Word for the Week: Loving Neighbours
Love your neighbour as yourself.
Leviticus 19:18 and Luke 10:27
Jesus expanded the meaning of the word neighbour in the story of the good Samaritan. Mostly it had meant what we mean in English today – someone who lives down our street. It was linked with the people you knew, your kin, clan or village. (Although, to be fair, Leviticus 19 does direct the people to love the alien who turns up in their community.)
Jesus’ revolutionary story makes absolutely everyone and anyone a neighbour – anyone you happen to meet, or by extension, hear about, or see on the news. So how do we love anyone and everyone as ourselves? What part should I be playing in encouraging human flourishing? How do I contribute to good working practices so that others flourish too?
But should we always focus on ourselves doing the loving – it’s me who’s going to do good? There is a twist in Jesus’ story that adds a further dimension. The initial question was, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ Jesus then tells a story of a battered Jew rescued, not by the religious passer-by, but by someone from a despised ethnic group. So the Jewish lawyer is then asked, ‘Who was neighbour to the injured man?’ He is forced to answer that the real neighbour, the loving one, whom we are to love, was a man whose touch he would avoid, and whose religion he despised. Handing out charity was one thing, but being forced to accept neighbour charity from that kind of person was a bit of an affront.
We might need to stop and help someone who has been beaten up, using our resources and our time, but there are a lot of other very ordinary ways in which we can make the world we live in a better place for neighbour human beings. Pay taxes, carry donor cards, give blood, buy fair-trade goods, etc. And graciously accept the loving help of others, even if our pride and sense of status is offended! The Bible sometimes speaks of the joy of obedience – ‘for the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart’. So enjoy yourself – be a loving neighbour and let others neighbour you!
Margaret Killingray
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