Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself

Sermon from November 7, 2010

Luke 10:25-37; 1 Thessalonians 4:1-12; Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18, 33-36

The Bible has a great deal to say about how we are to extend godliness to the social order by living out our human calling to be the image of God, representing God’s nature and purposes to the world. For instance, the central theme of the book of Leviticus is how God’s people are to live a holy life. The structural center of Leviticus’ message is in Chapter 19. The theme statement is expressed in 19:2, “Speak to all the congregation of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.’” Peter applies this theme to the church in 1 Peter 1:14-16, “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, ¹⁵but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, ¹⁶since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy."

A surprising number of the laws in Leviticus 19 are about relating helpfully and not harmfully to the poor, the weak, the day laborer, the deaf, the blind, the elderly, the foreign sojourner, the person accused of a crime, the neighbor who sins (possibly against you), and the neighbor with whom you do business.

The central teaching of Leviticus 19 is verse 18, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.” If you ask, “Who is my neighbor?” the answer turns out to be broader than “the sons of your own people.” Verses 33-34 say, "When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. ³⁴ You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.”

In Luke 10:25-37, a religious legal expert asks Jesus what is necessary to inherit eternal life. Jesus invites the man to summarize what the law says. The man combines Deuteronomy 6:5 which requires total love for God with Leviticus 19:18 which requires loving our neighbors as ourselves. Jesus affirms the answer. The expert, wanting to limit the potewntial neighbors he was thereby obligated to love, asks for a definition of neighbor. Jesus offers a parable about two self-concerned religious experts who pass without helping a man who had been beaten and left for dead along the roadside. In contrast, a Samaritan, stereotyped by the experts as spiritually and morally impure, goes to extraordinary lengths at his own risk and expense to help the man. On the neighbor test, the religious experts failed the neighbor test by passing the beaten man, while the man from impure Samaria passed the neighbor test by helping the beaten man. The expert had asked Jesus whom he was obligated to help. Jesus essentially told him that he would be better off asking whom he had the opportunity to help.

In Mark 12:28-34,when a religious expert asks Jesus to summarize the law, he gives the same answer that the earlier expert had given him, Deuteronomy 6:5 plus Leviticus 19:18 calling for our loving God and neighbor. When this second expert agrees emphatically, Jesus tells him that he is not far from the kingdom of God. Jesus specifically affirmed and taught that these verses are central for the lives of his followers.

There is another occasion when Jesus took the matter of our obligation to love others even further than with the parable of the Samaritan. In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:43-48, he challenged us to include our enemies on the list of those we hav the opportunity to love: ⁴³“You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' ⁴⁴But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. ⁴⁶For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? ⁴⁷And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? ⁴⁸ You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

“You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” is just a restatement of the Leviticus theme, “You must be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”

Jesus said that we may have heard, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” From where might we have heard that we should hate our enemy? Not from Leviticus 19. Indeed, the command in Leviticus to love our neighbor is given in the context of not taking vengeance or bearing a grudge against someone who has done us wrong. In essence, it is a command to love our neighbor who has just acted as our enemy. The passage says that we are to confront our neighbor about his or her sin, but nonetheless to love our neighbor. Love here does not mean to feel all warm and fuzzy about our neighbor, but to seek the best for our neighbor just as we seek for ourselves.

So where might we have heard the message to hate our enemy? From people who do not understand the true nature of the holiness of God. Some people think that being holy means being very angry against all sinners, so angry that we want to punish them, to do harm against them. Leviticus says that this is not right. Jesus says that this is not right.

We need to work our way through this carefully. Scripture is clear that we are not to condone idolatry, adultery, or other sins. Paul says that the church is not to partner in its internal fellowship which exists to represent Christ with blatant, unrepentant sinners. But not partnering with them in our church’s mission is quite different from withdrawing from all contact or of becoming hostile toward blatant, unrepentant sinners. How might the blatant sinner come to see the amazing redeeming and transforming love of God if Christians do not have friendly, helpful contact with them?

Now I would not suggest that the new Christian recently rescued from alcoholism be assigned to bar ministry. Nor would I suggest that the church in its eagerness to reach sinners adopt manners that appear to take sin lightly; the apostles explicitly forbid that in our Scriptures.

Jewish people were forbidden to marry pagans because of the difference in moral and spiritual values. Christians are similarly instructed regarding not marrying unbelievers. Marrying is one thing. Treating people with fairness and helpfulness is another.

