Yesterday our Exodus passage contained the Ten Commandments, typically seen as God's summary of all the commands. Today notice how God applies a number of those commands. We can find this message in a nutshell in verses 20-21 of chapter 22. We are to love only the true God as God and we are to serve our neighbors out of love. God goes on to apply the commands in multiple ways throughout out reading.
How far afield are we to go in our love for our neighbors? Who is our neighbor? When we turn to our New Testament reading we see that Jesus is asnswering this very question by pointing out that God cared for various people who were not of national Israel. These were the people God poured out his blessing upon, a widow in Zarephath, a leper from Syria. This message filled Jesus' hearers with such anger they tried to kill him. Why would that be?
It is very easy for us to assume our neighbors whom we are to love are those people who are just like us, those people who are socially acceptable, who fit into "good society" and who we find it easy to get along with. Those are the people we would gravitate to love and serve. But our Lord makes it clear that while we love and serve those people, we are also to love and serve our neighbors to whom we would not naturally gravitate. In Christ I am called to care for the people I don't particularly like, as well as those I really like a lot. It's not a matter of seeking out those who are similar to me. For that matter, it is not a matter of seeking out those who are dissimilar to me. It's a matter of loving our neighbor, whoever that neighbor happens to be.
Let us go forth today, loving our neighbor.
I'll be on the road for a couple of days, loving some neighbors who are far away. I'm going to try to figure out how to have some posts happen automatically.
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