The neighbor I am to love as I love myself is anyone who needs help, according to Jesus, when he offered a Samaritan victim advocate as the role model we are to follow. Victim advocacy is not easy. It involves inconvenience, unplanned expenditure and ongoing commitment. Read the "Parable of the Good Samaritan" found in Luke 10:25-37 and take note how involved the Samaritan was in assisting the helpless man.
As a pastor I preached and taught about this parable many times over the years. Only recently did I notice how competing agendas, as much as anything else, is what kept the priest and Levite exampled in the story from getting involved. I assume the priest and the Levite were decent and honorable people in their own right. In the culture of that day they would have been thought of as religious leaders. As such, they most certainly had a religious agenda. Their thoughts would have centered in ceremony and Bible study. Liturgy and correct doctrine were on their minds; not unlike many pastors and active church goers today. It consumes a great deal of mental, emotional and material resources to carry out the demands of many churches these days.
The priest and Levite believed they were on their own missions from God and thus could not be distracted into time consuming social work. God would expect them to remain on task... as would our employer, our family, our church, our financial planner, our sports teams and TV schedule, all those who set our agendas today.
What I need to understand is until I have positioned myself to be prepared to respond whenever I encounter the mistreated and victimized who have been rendered powerless by others, I'm not much of a neighbor by Jesus' standards. If my mindset is not geared toward immediate response regardless of the inconvenience, it's a fair bet that I love myself more than my neighbor.