Who were the foreign sojourners in ancient Israel? Probably many of them were from the nations and tribes that Israel had to fight on the way into the Promised Land, that the judges had to fight in the days of the settlement of the promised Land, that their kings had to fight in the days of possessing the Promised Land, the nations and exiles that taunted the Israelites in the days of their exile. In short, they were long-time enemies. But Leviticus commands Israelites to remember that their ancestors were once slaves in a foreign land and to treat foreigners living among them with fairness and hospitable helpfulness.

Jesus similarly continually shocks people with his open dealings with Samaritans, such as the Samaritan woman at the well who had had five husbands and was now living with a man to whom she was not married. Jesus did not condone sin, but he did not shun sinners. Who would have guessed that the Samaritan woman at the well would have moved more quickly into becoming an effective evangelist than Jesus’ own traveling companion disciples? Yet that is exactly what happened.

Somehow, we have to get it through our heads and into our hearts that our purpose in life is to represent the holy character of God, and that the holy character of God includes as a main feature steadfast, redeeming love even for foreign sojourners, hostile enemies, and blatant sinners.

I am not saying that we are to toss aside all discernment. I am not saying that we are to walk around with a “kick me” sign taped to our back. I am not saying that we become punching bags for abusers. I am not saying that we become foolish enablers of manipulative users.

I am saying that we are to represent the steadfast, redeeming love of God, that we are to support efforts that offer opportunities for people to salvage their broken lives and begin to live as children of God, that we are to offer such opportunities even to our enemies.

At the most basic level, this challenges us to strip all remnants of hate and fear speech from our conversation, all hateful and fearful actions from our lives. We do not have to agree with people in order to be kind and fair and helpful to them. We can understand that what certain people have done is not in accord with God’s standards without beginning to hate them. How many of us have said something about African Americans or Hispanics or Muslims or gay people that we would cringe in shame if we knew that Jesus overheard us? Guess what? Our actions have already been entered into our eternal records, and we had better repent of them, not just regret them, but also change the underlying thinking that led to them, and the sooner the better, so that Jesus can erase them from our book.

We live in a culture that is in serious trouble. Human brokenness is mounting. The social resources to cope with that brokenness are declining. The solutions that are being offered from our secular culture are about as effective as applying a band-aid to a cannon ball wound. Voices of fear, hatred, and resentment are spewing forth into our minds. They will only make matters worse. It is time to turn off the hate and turn on creative approaches.

I am convinced that real solutions must be spiritual, moral, and relational. They are the kinds of solutions that can be found only in living communities of faith, communities where believers are committed to living out the character of the God we know through Jesus Christ. We have lots of churches, but only a small minority of them are focused on their calling to put human flesh on the redeeming love of God in Jesus Christ, offering personal, caring alternatives to the mammoth impersonal institutions of our day.

What we have done is that we have, for the sake of elusive material benefits, sold out to a large, impersonal culture that has no ability to deliver on its promises. We have become producers, consumers, and clients managed by big, impersonal institutions. Jesus during his earthly life did not try to control those kinds of institutions. He simply laid the foundation for building something new outside those big institutions, an alternative way of living in community that has real, spiritual, God-given values. That is essentially what his followers did in the first century Roman empire. That is what his followers did again with Celtic-style monasteries that spread out from Ireland from the 5^th through the 10^th centuries, creating centers of hospitality, scholarship, arts, and evangelism that may well have saved civilization. That is what the evangelical pietists did in places like Germany, the British Isles, and North America in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries, creating faith-based missionary societies, Bible societies, hospitals, orphanages, schools, self-help groups, improving the status of women, equipping freed slaves, elevating the moral climate that was so damaging to women and children, and on and on.

In each of these movements, much of the strength of the movement rested in building voluntary, faith-centered, Bible-based, prayer-powered, spiritual communities and networks outside the dominant social institutions of their day, networks of relationships that changed the world of their day.

I suggest that it is high time for Christians to do it once more. You may ask, “How?” I do not know the details. The details will not emerge until we catch the vision and join ourselves in study, prayer, and mutual encouragement. But God is faithful. God has done it before when Christians have sought him. He can and will do it again if we will persistently seek him.

We cannot do it all at once. We must reach out to invite others to come alongside us, but together we can begin to reclaim our lives right here in this community of hope, faith, and love. This is where the real action is because God is here and ready to act as soon as we join him in our readiness. Let’s get ourselves spiritually prepared.