Free Pilgrimage by Lynn Austin Page A

of tying heavy loads on people’s shoulders but not lifting a finger to help them; ignoring the commands of God to follow the traditions of men; straining the tiniest gnat out of their food because it wasn’t kosher yet swallowing camels, the largest of the non-kosher animals. As Jesus told this story of a priest who looked the other way, the expert in the Law could not have missed the scathing condemnation of him and his fellow law-keepers.
    It was a Samaritan, as much an enemy of the Jews as the modern-day Palestinians are, who acted with human kindness, going beyond mere obligation in caring for the wounded man. No law required him to do that. Acts of love and compassion can’t be legislated. But helping someone in need was the loving thing to do, and he did it.
    Jesus was saying that people need to stop following a list of rules and follow God’s example of love and compassion. To truly love your neighbor, you must broaden your scope of who your neighbor is, even if it means helping your enemies. People like me want rules. We want to package God’s laws in a neat set of books so that we can analyze them and reference them. If we do everything “by the book,” we’ve done our duty. We want order and stability, the kind you find in a basketball game or a soccer match where we know all the rules and can clearly see when they’re broken. We can cry “Foul!” and see the offender placed in the penalty box immediately. We want to know exactly whom to root for and who our enemy is. And we want our religion neatly structured, too, so we can keep score and know precisely what is required of us with no shades of gray in our black-and-white world.
    Jesus broke the rules quite often, healing diseases on the Sabbath that were not life-threatening to deliberately show that a close, living relationship with God should serve as our guide, not rules. If the priest, the Levite, and the expert in the Law really knew the God they served, they would know that He is a “compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin” (Exodus 34:6–7). They would know exactly what their loving God meant when he said “Love your neighbor as yourself,” without asking for a detailed description of precisely who their neighbor was. But their religion was out of balance, emphasizing the rules and missing the heart of God.
    Jesus ended the parable with another question for the expert: “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The only conclusion the expert could possibly reach was “The one who had mercy on him.” It must have galled him to admit it, especially when Jesus added, “Go and do likewise.”
    A rich young ruler once asked Jesus the same question that the expert had asked: “What good thing must I do to get eternal life?” He assured Jesus that he had scrupulously followed all of the rules. Jesus told him to sell all of his possessions and give them to the poor—something the rich man couldn’t bring himself to do. He loved something else more than he loved God or his neighbors in need (Matthew 19:16–30). The lesson isn’t that I sell everything, too. It’s that I look at my life and see if I put God first, giving all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength to Him. I need to ask myself if I’m living an outwardly correct life, playing by all the rules, but lacking in love. I need to see if I’m someone Isaiah and Jesus wouldinclude in their indictment, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men” (Isaiah 29:13 and Matthew 15:8).
    The priest in Jesus’ story thought rules were more important than being led each moment by a living God, a God who wants us to open our eyes and see others in need and respond with compassion. The Hebrew word for priest, Kohen ,