Luke sets the familiar parable of the good Samaritan in the context of two commands: Love God and neighbor; and Go, do likewise! Furthermore, it is clear that by casting the parable with Jewish bad guys and a Samaritan good guy, Jesus wants our love to transcend ideological differences and respond to human suffering and injustice wherever it may be found.

Christian spirituality has always been characterized by its loving concern for others, but it has had trouble seeing the political dimensions of its love. In its focus on heaven it has approached the ills of this world with a first aid kit when major surgery was required. It has had difficulty seeing that the wounds needing treatment are inflicted by the political and economic structures of a society. One denomination official put it, "Local communities, churches, and judicatories have hunger programs that place an inordinate emphasis upon fast days, gleaners' groups, and food distribution programs which emphasize direct food relief, and then frequently ignore the necessity of dealing with systematic change and the fundamental causes of hunger and malnutrition."

There is a crucial distinction to be made between personal acts of love that aim to feed the poor, and political actions which seek to remedy the root causes of poverty. Of course, feeding the poor is required of us; as is offering a cup of water to the thirsty, clothing the naked, and visiting the prisoner. But we live in a world where political systems contribute to an economic stratification in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The lack of educational opportunities, lingering racism, inequality of taxation; all contribute to the complex malaise of poverty. Personal acts of love may salve consciences but they leave the disease untreated. A piety that cultivates personal virtues such as love and sensitivity to the needs of others - without addressing the societal causes of human suffering - fosters counterfeit love. Loving our neighbor forces us into the political arena where the decisions effecting the lives of people are made. Love must be spelled out politically and economically if we we are to carry out the biblical mandate to love God and our neighbor.

When Jesus spoke in his hometown synagogue he began his sermon to the local gentry by quoting the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord (Luke 4:18, 19)." His speech sounds strangely like that of a political candidate running for office, especially since he claimed that the promise was as good as fulfilled by his presence among them. But by doing so, Jesus nailed down one of the central planks to God's political platform.

In both the Old and New Testaments God is portrayed as the champion of orphans and widows, the maimed and the sick, captives and aliens. Scripture reveals the Divine bias for all those who yearn for a place in the sun and who can never find it. They have been crowded out and forgotten by those who already have a deep tan. To view the world through the eyes of Christ, as we are called to do, we must acknowledge, understand, and accept responsibility for our connectedness to each other in the human family.

This is not an abstract principle that Jesus puts before us. It is as concrete as our neighbor in need. We could paraphrase Jesus' words without doing mischief to his intent,

"I was hungry and you cut my food stamps, took away my school lunch, dumped 'surplus' crops like oranges to rot rather than let me eat them.

"I was thirsty and you continued to let the acid rain kill the fish in the lakes, and allowed river water to become unfit to drink.

"I was a stranger without a home and you wiped out the subsidies which were my only hope for a decent place to live.

"I was naked and you cut my welfare check so much that I could not buy clothes, you wiped out the community service agencies that were helping me, the job-training programs that gave me some chance of supporting myself, the day care centers which allowed me to work while my children received good care; you refused to provide an adequate minimum wage so that I can't afford to work anyway.

"I was sick and you capped Medicaid so that I was turned away from the hospital.

"I was in prison and you wiped out the legal services, so that 'equal justice under law' became a mockery. You took away the lawyer helping my family avoid eviction by a condo developer.

"You did all this and more, you said, to save your economy and balance your budget. But the money you had been spending to help me you added to your spending for implements of war.

"And you cut the taxes of the affluent so they would have even more while I would have even less."

Then Americans will answer, "Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and would not help you?"

The Lord will reply,"I tell you, whenever you refused to help one of the least important ones, you refused to help me."

By telling the story of the Samaritan's love, Jesus shows us that to love the least important ones is to love God. The obligation to love God and others is given urgency by the one command, "Go, and do likewise!" To love the neighbor - that is, those who are the victims of oppression and injustice - is to love God. Our love of God is not measured by the orthodoxy of our beliefs or the earnestness of our praise. It is, rather, gauged by our restoration to wholeness those who have been oppressed. In our society that kind of love is inescapably political.

Most people are of the opinion that politics and religion do not mix, or at least ought not mix and, consequently, it is one of those taboo topics in the church. The belief trails a long history. I imagine the Pharaoh of vintage Egypt did not appreciate Moses coming to court with his impudent demand, "Let my people go!" He must have been a firm advocate of the separation of church and state, no doubt because to grant the demand, would have disrupted the economy of the nation. Nevertheless, Moses was there because of a Holy calling.

I mean to suggest that a biblical faith requires of us a mixture of religion and politics because it sees God's creation as a work of Divine love. Law is the political means by which we, in groups, respond to God's creative initiative to love our neighbors and care for our planet. To love in the way that God has loved us is to work toward a time when the law of the land reflects the Divine intention for the world.

The political groups of which we are unavoidably a part make decisions about those whom Jesus calls, "neighbors." These decisions are called public policy. People live and die because of them. As members of society and citizens of God's kingdom, we have a special obligation to participate actively in making these decisions of public policy.

