Is Neighbor a Subject or Object?
July 13, 2025
This week I spoke with two colleagues in Watsonville who told me how terrified everyone is. ICE has raided many places and people are afraid to get food, go to work, to even leave their homes. The Trump administration is waging war against the people in our neighboring town, and across the country, because of fear that white people will not be in the majority. This appalling practice is antithetical to our country’s values and history. But it certainly is not new. Stan just read the law from Leviticus teaching us to love our neighbor and the alien as ourselves. To drive home the point God says, “I am the Lord” and “I am the Lord your God.” Appearing 49 times in Leviticus it is God’s way of saying you need to obey, you need to be holy. It is sort of like saying, “Doing this will make you holy, and you need to be holy because I am the LORD who is holy.” This is foundational and not optional. So much so, a lawyer approaches Jesus to ask about it. READ Luke 10:25-37.
“I like the story of the family who moved into a new community. As the moving van was being unloaded, the husband went over to speak to the man next door who was mowing his lawn. After introducing himself, the new resident asked, ‘How are the neighbors around here?’ The man did not bat an eye as he replied, ‘How were they where you came from?’” (Sermons.com, Maxie Dunnam). Neighborliness has as much to do with the kind of neighbor you are as how neighborly the other person is.
In this very familiar story of the Good Samaritan, we often see it through the lens of eternal life or good Christian behavior. But after citing the heart of the Jewish law of loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, we get to the real issue, loving your neighbor as yourself. The lawyer wanted to know the limits on who his neighbor is. If one needs to love your neighbor defining the neighbor is a good first step. A priest and a Levite would certainly be included as a neighbor. But a Samaritan, not so much. You see Samaritans were despised by their Jewish counterparts, being viewed as having both questionable lineage and questionable theology, even though they shared Jewish roots. So, a Samaritan would be considered an enemy more than a friend or neighbor. To a good Jew, a Samaritan would be an alien. And yet Leviticus tells us we must love them as well. Just like we get to love our neighbors in Watsonville who are being rounded up and deported simply for the color of their skin. I learned a way to see the numbers of people being detained by ICE. Here’s a video link, only 5 mins, to see for yourself. https://youtu.be/xYONElVGMo8 One example from the 208 detention centers around the country.
At the Golden State Annex north of Bakersfield they have detained 581 men this year. Only half of those are criminals, according to the government’s own data and only 22% pose a high threat level. We are detaining 286 non-criminals and for what? How is this loving your neighbor as yourself?
The lawyer wanted to limit how many people, how many neighbors, he had to love. But Jesus pushes back and says, it is not geography that matters, your neighbor is everyone, even your enemies. In the Sermon on the Plain Jesus said, “‘Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you’ (Luke 6:27–28). Now, in this parable, Jesus fleshes out that teaching. The Samaritan does not simply tolerate his Jewish neighbor; he loves him actively and abundantly, despite their hostility” (Working Preacher, Jennifer Wyant).
“Professor Douglas Hare writes: In an age when the word ‘love’ is greatly abused, it is important to remember that the primary component of biblical love is not affection but commitment. Warm feelings of gratitude may fill our consciousness as we consider all that God has done for us, but it is not warm feelings that Leviticus 19:18 demands of us but rather stubborn, unwavering commitment. Similarly, to love our neighbor, including our enemies, does not mean that we must feel affection for them. To love the neighbor is to imitate God by taking their needs seriously” (Sermons.com, Brian Stoffregen).
The Samaritan took the robbed man’s needs seriously and showed love, commitment and care to him. Rather than answer the lawyer’s question, Jesus gave a perfect example. “Instead of describing who is a neighbor, (Jesus) discusses how to be a neighbor. He switches the conversation from neighbor as an object you decide to love, to neighbor as the subject—how you embody being a neighbor” (Working Preacher, Jennifer Wyant). “Neighbor is as neighbor does, so to speak. “Neighbor” is not defined by location or group but by those who need concern and care” (Working Preacher, Michael Rogness). Then Jesus turns the question back to the lawyer, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man?” The lawyer’s pride would not allow him to say, “the Samaritan,” rather he simply said, “the one who showed mercy.”
“When a young 4th century Roman soldier and seeker of the Christian faith by the name of Martin of Tours met an unclothed man begging for alms in the freezing cold, he stopped and cut his coat in two and gave half to the stranger. That night he dreamt he saw the heavenly court with Jesus robed in a torn cloak. One of the angels present asked, “Master, why do you wear that battered cloak?” Jesus replied, “My servant Martin gave it to me.”
Martin’s disciple and biographer Sulpicius Severus states that as a consequence of this vision Martin “flew to be baptized”. God is gracious and merciful; his love compels us to treat others with mercy and kindness. When we do something for one of Christ’s little ones, we do it for Christ. Do you treat your neighbor with mercy and love as Christ has treated you?” (Sermons.com, Don Schwager).
How do you love your neighbor? “Franz Leenhardt argued: “One cannot define one’s neighbor; one can only be a neighbor.” This parable dismantles the very notion of boundaries, exposing the false divisions we draw between “us” and “them.” The Samaritan and the Jew were divided by history, culture, and theology, yet Jesus declares that their obligation to love supersedes all of it. In doing so, this story confronts the sin of racism for what it is: an attempt to carve out exceptions to God’s command to love, to create boundaries where none should be. The Kingdom of God allows no such divisions, and neither do the scriptures, which call us to love our neighbor as ourselves. And so, like the lawyer, we are left not with the question “Who is my neighbor?” but with the much harder one: “Will I choose to be a neighbor?” (Working Preacher, Jennifer Wyant).
When the lawyer answered Jesus’ question, “Who was the neighbor?” with “The one who showed mercy,” Jesus commanded, “Go and do likewise.” As we struggle to be Christians in this moment, to be neighbors to our neighbors threatened with deportation and detention, I find comfort in hearing these words from John Wesley.
“Let us go and do likewise, regarding every man as our neighbor who needs our assistance. Let us renounce that bigotry and party-zeal which would contract our hearts into an insensibility for all the human race, but a small number whose sentiments and practices are so much our own, that our love to them is but self-love reflected. With an honest openness of mind, let us always remember the kindred between man and man; and cultivate that happy instinct whereby, in the original constitution of our nature, God has strongly bound us to each other” Amen.
