Who is my neighbour?

[AI translation] Some representatives of the various churches of our country, including our Reformed Church, have found it necessary, by friendly discussion, that on this Sunday the Gospel of love for our neighbour should be preached in all the churches. Scripture teaches very clearly and clearly that God wills, commands and crowns with his blessings peace and love not only between one denomination, not only between one people, but between man and man. By common agreement, in this common, spiritual encounter before the Lord, which is so much needed by the Christian people of this country, we seek to find God's answer to the question, "Who is my neighbour? This was the question that a scribe once asked Jesus, word for word, and He gave him a very clear and definite answer in the form of a story, the story of the Good Samaritan. The whole question arises in connection with the great commandment of Love: "Love ... your neighbour as yourself". Jesus illustrates the practical application of this well-known maxim with the example of the Good Samaritan.We are so well brought up that we know in advance what to say to such a question: who is my neighbour? Everyone! We know that a Christian must consider everyone as his neighbour! But this statement may or may not be true. In theory, it is undoubtedly true that I, a Christ-follower, must see everyone as my neighbour. But practically, in most cases, it is also a big lie. Because when I so easily say that everyone is my neighbour, it is a sign of arrogance, a sign of conscience. After all, it is not possible to wish that I should take care of everyone, so everyone is practically equal to no one.
To the lawyer's question, "Who is my neighbour?", Jesus could have answered, "Everyone. Don't you know that everyone? And in so saying He would have been telling the truth, but Jesus also knew that in so answering He would have given cunning human nature a great loophole from His command.
So He then narrowed the definition of neighbour by telling the story of a man who was attacked by robbers, robbed, wounded and left half dead by the roadside. "Do you want to know whom to love as a neighbour?" asks Jesus! Oh, not everyone, but only such a wretch, a man in need of your mercy, in need of your help! This is your neighbour! So the nameless wanderers of the highway of human life are those who have been attacked by a terrible robber: the injustice and selfishness of other men. They have been plundered, wounded physically or mentally, and now they are lying half-dead on the street, unable to rise, to stand up, to rise to a decent standard. Indeed, true neighbourly love can also see the neighbour in those who, like robbers, plunder the other traveller. But those who are attacked by demonic forces and deprived of their common sense and sense of justice and responsibility are also very unfortunate victims. Those who are now wallowing in the very pitiful misery of their own heart's selfishness, vengeance and power madness. This too is the neighbour of the Samaritan soul, that is, of the Christ-man, and does not turn away from him in disgust or even hatred, but sees in him the fallen man, the very wretched man, the man in distress. He realizes that he is not to be hated, but to be pitied. He thinks to himself, "How terrible it would be if I were in his place! And compassion is shown to him, as the Word says. Yes, then, seek your neighbour among those who are in such and such a plight!
But Jesus narrows this circle even more. He says that not even all these penniless, plundered victims are your neighbours! Again, you could get out of this very nicely, but only those who get in your way. Jesus knows well that our hearts can ache for every pitiful, unfortunate person. Only not always for the one who gets in our way, the one we meet at the moment! The priest and the Levite confessed, perhaps with a very bleeding heart, that all unfortunate people are his neighbours, but not the one he is passing on the road to Jericho. But there and then, that one man would have been a neighbour, and no one else! So the only neighbour for you is always that one man, or company, or social class, or nation, with whom you meet in some form or other, and against whom the commandment of love becomes actual by reason of the meeting!
