Today as we read the parable, we go straight for loving the neighbor on the side of the road. Thus we make a metaphor of the neighbors—a metaphor that doesn’t include the person who lives next door to us. If we don’t take Jesus’s command literally, then we turn the Great Commandment into nothing more than a metaphor. We have a metaphoric love for our metaphoric neighbors, and our communities are changed—but only metaphorically, of course. In other words, nothing changes.
