This week is the 38th wedding anniversary for my dad and stepmom. I celebrate their love! For most of their married life they have “shared” a house with cats. (Notice I said shared – because for those of you who are cat people, you know it’s people who are the guests in their house!)
When I go over to visit my family, I like playing cat and mouse and pull the string. They have a little cloth mouse attached to a string that is so fun to tease them with. I slowly pull on one end of the string and watch the cats go nuts, stalking and pouncing until they proudly catch the mouse. Oh, what a look they have on their face – they got the prize! Then I pull on the other end as the string and the prize is gone and we start all over!
In this article I want to play pull the string, only the string I am referring to is this little verse that appears in Paul’s letter to the Romans that says, “(The commandments) are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Let’s follow the string of this verse.
It’s a verse that ties together pieces of a powerful biblical imperative that is scattered throughout the Bible.
Let’s pull on the string of this verse a little. When we pull, we see that these words were not original with Paul. Jesus said to his followers, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke record the story of a leader coming to Jesus and asking him which commandment in the law was the greatest. Jesus replied, “You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
But let’s pull on the string a little more. These words were not original with Jesus. In fact, the words go back to the Hebrew Scriptures, in the Book of Leviticus where it says, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Those words are from a section in Leviticus that describes a life of holiness expected to be lived by the Israelites in response to God’s saving deliverance from their slavery in Egypt.
Not only did neighbor mean next-of-kin or fellow Israelite, but a few verses later it says, “When an alien resides in your land, you shall not oppress the alien … you shall love the alien as yourself … for remember you were aliens in the land of Egypt.”
In other words, God’s word to the Israelites was that when an alien was among them, they were to treat the alien not like they were treated when they were aliens in the land of Egypt, but rather, love the alien as they loved themselves.
The point is, when we pull the string on Paul’s words from our reading today it takes us all the way back to Leviticus, where the definition of neighbor moves beyond next-of-kin and beyond friend.
Let’s tug on the string even more. In Luke, when Jesus said “Love your neighbor as yourself,” the religious leader asked another question, “And who is my neighbor?”
Jesus responds by telling the parable of The Good Samaritan. You know the story. A man was mugged and beaten up by robbers and left in the ditch along the side of the road to die. Two religious leaders passed by, a priest and a Levite. These guys, for sure, were familiar with God’s command in Leviticus to love neighbor and alien as much as themselves. Still, they passed the dying man by – ignoring his suffering and his pain. But ironically, it was an alien, a despised Samaritan, who showed compassion and stopped to help, fulfilling the commandment of God to love both neighbor and alien as himself.
Let me ask you a question this morning, which character in the parable of The Good Samaritan looks most like Jesus? Most people immediately say, “The Samaritan.” I don’t disagree, but, as theologian J. Holub says, “If you look deeper than the surface of this story, the mugged man in the ditch looks even more like Jesus – the Jesus who was flogged, beaten, hung on a cross and left to die; before whom all sorts of people, religious and profane, paraded by shouting scorn and displaying indifference.”
Remember in Matthew 25 where Jesus said “I was hungry and you gave me food … thirsty and you gave me something to drink … a stranger and you welcomed me … naked and you gave me clothing … sick and you took care of me … in prison and you visited me … just as you do it to one of the least of these you do it to me.”
What an interesting verse. Could it be saying that God understands our pain and suffering so much that when we minister to others who suffer, in some mysterious way, we minister to Jesus himself?
You see, if we pull on the string of “Love your neighbor as yourself,” a whole new way to live and love opens up before us. We begin to see that it’s not just a commandment to do nice things for our neighbors, but it’s an invitation to find Jesus in the lives of the most desperate, suffering, lonely and pained souls of this planet. I think of Mother Teresa.
“Love your neighbor as yourself” is the most concise, yet profound description there is of what it means to live the Christian life; to live your life in a way that honors God.
If we expand our boundaries of who our neighbor is, it changes everything about how we can live our lives.
It means that God’s neighborhood is so much bigger than the neighborhood we might be looking at. It means God’s neighborhood includes the whole world; and every person in it.
It means that our neighbors include even those we dislike; and especially those who dislike us.
It means that if we are looking for, as Holub says, “the presence of Jesus in this world,” we need to look into the faces of the suffering and oppressed, the least and last on this planet.
“Love your neighbor as yourself.” So who exactly is my neighbor? It’s the ones who look a little or a lot like Jesus, that’s who!
The ones who are lonely, lost, imprisoned, thirsty, starving, frightened, oppressed, poor, homeless, disenfranchised, sick, displaced, grieving, refugeed, rejected and dying. The ones who look like Jesus on his way to the cross: the victims of devastating floods and gun violence; those dying of AIDS; starving and orphaned children in refugee camps; the unemployed and under-employed; the lonely teenager; the abused woman or man; the forgotten elderly, and also the aliens among us, who have been labeled by some as illegal.
At a summer vacation Bible school, where the theme was God’s Big Backyard, where they talked about loving their neighbors in expanding concentric circles – from family, to friends, to community, to world. The last day a little girl (about 7 or 8) came up to the teacher and showed her a drawing she had proudly made. She had worked on it at home the night before and obviously had put a lot of time into it. It wasn’t a required activity, but it was an inspired labor of love.
It was a drawing of the world, with the oceans and continents; and all around the edge of the circle of the world she had drawn in people. Among her people were people of different colored skins; a person on a stretcher being carried by two other people; people of different colors all holding hands. Some of the people had long distorted arms that reached across the globe to join hands with people way on the other side. At the top of the drawing she had entitled it, God’s Neighborhood.
“Love your neighbor as yourself” is a verse that ties all things and all people together in the heart of God. It’s a verse that if taken seriously, may distort us; distort us with love – reaching farther than we thought was ever possible. It’s a verse that ties all of humanity together into one neighborhood. It’s a verse that ultimately brings us to Jesus – the great prize!
Remember how I teased my parents’ cats with the prize of the cloth mouse and then took it away from them? Well, the love of God for each and every one of us is strong and sure. What can separate us from the love of God? Nothing! And it will never be yanked away either – because there are no strings attached! Amen.
