Who is My Neighbor?

Gospel: Luke 10: 25-37

The commandment is clear - love your neighbor.  The lawyer asks a question - who is my neighbor - that he really does not want answered, and neither do we.  For the answer throughout the Gospel has been clear and will be made exceedingly so in this parable: everyone is our neighbor - the enemy, the foreigner, the stranger, the outcast and unclean.  No one is excluded from the love of God, and none is excluded from the obligation God places on us to love others.  

Yet we have created a religion and a gospel that says other than what the Lord Jesus taught and did.  We side with the lawyer and seek exceptions to the term neighbor.  What is more, we construct a religion where the ritual purity of the priest and Levite are given priority over mercy to the man dying in the ditch.  We change the Gospel to suit our prejudices and cater to our preferences for an easier road.

But the road of our faith is the one from Jerusalem to Jericho, the one that encounters the dying man who requires our love and care.  Our faith is the road of the Lord Jesus who healed, liberated, and fed all whom we would exclude: the enemy, the foreigner, the stranger, the outcast and unclean.  The inn of the Church was designed for these whom Jesus extended mercy and whom he enjoins us to provide love and care for.