Who is my Neighbour?

Reflection on Luke 10:25-37

During one of the Sharia riots in the north, people did unspeakable things to their fellow Nigerians. Men, women and children were slaughtered as if they were sallah rams. Muslims did it to Christians, and Christians did it to Muslims. In the midst of all that, there were cases of acts of heroism and uncommon courage displayed by Christians and Muslims alike. Some Muslim landlords defended their Christian tenants against attack by Muslim marauders at great risk to their persons and their families. Many Christians did the same thing for Muslims who were in danger of attack by Christian mobs. Those were modern day examples of the Parable of the Good Samaritan: Muslims seeing Christians as their neighbours and caring for them, and Christians doing the same.

In the time of Jesus, Jews and Samaritans were mortal enemies. They hated one another with a passion. It can be said that if a Jew saw a snake and a Samaritan, he would kill the Samaritan first before going after the snake. A Samaritan would do the same to a Jew. Therefore, when Jesus presented the Samaritan as the one who cared for the Jew who had fallen into the hands of brigands, Whereas his fellow jews, two leaders of his own nation and religion -a priest and a Levite- failed to care for him, he was making a revolutionary statement. He was saying that a Samaritan was as much neighbour to a Jew as another Jew. And so, the commandment of God to love one's neighbour as oneself applied as much to a Jew loving a Samaritan as it did to a Jew loving a fellow Jew.

As Christians, we are not supposed to have enemies, we are not even supposed to hate anyone. Jesus has not given us any permission to do so. But we cannot help it if other people hate us or they appoint us as their enemies. They may even go on to cause us grievous harm, physically, mentally, emotionally. They are still neighbours whom the law of God says we must love as ourselves. We must be Good Samaritans to them, and care for them in their need as we would for those who call and treat us as friends.

That is what those Muslims and Christians did in the north when they defended members of another religion against attack by people of their own religion. It means that we too can do the same. The final injunction of Jesus to the lawyer in today's Gospel passage is therefore addressed to us too: "Go, and do the same yourself."