“We need to learn . . . that we can assist the least desirable people with tenderness, using the deepest Treasures of our being. In this way we can touch eternity.” Taken from “The Tao Te Ching and the Christian Way” by Joseph Petulla

The question posed above of Jesus by the expert in the law transcends time and has the potential to transform individuals, cultures and countries.   How would you answer it? 

Prior to asking this question the man asked another; “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus didn’t answer the question directly (God seldom does so), and instead responded by asking another question; “What is written in the Law;  How do you interpret it?”  The man answers by saying “Love God . . . and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Let’s pause here.  Do you love God?  And if so how?  How do you love God in heart, soul and mind?  And do you love your neighbor?  Really?  Even if that neighbor is your enemy?  And if so how?  How does your love get put into action?  And finally, and most importantly, do you love yourself? Not in a narcissistic way springing from ego or in a way intended to mask or compensate due to one’s own deep insecurities or in some other way.  Do you love yourself as God loves you? Just for being you?!? 

Perhaps we wonder if God really loves us.  We wonder if we are worthy of such a pure love.  This doubt, this uncertainty, this divine unawareness may well result in a lack of self-love which in turn makes it impossible to love others as God loves us; and so we love them, if at all, in a self-serving way.  It becomes a matter not of what we have to give, but what stand to gain and what we can get back in return.  That’s not love.

Jesus acknowledged the man’s response by saying “Do this—love God and neighbor– and you shall live.”  It’s as if Jesus were saying, if you love you will have a full Life filled with meaning.  But this wasn’t good enough for the man.  We’re told that he wanted to justify himself. “Who is my neighbor?” the man asks.

Jesus responds with a story that is familiar to many of us, the one called The Good Samaritan.  The protagonist does for others what the “good people” who claimed to love God wouldn’t.  There are multiple meanings, the most obvious being that we are to care for those who can’t care for themselves.  Love for God and neighbor, and yes for self, is evidenced in having mercy on those who most need it, but are least likely to receive it.  What does this mean for you?

But another message that is missed is that Jesus is telling the man, who is Jewish, that his neighbor is the Samaritan, the person whom he would most despise.  In the response to the man Jesus is putting into a story what He speaks clearly elsewhere on what it means to follow God’s Way.  “What credit is it to you if you love those who love you?  I say to you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” 

Who is our neighbor?  Those who are farthest away from us.  Who are we to love?  Those whom we consider despicable.  How is God’s love made manifest in a world so enmeshed in hatred and violence?  By us loving others . . . as ourselves. This is the true Treasure which enables us to touch others and to touch eternity as we do.

“It is not how much we do, but how much love we put into doing it that matters.  It is not how much we give, but how much love we put into giving that makes the difference.”  Mother Teresa