This past weekend, a group of us college students traveled to Sneedville, Tennessee, to do service work. Lauren Ritter and her home congregation have a long-standing relationship with the community of Sneedville and have done a lot of outreach over the years. At the young adult’s retreat, Lauren suggested a group of us could go do a project there. Sneedville is a poor community in Appalachia with low access to running water, employment, and education opportunities. Along with delivering groceries to local families, we took on a large project of building a wooden platform and placing a 500-gallon water tank on it to give a family access to water. I am very grateful to have been involved in the project, and have reflected on the experience a lot over the last several days. 

If you would go ahead and turn your Bibles to Mark chapter 12, verse 28. In the verses before this, Jesus has been questioned by the Pharisees and Sadducees who were trying to trip him up and get him to make a mistake in his answers. In verse 28 they ask him another question. Starting in verse 28 it says, “And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, Which commandment is the most important of all? Jesus answered, The most important is, Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” 

The first thing we have to figure out in these verses is, Who is our neighbor and how do we love them as ourselves? Well, Jesus gives us the answer in Luke 10. Jesus is talking to a lawyer who wants to know how to be saved. The lawyer already knows that he is supposed to love his neighbor as himself, but like a lot of us he isn’t sure who his neighbor is or how to love them that way. The lawyer asks in Luke 10 verse 29, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus then responds by telling the parable of the good Samaritan, which most have us have heard plenty of times. While we have all heard this parable and know what it says, I’m not sure we really understand the significance of it. The person who helped the man was supposed to be an enemy of him. They were supposed to hate each other. They were completely different, yet the Samaritan was the one who chose to help. Jesus then asked the lawyer at the end of the parable, “Who was the neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” and the man understood that it was the Samaritan. The lawyer Jesus was talking to understood what exactly that parable meant and what he was supposed to do. But do we? Do we understand that our neighbor isn’t just our friends or people we go to church with, or people that look like us, or act like us, or people we think are cool? While those people are also our neighbors, the people Jesus focuses on are the people that are the most different from us. Just look at the people that Jesus talked to the most. The sinful woman in Luke chapter 7. He ate with tax collectors in Mark chapter 2. He touched the bleeding woman in Mark chapter 5. He drank water from the woman at the well in John chapter 4. These people were either completely different than him or hated by everyone else in the community. Yet these are the people that Jesus chose to be with. We tend to look down on people that are different than us, but Jesus says that loving them as ourselves is the second greatest command only behind loving God.  When we learn to love like Jesus it opens our eyes to see people for who and what they really are: a soul that is precious to God. The good Samaritan helped the man not knowing anything about him, his past, his work history, his family situation, or if he would be receptive to the Gospel.  If we learn to love people like this, it will change us. 

While this past weekend was focused on providing for physical needs, we should never forget the greatest need of all is spiritual. Loving people with no strings attached and forming relationships eventually allows people to be receptive to what good news you have to offer.  When they see you love them as you love yourself, they know you want what is best for them. Jesus told his disciples to go into all the world preaching the gospel. There are people all over the world and in our communities who have never had someone show love to them the way Jesus loves and to point them to Him. This weekend really opened my eyes to this.  While these people look and live much differently than I do, their needs are no different than mine, and they are no less loved by God.  Learning how to step outside our comfort zones and love and serve people will provide opportunities to share the gospel.