Jesus summarized the entire Law of God into two succinct commandments: love God and love your neighbor. This seems so simple and clear, yet working out the implications of either one would take a lifetime and more. As we have seen, the first four commandments basically, though not exhaustively, have to do with loving God. The last six revolve around loving our neighbor.

It's important to recognize that these are not as much two separate commands as they are one command and its corollary. When Jesus referred to loving God as the first and greatest commandment, he meant that it is foundational to all of life. Loving our neighbor follows from it; as the apostle John says, "Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister." (1 John 4:21). How can we love God if we don't love our neighbor, whom God also loves?

On one occasion, when Jesus taught this close connection between loving God and loving our neighbors, a smart young theologian asked him a simple but profound question: "And who is my neighbor?" (Luke 10:29). Luke clarifies that he said this to "justify himself." That probably means that he wanted Jesus to place some limits on that commandment, like loving your family or your fellow Jews.

In response, Jesus told the now famous story called "the Good Samaritan." As we have come to expect from Jesus, this is an exceedingly clever story. Like many of his parables, it's like a time-bomb, set to explode in the mind of anyone who begins to really think about it.

It's the kind of story that might have appeared in the Jerusalem Post of that day: "Man Mugged on the Road to Jericho." This notorious approach to the city was a hilly, twisty road with lots of places for robbers to hide and attackers to go unnoticed. As seems to be the formula for nearly every story or joke you've ever heard, Jesus has three people happen along, one at a time. Observing the man lying there, bleeding and injured, are a priest, a Levite, and an unexpected third man.

While it's hard for us to imagine anyone justifiably passing by an injured man on the road, such an occurrence was conceivable in this setting (and what about us when we encounter stranded motorists?). We have to think in terms of the ritual laws of cleanness and uncleanness. These two religious officials might have been afraid of becoming contaminated by, for example, touching a dead body . . . or a Gentile . . . or a person who was in some other way ritually unclean. Such defilement would have inhibited their religious work for days. Perhaps you can imagine them reporting it to the "police" down the road rather than doing nothing at all.

The zinger comes, of course, with Jesus' description of the third man as a Samaritan---a member of that group of people Jews despised and thought of as religiously confused. The wayfarer stops to help---and not only help but make sure the man is cared for in the days of recovery to come.

Who is the neighbor? Well, the answer is obvious. The Jewish official can't even utter the word "Samaritan," so he just says, "the one who had mercy." "Go and do likewise," rejoins Jesus.

This dynamite of a story still explodes in our hearts and minds today. Indeed, who is my neighbor in this global world, in this city of overwhelming needs, in this community divided by race and class?