Whenever someone in real need crosses our path, we should respond with compassion and help as we would hope to be helped, even if that person isn’t someone we would typically choose to love.

I know you’re a deeply loving person. I see it week after week in the way you treat others. So here’s what I want to ask: is there anyone you feel is not worth your love?

We don’t announce it, but we carry around an internal calculus, a sense of who’s worth the effort, who deserves our sympathy, who has earned care. And somewhere in that calculus, there are people we’ve quietly written off:

• The one whose politics feels like a threat to everything you cherish
• The person who always seems to be in mid-crisis, so that every interaction feels like it’s slowly draining you
• The addict who’s burned every bridge and is living on his third “last chance.”
• The public moral failure whose repentance feels suspiciously timed
• The coworker who’s difficult in ways that feel almost intentional
• The person whose theology is “off” enough that you’ve gently demoted them in your heart
• The family member who took and took and never gave back

None of us would stand in a church service and announce, “Those people don’t deserve love.” But we’ve learned to keep our distance, to set boundaries. We’re loving people, but deep down, we know that our love has limits.

And that’s where the parable this morning presses in and challenges all of us.

Two Questions

Question One

The parable arises from an interaction Jesus had with a lawyer, a term that Luke used to describe the scribes in Jesus’ day. This was a highly trained Torah scholar, an “expert in the law,” who studied, interpreted, and applied Scripture and its received traditions to everyday life. He functioned like a blend of theologian and legal expert, skilled at defining terms and setting the boundaries of obligation.

And here was his question: “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

He showed proper respect. Back then, teachers sat, and students stood out of courtesy. But Luke identifies that his intentions weren’t sincere. The lawyer asked this question to test Jesus. The lawyer believes he’s part of the in-crowd, and he wants to know how to stay there.

Jesus responds with his own question. He asks the man, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” Two questions: content and interpretation. The content is clear. He quotes the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:4:

And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27)

Shema is simply the first word of the passage. In Hebrew it means “hear” or “listen”: “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one.” It became the daily rhythm of Jewish faith—recited morning and evening. Children learned it first; adults bound it to their bodies in phylacteries and fixed it to their doorframes.

So when Jesus asks about the greatest commandment, the expert answers with the words he has prayed his whole life: love God. Then he adds Leviticus 19:18: love your neighbor. He doesn’t need more information; he already knows the right words by heart. Everyone did. The youngest scholar in the synagogue knew the answer.

So Jesus replies, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live” (10:28). He’s right. The standard is clear: love God fully, love your neighbor truly, and you will live.

The problem, of course, is that none of us has ever kept those two commands with an undivided heart. We have not loved God with everything we are, and we have not loved our neighbor with a steady, selfless, wholehearted love. We have not done what God requires.

He has the right answer, but he hasn’t faced his real problem. What he should have said is, “Lord, have mercy on me. I know your law, but I can’t keep it. I don’t love God the way I should, and I don’t love my neighbor the way I love myself. Tell me how a sinner like me can be saved.”

Instead, he asks a second question.

Question Two

Here’s what the scribe asked as his second question: “And who is my neighbor?” (10:29). In other words, “Okay, I’m called to love my neighbor. How can I tell who is my neighbor and who isn’t? How can I spot the people I’m supposed to love?”

It seems many in that period treated “neighbor” as a fellow Israelite, someone inside the covenant community. In practice, that often pushed Samaritans, foreigners, apostates, and resident outsiders to the margins, as though they fell beyond the reach of the command to love. The circle had clear boundaries: some were “in,” and many others were “out.” After all, we reason, you can’t help everyone, so you draw the line somewhere.

We ask the same question today. We know we should love the people closest to us, but we quickly start managing love by narrowing it. We keep our distance from the inconvenient, the complicated, the different, or the ones who have hurt us. We rarely say, “Who is my neighbor?” out loud, but we ask it with our calendars, our attention, and the quiet lines we draw around our mercy.

And that’s where Jesus’ parable comes in.

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