When Jesus said love God and your neighbor, he wasn't saying anything particularly new to his Jewish audience. He was simply repeating a rabbinical answer to the question "What is the summation of Hebrew law?" What made his comments unique was his answer to the question "Who is your neighbor?" The inclusion of the Good Samaritan story in the gospels was intended to remind us that Jesus not only had a different definition of neighbor, but a broad definition of who was able to be a good neighbor.
By using the Samaritan as the protaganist in the story he was broadening the scope of who was able to be seen as righteous. It's the Samaritan who answers the queston, "Who is your neighbor?" by crossing cultural lines with a merciful act. The people listening to the story were left shaking their heads in disbelief. Jesus was proving again with his story the radical nature of this new way of following God. Faith in God in Jesus way would supercede cultual prejudices, historic hatreds, cross old boundaries.
Is this still the Jesus way? What are we doing to answer the question "Who is your neighbor?"
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