of dozens of animals like Florida panthers, Snail Kites, and Wood Storks. The White Ibis, however, is an exception. Having adapted to the new urban landscape, large groups of ibis happily graze the lawns of subdivisions, parks, and golf courses. They’ve found it easier to poke at the soil for a predictable buffet of grubs, earthworms, and insects than to forage in the remaining wetlands for aquatic prey like small fish, frogs, and crayfish. Once wary of humans, these urbanized ibis pay little or no attention to people as they follow one another across our lawns.
When writing about giving God the glory and how we are but instruments of God’s grace in the world, I recalled a quote by Mother Teresa having to do with being God’s pencil. Wanting to quote it correctly, I Googled it. Along with the quote, I came across several versions of a parable about a pencil. Of unknown origin, it has been around for more than twenty years. Nevertheless, the parable was new to me and this is my version of “The Parable of the Pencil.”
It was while Jesus and the disciples were eating the Passover meal that the Lord instituted the Eucharist. The 1st century church followed His lead by celebrating the Eucharist in the context of a communal meal. The wealthier contributed the food and portions were set aside for the sick, poor, and widowed. Nourishing both body and soul while building a sense of community, these fellowship meals were known as agape or love feasts!
Pastor Chris recently shared a devotion she read in which the author gives his office globe a gentle spin each morning. After a moment or two, he places a finger on the globe, stops its revolution, and prays for the people wherever his finger lands. Chris said she’s adopted this practice but, to make it more than a quick uninformed prayer, she does some research on the country’s needs and religions to guide her petitions.
Devotions of the Heart 