It’s a good question, and one which becomes increasingly pressing as the years go by. In Jesus’ day the notion of eternal life was by no means universally accepted. We know from what Luke writes elsewhere, that the Pharisees believed in angels and spirits and resurrection, whereas the Sadducees denied all three (Acts 23.8). The Old Testament was largely silent on the matter, as we saw in our reading from Deuteronomy, which focussed on the obligation to observe the law in this life, and the rewards which were also to be expected in this life. Turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, observing all his commandments and decrees, and the Lord your God will take delight in prospering you, just as he delighted in prospering your ancestors (Deut 30.9/10).
What must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus does not give the lawyer a direct answer. He asks him what is written in the law. What do you read there? The lawyer answers well enough that the law requires us to love God absolutely and unconditionally ‘with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength and with all your mind’ – ‘and your neighbour as yourself’. And Jesus commends him – Quite right, he says. Do this and you shall live. In St Mark’s account of the same incident, Jesus goes so far as to say to the lawyer: You are not far from the kingdom of God (Mark 12.34).
We are so used to this brief summary of the law – Love God and love your neighbour – that we easily overlook the significance of this reference to ‘loving your neighbour as yourself’. Loving your neighbour does not figure among the ten commandments in the book of Exodus, which loom over us to this day from the splendid commandment boards above our east gallery. Neighbours are only mentioned in the last of those commandments, which forbids us to covet any of our neighbour’s possessions.
So where does the injunction to love your neighbour come from? It rests on a verse buried deep in chapter 19 of the priestly book of Leviticus, among the moral and ethical laws of what is known as the Holiness Collection, where it serves as a summing up of several more specific commandments governing neighbourly relations: you shall not defraud your neighbour; with justice you shall judge your neighbour; you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbour; you shall reprove your neighbour or you will incur guilt yourself; and finally: ‘you shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ (Lev 19.18). The importance of this final injunction is emphasised by the solemn refrain that follows: I am the Lord.
St Paul says that all the other commandments – you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not commit adultery and so on, are all summed up in the command to love your neighbour as yourself, so that love is the fulfilling of the law (Romans 13.9/10; Galatians 5.14). James calls it ‘the royal law according to the scripture’ (James 2.8). But what does it mean to love your neighbour as yourself? In what sense is this the gateway to eternal life? No wonder the lawyer presses on with his follow-up question: Who is my neighbour? Once again Jesus turns the question back on him, telling the story of the Good Samaritan and asking him to say which of the three travellers on the road was neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? And of course the answer is
the one who showed him mercy. So my neighbour turns out to be not a limited category of the people we know, but the unknown person who comes to our aid when we are in trouble.
This is what makes the gospel message so radical. It is not about deals and transactions. I will scratch your back, if you will scratch mine. The good news of the gospel is about the unlimited nature of God’s love which is freely given. He asks for no commitment from us before pouring the healing oil and wine into our wounds.
Who is my neighbour? How many appeals for help have I binned this week? How often do I pass by on the other side of the road? As you probably know, in 2023 our Parochial Church Council took the decision to reduce charitable giving from parish funds on the grounds that most of us would prefer to make our own choices. It had been the PCC’s policy to give away up to 10 per cent of parish income in donations to charities. In practice it wasn’t always as much as that, but in 2023, the last year to which this policy applied, the Parish budget included about £14,000 for ‘other charities’, charities other than ourselves. That is a very approximate measure of the annual scale of charitable giving which we are now expected to donate to charities of our own choice – over and above what many of us were already giving. I wonder how many of us have risen to the challenge.
I don’t want to bang on about money, least of all do I want to pile a sense of guilt onto those who have barely enough for themselves, as dear Suzanne Pinkerton was always keen to point out, but those of us who will soon be totting up our charitable donations for the past financial year in order to claim tax relief on them, should remember that the change in the church’s policy for giving away, came with a corresponding challenge to increase our personal charity donations to compensate for that change.
Who is my neighbour? The story of the Good Samaritan is a reminder of the challenges which any of us may face at any time, unless of course we choose to pass by on the other side of the road. It is the challenge which our Lord himself chose to embrace in coming to earth as child and man, walking the same roads as we walk, facing the same challenges as we face, without ever choosing to pass by on the other side. And we know what it cost him, ultimately, to do so. When we share in the bread and the wine which symbolise his participation in our daily lives, we are strengthened by his grace to face the challenges which we have encountered on the road, or may encounter just around the corner.
Who was neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? The one who showed mercy. Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise” – do as he did.