"Let us go and do likewise, regarding every man as our neighbour who needs our assistance.Let us renounce that bigotry and party zeal which would contract our hearts into an insensibility for all the human race, but a small number whose sentiments and practices are so much our own, that our love to them is but self love reflected. With an honest openness of mind let us always remember that kindred between man and man, and cultivate that happy instinct whereby, in the original constitution of our nature, God has strongly bound us to each other." John Wesley
It's called the Story of the Good Samaritan. It could easily be called the Story of the Pitiful Priest or the Story of the Lousy Levite. You know the plot line well. Jesus' was asked the question, "Who is my neighbor?" by a expert in the law. The Teacher had just proclaimed loving your neighbor to be of equal importance to loving God and it was too much for the legal eagle to take. "Fine! Who is my neighbor? Who do I have to love?"
Isnt this the same type of thing we ask? Don't we try to weasel out of those Truth-inflicted-guilty moments by conjuring up silly, rhetorical questions? Justify ourselves much?
Who is your neighbor?
The dude whose dogs bark incessantly at night?
The family with Christmas decorations still in their yard...from 1998?
The couple that police visit weekly because of domestic disputes?
The heroine addict?
So, the expert wanted to know who his neighbor was. Jesus one-two punches the guy in the solar plexus with a parable about a robbery victim, two religious guys that crossed the road to avoid the guy and a mortal enemy that didn't, choosing instead to do the unthinkable. Christ concludes the story with a question of His own. "Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" You can almost see the red flushing his cheeks, the sheepish look washing over his face. What could the guy say? Of course it was the one that showed mercy. Jesus tells him and subsequently us to..."God and do the same." He still expects us to do so today.
I'm praying for you brother/sister. You most certainly will be faced with the decision today or in the coming days. Do I cross to the other side of the road or do I engage, bless, minister to my neighbor? Show compassion. Show mercy. Love your neighbor. Yep, even that one!
He who gives outward things gives something external to himself, but he who imparts compassion and tears gives him something from his very self." Pope Gregory I
