“And Who Is My Neighbor?” Luke 10:29
By Rev. T. A. Wharton, D.D., First Presbyterian Church, Columbia, Tenn.
He was a Pharisee. He was also a scribe—a lawyer. And he stood up to tempt the Master. He would show this throng gathered about the Lord that their alleged prophet was only a cheap schemer—a designing Galilean playing upon their ignorance and credulity.
“Rabbi (patronizingly), what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Let us reason together and come to first principles: What do you make of the primal law? Just the old question of the Pharisee—the classic question of the legalist in every age of the world. There is a double blunder in this age-worn question. They belong to that class of blunders which have just enough truth in their midst to give them a species of eternal life, and self perpetuative power.
The first blunder is an assumption—that in doing alone depends an entrance into the kingdom of heaven. What shall I do—what shall I do? Never what shall I be? It is so much easier to do than to be—that it is not a thing for wonder that our poor warped human nature should prefer to beat out a path of merit and morals to the kingdom rather than submit the will. “Do this and live” is its password and shibboleth—never the “live and do this” of the Master.
“Ye must be born again” is something alike repulsive to the pride of reason and the pride of life. And yet there is nothing more certain than this—no one of us shall ever see the kingdom of God without such a radical birth change in our heart of hearts as shall give all our doing a new meaning and color. Is it not a strange blunder for man to make when it appears in the very question itself? We cannot do things to inherit—we must be sons to inherit.
The second blunder is an assumption also. It appears in the tone of the questioner. The tone implies, Rabbi, am I not doing enough already? Am I not doing all that is necessary. I give alms of all that I possess. I fast twice in the week. My life is clean in the sight of the law—“Thank God, I am not as other men are”—as that disciple of yours there, for instance. What further shall I do or can I do to inherit eternal life? What lack I yet or the existing church of God? In so far as you are teaching anything new it must be false, and anything old is it not unnecessary? Why then all this stir you are making throughout the land?
The Master’s reply is very simple. He takes this self-sufficient sinner on his own ground: “How readest thou the law?” Since this is your trust and hope, what do you make of it? The lawyer replies glibly enough: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy might and with all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thy self.” The Saviour replies: “Thou hast answered right; do this and thou shalt live.” But there is such an emphasis upon the “do” this that a dead silence falls. The lawyer grows uncomfortable, and begins to hedge. Had he this “done?” But it is evident that the less said upon the first table of the law the better. There is more hope of the second. So says the record: “And willing to justify himself, he asks,” “And who is my neighbor?” Do you not see that this is a broken sentence? It is preceded by a bit of very hurried thinking. I have been good to my family—to those about me—my next of kin—my set. It all depends upon this “who is my neighbor.” “And who is my neighbor?”
The answer is only a parable, but a parable whose meaning when once caught and practiced shall change our world beyond the recognition of even the angels of heaven. It will make this poor, weary, burdened earth to blossom as the rose; shall make all our desert like the garden of the Lord. It shall become the universal solvent for all problems arising from man’s relation to man. It will stop every war before noon to-morrow.
Then shall the lion of capital and the lamb of labor lie down together, and neither shall be afraid, neither shall there be any more strikes, nor walking delegates; no more epidemics of hate; no more vipers to hiss their slander or trail their slime. “Then shall every battle flag be furled in the parliament of nations, the federation of the world.”
Wherever there lies the wounded and helpless by the wayside of life, wheresoe’er in the world there shall spring to the rescue some strong son of God armed to the teeth with wine and oil for the wound and the sword of the Lord and of Gideon for the assassin, our right worshipful dollar shall change its meaning and its face—its eagle shall have the olive branch in its mouth. It shall become a health certificate for the sick, a help certificate for the needy, even though they be not our next of kin.
This parable has wrapt up in it the one remedy for the race with which to work out its salvation from man’s inhumanity to man.
Oh, this is a dream, the over statement of an enthusiast’s heated fancy. If it be so, then farewell to our hope of civilization. Its permanence will depend upon its obedience to this, its supreme law. It is no dream. Everywhere before your very eyes is it unfolding—unfolding an asylum for the helpless, hospitals for the sick, charitable institutions of every type are reaching out their arms all over the world for earth’s stricken ones—its motherless and helpless. You pessimists do not believe in humanity, nor do I, but I believe in humanity’s Christ, and I know He is breathing into His own utterance the law that is to redeem the whole earth. “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
And who is my neighbor? We have been saying all the time with this narrow Jewish lawyer, He is my fellow-Jew; he is akin to me—a man of my nation, and my neighborliness, diminishing with the square of the distance, vanishing altogether when he is out of sight.
Well, I tell you, this is not the Master’s, although very similar. His definition has just two definite terms, and two only—a certain man, and, to die unless someone helps him. A nameless man of a nameless land, and wholly desperate. All else is indefinite—a certain man. Was he a Jew? No answer. Was he stranger from the Perean hills beyond Jordan? No answer. Was he a merchantman from the isles of the sea returning with his Damascus purchases via Jerusalem and Joppa? No answer. Was he a good man? No answer. A man of means, or poor, with a dependent family? No answer. Was it not wrong of him to venture through so dangerous a region, and alone? No answer. Was it not foolhardy of him not to yield his goods and without a struggle? No answer.
All that enters into the Saviour’s definition is the fact that he was a man, a helpless, wounded man, and to die unless someone comes to him and ministers to his desperate need.
“Once in the flight of ages past,
There lived a man—and who was he?
Mortal howe’er thy lot be cast,
That man resembles thee.
The bounding pulse, the languid limb,
The changing spirit’s rise and fall,
We know that these were felt by him,
For these are felt by all.
He suffered, but his pangs are o’er,
Enjoyed, but his delights are fled;
Had friends, but his friends are now no more,
And foes—his foes are dead.
He saw whate’er thou hast seen,
Encountered all that troubles thee;
He was whatever thou hast been,
He is what thou shalt be.
The annals of the human race;
Their ruins since the world began,
Of him afford no other trace than
This—there lived a man.”
Now, here is the definition and the picture of our neighbor, a picture whose lights and shadows shall never vary while the world shall last. This is the man whom Jehovah solemnly committed to his people in every age of His church. O land of Pharisees, O scribe and lawyer, ever since the days of Abel this man has been your charge and ward. How sayest thou, I have loved my neighbor as myself? How sayest thou, I have kept the commandment of God, when thou has walled thyself off in national barriers and hath built walls of caste and prejudice between thyself and him? How sayest thou, I have loved my neighbor as myself, when thou hast stopped thine ears and shut thine eyes and stalked on by all those who are lying by the wayside of the Kingdom, dying through all these years of your history and theirs?
This is our neighbor, where are his? We have found him, where shall he find his neighbor? The story of the Good Samaritan is the eternal answer.
Who always would but nothing finds to try,
Unstable shall he live, unhonored die.
Prejudice is the ball and chain of Achievement.
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