Sunday, July 13, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Neighbors
Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
How did Joseph’s wisdom, both in interpreting dreams and managing accounts, bless Egypt? During his lifetime Egypt’s people faced famine and near extinction. Joseph’s family repopulated themselves within Egypt’s borders and enriched the Egyptian economy. Joseph’s ability to forgive and forsake revenge must have carried over to the Egyptian court, where he was highly respected. And most important, the Egyptian’s polytheistic religion would have been challenged and changed by Joseph’s worship and commitment to the One God Yahweh.
Jesus, representing Yahweh on earth thousands of years after Joseph, knew the stories. In the Torah countless tales of selfishness and revenge were more than balanced by their opposite. I think of Abram welcoming the three strangers to his tent, and of Lot in the center of Sodom sharing his home with the heavenly strangers, and of Joseph’s choice to share Egypt’s grain with adjoining nations, and finally with his own family from Canaan.
“Who is my neighbor?” takes on life and death meanings in the desert or the wilderness, where survival often depends on finding food, shelter and water already in someone else’s possession. Share, and share alike. Either that or fight for the right to eat and drink and sleep.
Why not share? Why not give it away? The answer in my culture is, spoken or not, that there is not enough to go around, so I must keep what I have. And the rest of that is that if others keep what they have, then I must keep mine too. I have no choice. I’ve been forced into this selfishness by the selfishness of others. Ugly thinking. And a wrong starting point, because God made an abundant world for us all.
A man fell victim to robbers
as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.
They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead.
A Samaritan traveler came upon him and approached the victim,
poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them.
At a roadside inn, he left the wounded stranger
and gave the innkeeper two silver coins.
‘Take care of him.
If you spend more than what I have given you,
I shall repay you on my way back.
Jesus’ story doesn’t include the robbers’ childhood, or their campfire scheming, or their own near starvation. Their reasons were simply selfish, and not only them – the Jewish priest and Levite who ignored their victim were simply selfish too. Only the Samaritan,  who was likely looked down upon by everyone else, moved beyond his own self-interest. Once he made the choice to stop, this good man poured wine, oil, money and mercy on this other man he had never met, this neighbor, who did not live close to him or worship God in the same way.
In a short time Joseph’s example became lost on the Egyptians. In a short time Jesus’ example becomes lost on us, and we find it easier to choose self-protection with its consequent neighborhood squabbles and world wars. But always, whether victor or vanquished, we must return to the truths of God.
The law of the LORD is perfect,
 refreshing the soul;
the decree of the LORD is trustworthy,
 giving wisdom to the simple.
Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.
I am afflicted and in pain;
 let your saving help, O God, protect me.
I will praise the name of God in song,
 and I will glorify him with thanksgiving.
Turn to the Lord in your need, and you will live.
Moses knew and so he told the Israelites – this is not an option. God commands us to be merciful and kind to strangers.
This command that I enjoin on you today
is not too mysterious and remote for you.
It is not up in the sky, that you should say,
‘Who will go up in the sky to get it for us
and tell us of it, that we may carry it out?’
Nor is it across the sea, that you should say,
‘Who will cross the sea to get it for us
and tell us of it, that we may carry it out?’
No, it is something very near to you,
already in your mouths and in your hearts;
you have only to carry it out.
Carry it out. Carry the weight. On their album Abbey Road, the Beatles’ song of lonely heavy burden is paired with “Golden Slumbers,” a song about comfort and shelter given without condition.
You have only to carry it out.
Jesus says it so simply, referring to the Good Samaritan:
Go and you do likewise.
Just do it.
(Deuteronomy 30, Psalm 69, Psalm 19, Colossians 1, John 6, Luke 10)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
