THOUGHTS ON LOVING OUR NEIGHBORS AS WE LOVE OURSELVES

I preached on the Good Samaritan story recently, and as I've thought about what it means to love our neighbor in a time when loving our neighbor has become a political issue, I can't escape these seven thoughts and conclusions:

1) I will never meet a person whom God doesn't love. Neither will you because God is love. I may like some people more than others. I may even have prejudices against certain people, but I will never meet anyone whom God does not love.

2) In Christ, there is no male or female, no slave or free, no gay or straight, no black or white, no any difference at all that would give us reason to fear, discriminate, or hate anyone else.

3) There has always been a special place in God's heart for the vulnerable and the foreigners in our midst. In Leviticus, we're told to love foreigners in our midst because we were foreigners too, and in the book of Hebrews, we're encouraged to treat all people with the greatest respect because we may be in the company of angels and not even know it. In short, feeding the poor, clothing the naked, and embracing the foreigners in our midst... is NOT a matter of politics. It is a matter of faith!

4) Biblically speaking, love is an action word. It is doing something for someone else, even if that "something" puts us a risk, takes up our time, or brings us into contact with someone we would rather avoid. If they're hungry, we feed them; if they're wounded, we patch them up; if they're lonely, we visit them, without judgment or prejudice.

5) Our "neighbor" is the person who is near and in need. It may be someone we work with, golf with, or meet on a street corner. It may be someone who offends us and puts us at risk. It doesn't matter because he or she is our neighbor, and we are called to love him or her, as we love ourself.

6) Getting involved is the most important part of loving someone else as we love ourself. We can't take a cup of water to a man dying in the desert without going into the desert, and we can't patch up a man who has been beaten and robbed, without kneeling down and touching the man to see if he is alive. This isn't easy, which is why most of us just walk on by;

7) Finally, we simply need to do it! According to Soren Kierkegaard, we are all "artful dodgers" who pretend that we don't understand Scripture because we don't want to practice it in our own lives. Who is our neighbor, we ask, as we pass by the beggar on the street, drive by the home of someone we know to be lonely, or let our phone ring when we know it is someone who really needs to talk. O Lord, let me see others as you see them and give me the courage to love them every bit as much as I love myself.