Love Thy Neighbor—or Else

Note: This Midweek Message was originally published in The Eagle’s “Faith” section, 9/20/25.

Jesus was betrayed. Christians remember this often when observing the sacrament of communion where the one presiding at the table says, “On the night that Jesus was betrayed…” Communion (or the eucharist or the Lord’s Supper) remembers the last night the disciples shared with Jesus before he would be betrayed by one of them. That betrayal led to his demise.

The state of our society has me taking a closer look at what betrayal means in terms of the faith that followers of Jesus practice. In the New Testament, “betray” is translated from the original Greek word ‘paradidomi,’ which means “to give into the hands of another.” It is even more sobering to think of Jesus being given into the hands of another—given into harmful hands—by someone so close to him. And it should be sobering for all of us to notice how we, as neighbors, are treating each other similarly these days.

We are each other’s keeper—neighbors in one another’s hands—but that moral responsibility is being betrayed by the creeping normalization of policing each other rather than loving one another as Jesus instructs us to do. If someone finds something that their neighbor said or wrote disagreeable, rather than reaching out to them, they might dox them, sharing their neighbor’s private identifying information widely with malicious intent. Screenshots are taken of a neighbor’s social media posts and uploaded to watchlist websites, rendering those listed as targets for harm. The spouse of someone in our congregation was fired without cause last week when a stranger informed their employer’s HR department of harmless content they had shared on their personal social media account. Such injurious acts by some tempt us as a society to be out to get each other instead of holding one another closely in a mutual pursuit of the common good.

It is one thing for us to be divided as a people—which we certainly are right now—but it is another for us to handle that division by opting to be bounty hunters rather than being neighbors who engage with one another. There’s no hope in betrayal, no communal benefit in giving one another into the hands of harm.

Jesus taught us this when he told a parable about a man who was beaten, robbed, and left for dead on the side of the Jericho Road. A priest sees the man in need but passes him by. Then a Levite sees the man and ignores him. But when a Samaritan sees the wounded man, he puts himself in harm’s way by doing everything he can to help him. After telling that story, Jesus asked his listeners, “Which of these three was a neighbor to the person in need?” Jesus’ listeners recognized that it was the Samaritan, “the one who showed him mercy.” And then Jesus instructed those listeners to “go and do likewise,” to be faithful members of society by being neighbors to one another.

Our sociopolitical climate has me also looking closer at what being a neighbor means. “Neighbor” is translated from the word ‘plesios’ in the Greek New Testament, which means “near” or “close to.” To be a neighbor to someone is to recognize our nearness to them and to nurture that sacred proximity with compassion that does no harm. By definition, neighbors do not betray each other, but hold one another close, with hands that show mercy over cruelty, and refuse to deliver one another into harm.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. writes in his book Strength to Love, “Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies—or else?” I believe we are at that impasse. In this divided and divisive time, will we love our neighbor or betray them? And if we choose betrayal, who will help us in our time of need when we ourselves are given into hands of harm?

At the table of communion, we are reminded that Jesus was betrayed, and we are also reminded that he took bread in that anxious moment, blessed it, broke it, and instructed his followers to eat of it in remembrance of him and of the unrelenting, unconditional love he has for all of us. Eating this bread is an act of remembrance that enables us to remember—to re-member—our broken society and be reconciled to one another in witness to the love of God that holds us all together in merciful hands that never let us go.

In this anxious moment, we can give our energy to finding disagreements with people and betraying our God-given bond to them, or we can focus that energy on being neighbors to one another, making sure we have all that we need to live abundantly together in a trustworthy peace that elevates the common good. The choice is urgently upon us. We can be cruel, or we can show mercy. There is no hope in betrayal. Our only hope is love. We must love one another—or else.