10:25 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?

27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.

28 And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.

29 But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?

30 And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. 33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, 34 And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.

36 Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?

37 And he said, He that shewed mercy on him.

Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

I have always thought the answer started with verse 37: "He that shewed mercy on him." What does that verse mean? --That the neighbor of the "certain man" is the Samaritan. But then, by implication, the Levite and the priest are *not* his neighbors-- and he has no duty to love them. We are then led to some meaning such as that we are commanded to love good, helping people, but not anybody else, no matter how holy their position or how close their kinship.

This, of course, is not how most people understand the verse. They understand that the "certain man" is supposed to love the Samaritan, but then they take it for granted that he is supposed to love the priest and the Levite also, even though that runs directly contrary to the spirit of the passage, which is that the Samaritan is very different from the others-- and better. Modern people want to read out the term "neighbor" entirely, and replace it with "everybody", just as they want to think, contrary to the Bible and all evidence, that God loves everybody and we are to love everybody.

The interpretation that we are to love everybody does have an element of truth, though, and the idea that came out tonight is a more sophisticated version of it.

First, we need to look back to where the command "Love thy neighbor as thyself" comes from. Take a look at Leviticus 19:

16 Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people: neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour: I am the LORD.

17 Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him.

18 Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.

Now look back at Luke 10 and the context of the parable. The "certain lawyer", a person with talents and faults similar to my own, is trying to test Jesus in an intellectual discussion. Jesus turns the lawyer's first question back on him, getting the lawyer to give the answer and then just saying in effect, "Okay, we see you know the right answer. Why ask me?". The reason is probably that the lawyer is trying to score points off of Jesus by showing that Jesus is not as smart or well-educated as he is. So the lawyer keeps trying. He asks Jesus what "neighbor" means, a hard question. The answer would require Jesus to analyze Leviticus 19:18 and the surrounding verses, and to bring in other verses too. It would make for a nice academic discussion-- or, it would reveal whether Jesus really knew Leviticus or was just faking his way through as a teacher.

Jesus, we know from other passages, really does know his Leviticus. But he does not continue the discussion on the terms the lawyer expects. Instead, he tells a story. The ultimate effect is extraordinarily multi-faceted, combining a number of meanings. Let me go through the results: 1. The lawyer loses the intellectual debate. Jesus takes the initiative, shifts the ground unexpectedly, and forces the lawyer into a situation where the lawyer has to answer just as Jesus wants him to. The audience sees this, and there is no way, rhetorically, for the lawyer to continue the debate without looking like a sore loser. Thus, Jesus has shown he can play the intellectual debate game and win.

2. Jesus implicitly tells the lawyer that Leviticus 19:18 is misleading, and asking "Who is my neighbor" is not the right question after all. Jesus no doubt knew about Leviticus 19:33-34, which says this:

33 And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him.

34 But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

3. Since Leviticus 19:18 says you are to love your neighbor as yourself, and Leviticus 19:34 says you are to love the stranger as yourself, it is reasonable to conclude that Leviticus does not exhaust the list of people you are to love as yourself. Thus, relying legalistically on the Bible is wrong. You will miss some duties you owe God. He has given us certain commands, but these are to be taken as illustrative examples rather than as an exhaustive list, and we are supposed to think about the spirit of the rules and how to please God rather than how to barely achieve some compliance threshold. This is a major theme of Jesus's teaching-- in particular, it is a major theme of the Sermon on the Mount.

4. Jesus leaves us uncertain as to who our neighbors are. What he makes very clear, however, is the command, "Go, and do thou likewise," in verse 37. If you see someone wounded by the road, you are commanded to help him.

This, however, ought to be obvious. It does not require expert knowledge of Leviticus to know that you should help someone wounded by robbers; it is part of natural law, part of being human. People don't always do what they are supposed to-- witness the priest and the Levite-- but the problem usually isn't lack of knowledge, but lack of will. The priest and the Levite know they should have stopped, and that is probably why they go to the other side of the road--from guilt.

Thus, we have a lesson for the lawyer: "It may be fun to have theological discussions, but the big problem is not figure out the details of what we should do, but to make ourselves do what everyone already knows we should do."

And so Jesus answers the question, "Who is my neighbor?", by saying, in effect, "Don't bother about that question--it's not important, and you're either asking it as an intellectual exercise or in the hopes of finding an excuse to duck the duties you know you owe God."

5. Thus, at the end of the day, I find that I oughtn't to worry about what the parable tells me about who my neighbor is, because its point is that I shouldn't even be asking that question.