Note: I am aware my citations are not perfect. Don't judge.
"I want to begin my talk today with a simple scripture from 1 John 4:8 “ He that loveth not, knoweth not God: for God is love.” Today I have been asked to speak on the phrase from the parable of the Good Samaritan “And who is my neighbor?” But I feel that to truly understand what that question is asking we need to define a few things. Let’s begin with the equation just expressed by John: “God is love.” The word “is” is a statement of reality, to be, to exist. When used in mathematics it means “to have a specified significance” or “to equal.” Therefore, God = love. Over thousands of years the definition of love has taken on many connotations, but at its root it is an attachment, a chosen connection, an expression of a relationship between two or more things. Like the equation “God is Love” in its simplest form, love denotes the truest type of bond or connection to be had, a relationship with God.
We know how to love because of the pattern set in place by God. John explains this in verses 10-11: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us… Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.” So God created the pattern for us to follow. He loved us, so we should love others in the same way. In fact, God went a HUGE step further and commanded that we follow it. In Matthew 22: 37-40, Christ sums up these commandments as follows, “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Did you catch that last phrase, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” In scriptural language this reads as saying… EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON THIS! Everything, as in “this is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man,” kind of everything.
So what does this series of definitions have to do with my topic? Well, we were just told it has everything to do with it. As Dr. Marleen Williams stated, “All of God’s laws are ultimately laws of love. Every commandment is given out of love for you and concern for your happiness. Every commandment ultimately tests your ability to love Him and your fellowman.” If all the Gospel laws and the prophets hang on our ability to love God and our neighbor, then we had better learn about these relationships.
Let’s go back to the phrase I was given to study: “And who is my neighbor?” The word neighbor is an Old English/Saxon word “neahgebur” or “neah/nigh” meaning near + “gebur” (sounds like how my voice sounds) meaning dwelling. So a neighbor is a “near dweller” or someone who dwells near. Let me read from the parable of the Good Samaritan and you’ll see how this is all related: Luke, chapter 10 vs 25-29.
25: And Behold a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, What shall I do to inherit eternal life?
26: He said unto him: What is written in the law? How readest thou?
27: And he answering said: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.
28: And he said unto him: thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.
29: But he, willing to justify himself (or show he had reason for asking) said unto Jesus, and who is my neighbor?
As I have read through these passages I keep coming back to that final question. The emphasis of each individual word in the sentence shows the meaning and power these words have in relation to each other. And it is this idea of relationships (if you haven’t noticed already) that I want to focus on today.
Returning to the parable of the Good Samaritan, it seems to me, that the lawyer who contended with Jesus sought to logically answer the question: “WHO is my neighbor?” So with the prior definition of neighbor, the lawyer wanted to know the limit of his obligation for neighborliness. He wanted to know which of the people he associated with or “dwelled near” were considered his neighbors so that he could follow the law (as he stated previously) and then obtain eternal life. He wanted an equation, this + this + this = my neighbors.
But Christ made it clear from his parable that those people the lawyer normally associated with were not the only people who were his neighbors, nor did they (the priest and the Levite) necessarily treat those who dwelled near them as they would a close associate. Christ showed that Samaritans were his neighbors too, even if over time Jewish culture developed a hatred for the Samaritans because they had apostatized from the Israelite religion. Christ’s vision and understanding of “neighbor” extended further than the lawyer expected.
Christ was leading him, and us to ask the question this way: “Who IS my neighbor?” We have already talked about the definition of the word “is.” It is a statement of reality. To understand who our neighbor truly is, we have to understand another relationship, the being we first dwelled near. God said “I will give unto you a pattern in all things, that ye may not be deceived.” He set in place our first relationship, that of a parent. As the bible dictionary states, “Mankind has a special relationship to [God] that differentiates man from all other created things: man is literally God’s offspring, made in his image, whereas all other things are but the work of his hands.” God, therefore, is our Father, and our doctrine and the scriptures testify repeatedly of this relationship.
It would have been easy to start my talk by just saying, God is our Father, our neighbors are God’s children, so we should love them as we love God. That really would be have been much easier. But, again, what I want to make clear are the relationships we are placed in. If you think about it, existence = relationships, to just be alive is to be in relationship with countless things. The instinctive act of breathing is a complicated and interconnected process of relationships involving our heart, veins, blood cells, lungs trachea, bronchi, bronchioles, and clusters of alveoli and more… not to mention the vertebrae, ribcage, back muscles, etc.. that keep our body erect and space inside for our lungs to expand. Or how about if we were to walk around outside right now… all of our senses would report the information or energy, colors, smells, etc, we are in relationship to. But as God said, all these things we see are “but the work of his hands.” Our neighbors, however, are our literal brothers and sisters all linked together in a vast series of interconnected, intergenerational, physical, spiritual, and emotional relationships. Our connections, obligations, and influences on each other are far greater than we often choose to realize.
It is through these relationships, with God and our neighbors, that we find meaning, that we literally learn language, understand that this person is a boy, and this person is a girl. Through these relationships we learn about power, and pain, endurance, joy, and love. This is what makes the Gospel truly amazing. It is our and its interconnectedness.
It is clear that the lawyer in the parable didn’t understand the breadth and depth of our relationship to others. Nor did the characters, the “certain priest” who saw the wounded man, but walked on the other side, or the Levite, who “looked on him” but continued on his way. They did what so many of us do with those we meet, we look, sometimes get really close- enough to see the wounds, and mistakenly think there is nothing we can do, or someone else will help them.
By the end of the parable Christ is asking the lawyer and us to adopt his view of the people that surrounded us and show mercy and compassion toward them. What better person to share a view of our fellow beings with than Christ, who more than being our Elder brother, chose to be our Savior and Redeemer, to create a relationship that would literally save us …from our sins, our heartache, those stupid things we did in jr. high, high school, or even yesterday, and the pain caused by being in relationships with others who do not see us and love us as Christ and God do.
The parable of the Good Samaritan, and particularly the phrase, “And Who is my neighbor?” is asking us to acknowledge the eternal connections, relationships, and desires we have when and if we choose to see and love others. The Samaritan may have not understood Jewish doctrine, or LDS doctrine, or even Christian beliefs, but his behavior toward the wounded man, left half dead, on the side of the road, was motivated by his innate humanness, by the light of Christ which connects us, and the love of God the Father, and our Redeemer. We as members of the church have the added companionship/relationship of the Holy Ghost, the literal Spirit of God. John confirms this relationship again in CH 4: 16- “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him.”
We, too, have been, and can continue to be motivated, like the Samaritan to have compassion on our brothers and sisters, some who may be wounded, even left half dead after life experience. We can extend our vision of our “neighbors” beyond our roommates/families, or the people across the hall, but to love and seek to understand those “in [the] sphere in which God has placed [us]” who we may not know, understand, agree with, or even acknowledge. When we choose this type of action we are being like God and like Christ, we are choosing to love as they do, the first step to becoming like them. As John states in a Ch 3: 2 “Beloved, now we are the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” It is my prayer that we will not pass by our brothers and sisters in need. That we can take every opportunity, though service, home and visiting teaching, game nights, softball, FHE, and by listening to the Spirit which dwelleth in us, to act upon our compassion for others and continually build upon our knowledge of the Gospel and its teaching of love. As John stated “God is love” and this eternal equation helps us to see the relationships and connections we have with God and our neighbor, for as Christ has told us, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have adone it unto one of the bleast of these my cbrethren, ye have done it unto me.”"
