The next day, he took two full days’ worth of wages and gave them to the innkeeper. He said, “Take care of him, and when I return, I will pay you back for any additional costs.”
Luke 10:35 (CEB)
In Luke 10: 25, a lawyer asked what he thought was a tough question of Jesus: “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus doesn’t answer the question and instead tells a story. A neighbor is someone who will lend you a cup of sugar when you’ve started a recipe before checking to see if you have all the ingredients. A neighbor is someone whom you can ask to come next door and watch the sleeping baby while you drive the older kid to the ER to extract the small toy he jammed up his nose. A neighbor is someone who will wander around the neighborhood with you looking for your lost dog.
Or, as Jesus described it, a neighbor is someone who will bandage the wounds of someone left for dead; who will take that person to a place where he can heal; who will pay for all of that person’s expenses during his recuperation; and never expect to see that person or receive thanks.
Jesus answers the lawyer’s question by defining a neighbor by what a neighbor does, not by the labels he carries; not by his citizenship, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, or anything else. And, because the lawyer was looking for labels, and to put an edge on his point, Jesus makes it clear: “By the way, this super-neighbor guy happens to be from a place we hate: Samaria.
And then Jesus asks the really tough question: “Who was the neighbor?” And the lawyer, who can’t even bring himself to name his enemy, has to answer, “The one who showed kindness.”
There are people fleeing from suffering all over the world or simply seeking to make a better life for their family, whom the U.S. and other nations turn away. It seems we have become the lawyer asking Jesus to impose conditions on God’s love.
The act of “welcoming the stranger” requires radical hospitality and unconditional love for people who are different from us. In these difficult times, all of us, but particularly those of us who are followers of Christ, must love exceedingly generously in ways that people will say, “these people are crazy!” 80-year-old women coming out in arctic conditions, as they have in Minnesota and Chicago, to stand on corners and watch for ICE activity, for instance.) It’s that kind of tenacious love, in which people still believe in the sacramental power of bringing people casseroles as signs of God’s unconditional love, that has endurance against evil. It echoes in Paul’s words of Romans chapter 8, one of the boldest theological claims in the Bible, “nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from the love of God.” Paul isn’t saying God will necessarily fix everything. He’s saying that God will be with us, and walk with us, and cry with us, and laugh with us… even on our darkest days. This is love that shows up in the women watching their neighborhood street corners when it feels like the world is falling apart and you are scared to even open your door. And then they bring you a casserole when their whistle-blowing shift is over.
Prayer:
God, may we have faith that there will be redemption, forgiveness, and reconciliation. And, even in these dark days, may we hold on to hope, a hope that shows up in people who fight evil with casseroles and other signs of unconditional love. Amen.
The Rev. Jack Amick serves as the director of Global Migration for the United Methodist Committee on Relief, a unit of the General Board of Global Ministries.
