For many of us, even the most casual of Christians, to talk about loving God sounds both easy to do, and at the same time, also very abstract. One can say that he or she “loves” God, express that love through acts of piety and devotion, and then think nothing more about it. One can also claim a love for God and leave it at that. Afterall, what demands can one’s love for God place on someone? Does God even know or care that we love him?

Jewish Law demanded love of neighbor along with the love for God. This now takes an abstract sense of love and makes it more concrete. But what does that mean on a practical level?

That is the essence of the question that a legal scholar posed to Jesus. Perhaps he struggled with the meaning of that question himself. 

Jesus uses this opportunity to tell a parable that we call The Good Samaritan. 

No other parable that Jesus tells would be as upsetting to the social order and conventional ways of thinking than is this one. Here Jesus proposes a scene where a Jewish man beaten to the very brink of death, was rescued by a Samaritan who happened to be traveling along that same route.

While two fellow Jewish travelers -- one a Levite and the other a priest -- ignore the man and walk past him, it is this Samaritan who stops to assist him. Not only does he bandage the man’s wounds, he transports him down the steep road to an inn where he not only pays for the man to stay for a few nights, he offers to pay whatever else is due upon his return.

Jesus sets a scene which, for most of his contemporaries, would be unimaginable. Not only would his Jewish audience find this a ridiculous scenario, they might even find it humorous as no Samaritan would even dare to do such a thing. Likewise, any Samaritan who heard this parable would be astonished to think that a Samaritan would be traveling in that area, much less that one would risk his life to assist an injured Jewish traveler.

This parable places a demand to love even those who do not and, for whatever reason likely would not, at the same time love us in return. 

This exponentially expands the meaning of the word “neighbor.” This was the question of the young legalist to Jesus and certainly it is the intention of Jesus in his answer. Jesus has taught that one must “love one’s enemies.”

In our times, and given the great diverse nature of our country, we would, I hope, all think ourselves beyond the pettiness, prejudices and hatred for others. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Even the most enlightened -- or what we now call woke -- among us carry disdain and even hatred for those with whom they disagree or whose modes of thinking or acting they have judged to be less enlightened or woke than their own.

The prior step to love of one’s neighbor is rooted in the capacity to experience compassion. In the parable Jesus notes that the Samaritan was moved with compassion at the sight of a man in a ditch. He didn't seem to care that the man was a potential enemy and might even detest that it was an enemy who saved his life. 

Compassion -- the capacity to sense and be moved by the pain and struggle of others -- is fundamental to our ability to love. We might not think of the Samaritan in this parable as thinking of himself as “loving his enemy” but he instead experienced compassion for a man who was beaten and robbed. This compassion led him to act with mercy.

Prejudice, hatred and disdain fall not only on racial and ethnic lines as they did for so much of history but are increasingly ideological in nature. It is easy to be condescending and dismissive of others, and to mock their way of life, their attitudes, values and beliefs. 

As we lack any sense of compassion for those who are other, we are then truly incapable of love or of being merciful. We at best become condescending and controlling. This is a hard road for many of us to walk. Compassion, though it seems as if it should be natural, places a demand on us, causing us to step outside of our self-concerns to become truly a person for others. 

Jesus calls us beyond all forms of prejudice and hatred. Love of neighbor includes all, not just those who happen to be the in-crowd that we have now decided to include -- often in a condescending way -- into our company. 

Father Koch is pastor of St. Benedict Parish, Holmdel.