We’ve got more friends, but less friendship! (Luke 10:25–37)
Jesus has answers: Be a neighbour
The internet and online social networks have become a everyday communication tool – they have allowed us to become a part of a global community at the touch of a button. Facebook, MySpace, twitter and YouTube mean we can have a presence on the internet and make friends locally and internationally, but often they are ‘virtual’ friends, people we can’t see or touch or enjoy real time with. Yet it seems the more we communicate electronically the more isolated we can feel. Electronic communication can only go so far in building relationships.
Jesus has an answer in one of his most famous stories, the parable of the Good Samaritan, where his punch-line is quite simply: ‘Be a neighbour’.
What’s less well-known about that story is that Jesus told it in answer to a lawyer’s question. The lawyer asked Jesus, ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ When Jesus pushed the lawyer to answer his own question, the man came back with the statement: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and, 'Love your neighbour as yourself.’
While the lawyer’s answer was correct, it is also impossible. All of us know that if this is God’s standard, then none of us will see life in heaven.
Looking for a loophole, the lawyer debates with Jesus ‘... who is my neighbour?’
Jesus had the answer:
Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
The priest and the Levite in the story represent official, pious Judaism, which fails to love.
The mood totally changes in Jesus’ story when a Samaritan comes on the scene.
But a Samaritan, as he travelled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'
"Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"
The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."
In Jesus’ story, the person who is a real neighbour is the most unlikely person — the one despised by official Judaism — yet who sees the half-dead man’s need and acts concretely to meet it.
At the end of the story Jesus challenges the lawyer, ‘Go and do likewise’.
But here’s the twist — and this will come as a surprise.
First, Jesus says, see yourself in the story not as the hero but likewise — as half-dead, needing to be rescued. We are also to look to the most unlikely person in the story — the one despised by official Judaism, who sees the half-dead man’s need and acts concretely to meet it.
Look to Jesus, who in his death on the cross, pays for our real need — the forgiveness of our wrong before God.
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