Because the church is not a homogeneous group of people who see things eye to eye or who understand God's will in the same way, it will always be a place of lively discussion of diverse views as we try to discover what is God's will. To paraphrase James Gustafson's observation; the church is not a place of religious, much less political, agreement. It is, rather, a place of religious and political discussion in the light of Scripture. To short circuit this discussion by quoting a few isolated verses from the Bible is not only inadequate, but woefully naive. Scriptural proof-texts cannot be applied to our time as though no water has flowed under the historical bridge.

The issue of drinking, for example, is complicated, not only because of the modern technology of distillation which increases the alcoholic content of beverages, but the invention of the automobile. In the days of Jesus, a pedestrian had considerable time to get out of the way of a drunken ox cart driver. Today, travel is vastly different as are the issues involved. They do not lend themselves to the advice of writers for whom speeding automobiles and souped-up horsepower did not exist even in their wildest flights of imagination.

What does it mean to love my neighbor in a labor-management negotiation over wages and working conditions? Who is my neighbor? Is it the person across the bargaining table from me or is it those whom I represent and to whom I am responsible? What would Jesus do in such a situation? I must confess, I do not know and neither does anyone else. The Bible never envisioned big business much less labor unions.

We will, therefore, be left to our own best judgment about the question. We must risk some answer, but it will be a risk of faith and no doubt other Christians will see the matter differently. Hopefully we will make our decisions in the best light of our faith at the time, and not cop out by compartmentalizing it into worlds of the sacred and the secular; never the twain to meet. We can expect that when politics and religion mix in the arena of faith, as indeed they must, emotions will be ignited and people will get involved. But no one will be bored - a condition sadly present in many churches today. Religious discourse will be heated because it will matter. It will be relevant and carry consequences.

For those who want a biblical precedent for such a model of the church, let me suggest the motley group of disciples. There, following Jesus along the dusty roads of Galilee, was Matthew, the tax collector. His income was dependent upon retaining the Roman political party in power. He was a company man and voted a straight ticket. There, too, was Simon the Zealot, trudging side by side with Matthew on those hot dusty roads. Like Matthew he was also a disciple of Jesus. But his political persuasion led him to become a terrorist. Zealots were dedicated to the violent resistance of Roman oppression including the overthrow of the government. On any normal day, or dark night, Simon would have slipped a knife between the ribs of Matthew the tax collector, and done it to the glory of God! And Matthew would have turned Simon in to the authorities as a revolutionary. Yet there they were. Both of them. Side by side. Disciples of Jesus, not because they agreed with one another, but because they were both seeking to be obedient to the calling of discipleship. What is fascinating is that there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that either of them changed their political views. Assumptions to the contrary bring unwarranted presuppositions to the text. That which bound them together was not agreement about religion or politics but the fact that each of them, in his own way, was following Jesus. Which, in turn, meant they had to trust one another's faith and ethics even though they did not agree with either. Imagine the heated arguments they must have had as they walked and talked together! Never a dull moment!

The trouble with most churches today is that there is no evidence of that kind of diversity. Many church leaders, not to mention their constituents, find any difference of opinion, and certainly conflict, to be very threatening. They seek to avoid it at all costs, either by denying it or burying it. Consequently we have successfully screened out the differences or suppressed them in the name of peace and unity. The result is counterfeit love because it lacks political dimension.

The point to be gained is crucial. The unity of the church is not found in the oneness of our agreement - political or religious - but in our common allegiance to Jesus Christ. That which binds us together as a community of faith is our common desire to be obedient to God's will which as Luke reminds us is to love our neighbor - and do it now!

Christian faith is on trial in the eyes of the world. It looks at the church to see if we put our practice where our proclamation is. Our claim is that God was in Christ reconciling the world. Not merely forgiving it; reconciling it. Forgiveness moves in the direction of the righteous to the sinner and, thereby, maintains in many subtle ways the distinctions and the rifts between them. Reconciliation, on the other hand, is accomplished when equals who differ are able to accept, though not necessarily agree with, one another.

What usually happens in human relations, and certainly church relations, is not reconciliation in the midst of differences but the elimination of all differences. Not conflict managed creatively, but conflict denied. Churches either do not allow conflict; screening out certain practices, people, or beliefs, or they pretend that there are no differences and call themselves a fellowship of love simply because disagreements are not taken seriously. In neither case is reconciliation practiced. Because believers are not encouraged to disagree they do not know what to do with their differences. They become frustrated because they feel their views are not valued. They discover there is no room for them in the community of believers and tend to become bitter because they are not part of the power structure which successfully imposes its will on everyone else. As a result the differences go underground where they work as a cancer sapping the energy of the community of faith or erupt in open schism. Or they drop out altogether. Or they start another denomination.

If the church cannot demonstrate the reconciling power of Christ to the world, it will never be able to convince the world that it has any good news to offer. The world with all of its pluralism of perspectives and variety of viewpoints, will not be impressed by anything the church has to say as long as it sees simply another group of homogeneous people who enjoy scratching one another's backs. There are plenty of groups for bright bridge players or happy hymn singers.

But if the world sees a lively discussion of differences taking place within a fellowship of love, where the discipline of trust carries across the abyss of disagreement, it may take a second look. If the world sees the Word that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, Democrat nor Republican - sees that Word become flesh, it just may be convinced that there is something to this faith that we profess.

The church is a community of faith practicing godly love. We are called to be lovers. Christians do not leave their politics at the door of the church as they enter because the church is that group of Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives who is learning to be good Samaritans and love our neighbors in need.