Devotion: Praxis, Love, and My Neighbor (Luke 10:25-37)

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25 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put [Jesus] to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” 27 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.” 28 And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” 29 But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. 34 He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ 36 Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” 37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.” 

The word praxis isn't used much in our everyday language. Taken from the ancient Greek word that referred to the activities engaged in by free men, praxis is the act of incorporating practical and applied knowledge into one's actions. In other words, praxis is where theory and practice come together — where the rubber meets the road. Praxis is action.

Perhaps one of the reasons we don't make much use of the word praxis in the Church is that we'd prefer our discipleship to be more conceptual than practical. It's much simpler to incorporate the teachings of Jesus into our family, work, and community lives if we treat them as ideals rather than as practical actions to live out in the context of our relationships. While we know that Christ has called us to live our lives in a way that is radically different than the unbelieving people in our lives, we're much more comfortable living our lives according to the standards, values, and priorities of the world than we are to the teachings of Jesus. When we can no longer escape the inherent conflict between His teachings and those of the world, we manage to convince ourselves that Jesus wasn't seriously expecting His disciples to live out what He was teaching. We treat His Word as idealistic, maybe even naive. We're enamored with His teachings and hold them up as great ideas to which we might aspire, but we don't see how we can actually put them into practice in our lives — and we seem convinced that we aren't really expected to. In treating Jesus' teachings in this way we have removed praxis from our confession of Christ and we have justified our lack of action in serving Christ through serving our neighbors.

The teacher of the Law who stood up to put Jesus to the test understood our predicament well. Faced with the clear and challenging call to love God by loving his neighbor, he approached Jesus in an attempt to justifying himself in his own mind and before God. Well versed in the theory of living according to God's will but unwilling to put his knowledge into action, he was looking for affirmation that knowing God's Word was enough to be justified. But Jesus' teaching challenged his lack of praxis. Clinging to his desire to be justified while being entrenched in his selfish and self-centered worldly ways, he challenged Jesus' insistence on praxis with the question, "Who is my neighbor?"  Jesus' reply, a call to action through the parable that we've come to know as the parable of the Good Samaritan, struck at the heart of the man's self-righteousness. A remarkable parable on many levels, this story's lesson is above all a call to live out what God's Word makes clear — not only for the teacher of the law, but for us —  apart from the compulsion of the Law. It is a call to praxis — a call to activities that are engaged in by free men, not under compulsion but in loving response to the One who has acted on our behalf to free us from sin and death.

Like love itself, loving praxis cannot be mandated. To actively love God and our neighbor, we must first be moved by the love that Christ has shown to us in His praxis. In the ultimate act of love, Jesus carried our sins to the Cross, bore our shame, and endured the punishment that we deserved. Willing to act to save us when we could not act on our own behalf, Jesus' life-saving and life-giving praxis fully expresses the call to love one's neighbor as oneself. And as His neighbors served and saved by His loving action, we are now free to live in loving praxis for our neighbors and our world — to "go and do likewise."