It is not by chance that Jesus demonstrates the practice of love of neighbour with a Samaritan and a Jew. The conflict between the two peoples goes back centuries. The Jews looked down on the Samaritans as a weak, inferior people, and the Samaritans hated the Jews, just as the smaller and more oppressed hate the larger and more powerful. The sons of the two peoples would have been mutually ashamed even to speak to each other. Knowing this, we can understand the meaning that Jesus wants to give to love of neighbor by the fact that a Samaritan had mercy on a Jew! The sons of a despised and oppressed people on the unfortunate son of a hated and conceited people! Humanly speaking, it would have been more justifiable if the Samaritan had behaved like the priest or the Levite. He would have had more reason to look at the man lying in the dust and think, "What is it to me? I am sorry for whatever happened to him! He is not of my kind! Let his own brethren help him! It would even have been understandable, according to present-day thinking, if he had looked with a certain glee on the misfortune of his enemy and thought to himself: 'He must have it so, at least there are fewer of them than this one! But that is not what he did, and perhaps many would do today! But he had pity on him, forgetting all the grievances, bitterness and injustice of centuries, he bowed down to him with the greatest care, tenderness, and helpful love, manifested in deeds! He, of all people, the stranger, the one abandoned by his own kind!
What Jesus is saying is that love for one's neighbour cannot be selective! It is different from the love of friends or brothers or sisters, or the love of people bound together in any kind of community of interest! Love of neighbour is love of humanity that transcends any racial, religious or social barriers, or even the opposite! Loving the other person not because he or she is in any way worthy of love, because he or she belongs to me racially or religiously or familially or ideologically or in terms of any interest, but for the mere fact that the other person is also human. And a human being whom God created at some time in his own image and likeness, just as he created me. In whom, just as in me, this image of God created in him has been confused and corrupted by sin, and in whom Jesus Christ wants to restore this image of God, which made him man, just as in me, by His redemptive work, whom the Saviour, who also suffered for him, wants to remould again into His own image and likeness.
"Man!" Do you know what that means? In God's eyes, the greatest possible treasure, more precious than the whole created world with its gold mines and billions of stars. It is worth so much to God that He has deemed it worth while to sacrifice the second person of the Trinity, to give Him up to death, to shed His blood for it! That is what you yourself are worth, and that is what the man of a different race, mind, language or political orientation, whom you hate and despise, whom you may be hated and despised by thousands or tens of thousands of others, or who, at best, is indifferent to you, is worth! Can you do this, may you do this, dare you do this to a human being? Even if that man be what he is, he is the greatest treasure in the world! The deeper in dust and mud this precious treasure wallows, the more distorted is his image of kinship with God, the more he needs not hatred and contempt, but mercy, pity and love! The more he needs to be loved and helped! He who cannot love the stranger, the other kind, the unrelated, with such unlimited neighbourly love, cannot love his own kind and related truly and constructively! The love that sets limits, delimits, classifies, selects, that I love this and cannot love that, that love, even if it appears to be the most glorious virtue, does more harm than good! We have seen sad examples of this in the recent past. And at a time when people, classes, parties and peoples are being set against each other by ever more violent passions, it is a vital question today - I dare say a question that will decide the whole future - whether we, the disciples of Christ, can see our neighbour even in our enemy? Can we appreciate, with self-denying responsibility, that he is also human?
It is a terrible thing in this parable that it is the servants of God, a priest and a Levite, who pass by indifferently to the misery of their suffering fellow human being. And yet, if anyone, it is they who should have been expected to show mercy. For they were either coming from the church or on their way there, and in any case they are more heavily burdened by their omission. This is a terrible vision of the immediate future: here is a congregation sitting and listening to Christ's message of love for our neighbour. In a few minutes, he will step out of the church door, walk along the Jericho road, and behave just like the priest and the Levite. How many of them will now become Good Samaritans? Does that also mean how many people were worth coming to this church today? This world, even if it does not need it, can expect and receive from us the love of neighbour. From us, who perhaps belong to Christ! And if it does not receive it from us, who is surprised if it can win the masses over to whatever worldview offers or deludes them with its appreciation of human life?
Of course you can't love your neighbour on command. But only if one has first accepted the mercy, the compassion, the healing blood, the great gracious help of the great Good Samaritan, Jesus Christ, who bowed down to his broken life! Only under the sight and influence of such mercy can love for one's neighbour be born in a heart! No other way! The more you experience the mercy of Jesus towards yourself, the truer and deeper the love of neighbour will become in your heart! Always look to Him first, then go and do likewise!
Amen.
Date: 20 June 1948.