Pentecost 5C (Luke 10:25-37)

​Every Christian knows Jesus' greatest commandment: love God and love your neighbor. Yet knowing this command and practicing it skillfully are two different things entirely. What does it actually mean to love as Jesus commands? What spiritual skills must we cultivate to love effectively?

Today's gospel reveals two essential prerequisites for authentic Christian love—insights that transform how we understand both divine devotion and neighborly care.

1. First: Anchor Yourself in God's Presence
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind." This isn't merely intellectual assent or Sunday worship—it's the cultivation of God's living presence within us.

To love God means learning to recognize, welcome, and rest in the divine presence that dwells within. This requires intentional spiritual practice: making space for God in our thoughts, allowing our very breath to become prayer, grounding ourselves so deeply in this presence that it becomes the foundation from which all our words and actions flow.

Without this inner cultivation, love becomes mere human effort—well-intentioned but lacking the transformative power that flows from divine union. When we anchor ourselves in God's presence, our love for others springs from an inexhaustible source.

2. Second: Let Your Neighbors Choose You
The lawyer's question seems reasonable: "Who is my neighbor?" But Jesus' response through the Good Samaritan parable completely reverses our assumptions.

Notice how Jesus reframes the question: "Which of these three was a neighbor to the man who fell among robbers?" The shift is profound. We don't get to choose our neighbors—they choose us. Those in need determine whether we have truly become neighbors to them.

This transforms everything. Instead of asking "Who deserves my love?" we must ask "Am I being received as a neighbor by those who need care?" Our love isn't measured by our intentions but by whether those in need experience us as truly present, truly caring, truly neighboring.

The vulnerable, the suffering, the marginalized—they hold the power to validate our love. Until someone in need can honestly say "Yes, you are my neighbor," we haven't yet learned to love as Jesus commands.

The Challenge of Divine Love
This teaching confronts us with uncomfortable truth: loving as Jesus loves requires both deep spiritual grounding and humble receptivity to judgment from those we claim to serve.
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We must prepare our hearts through contemplative practice, allowing God's presence to reshape our thoughts and motivations. Simultaneously, we must approach those in need not as benefactors but as potential neighbors, ready to be evaluated by their experience of our care.

This dual requirement—inner transformation anchored in God and outer validation from those we serve—sets Christian love apart. It demands both mystical depth and practical accountability, both divine communion and human vulnerability.

The question before us isn't whether we know the commandment to love, but whether we're willing to develop the spiritual skills necessary to love as Jesus did—with hearts rooted in God's presence and arms open to serve whoever chooses us as neighbor.