A Neighbor's a Neighbor

This message was first delivered at Providence United Methodist Church and White's United Methodist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia on July 9, 2016. It is based on the lectionary text of Luke 10:25-37.

Luke 10:25-37 The Message (MSG)

Just then a religion scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus. “Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?” He answered, “What’s written in God’s Law? How do you interpret it?” He said, “That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence—and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself.” “Good answer!” said Jesus. “Do it and you’ll live.” Looking for a loophole, he asked, “And just how would you define ‘neighbor’?”

Jesus answered by telling a story. “There was once a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he was attacked by robbers. They took his clothes, beat him up, and went off leaving him half-dead. Luckily, a priest was on his way down the same road, but when he saw him he angled across to the other side. Then a Levite religious man showed up; he also avoided the injured man. “A Samaritan traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man’s condition, his heart went out to him. He gave him first aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. Then he lifted him onto his donkey, led him to an inn, and made him comfortable. In the morning he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take good care of him. If it costs any more, put it on my bill—I’ll pay you on my way back.’

“What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?” “The one who treated him kindly,” the religion scholar responded. Jesus said, “Go and do the same.”

In the gospel reading, Jesus is being challenged by the leaders of the current culture – that occupation that is often translated as “lawyer” was more closely akin to “law-maker” or a scholar of the laws and rules.

It reminds me of a story about a rather pompous deacon who was endeavoring to impress upon a class of boys the importance of living the Christian life. "Why do people call me a Christian?" the man asked. After a moment's pause, one youngster said, "Maybe it's because they don't know you."

That describes the situation that Jesus was faced with as he began his ministry. Oh, sure, the talk was all about how one could live a righteous life...but when you got right down to it, the leadership of the day was missing the forest for the trees.

We need to examine what they were doing wrong so we can avoid their mistakes. Because there are a lot of people in this world that are hearing messages from folks who claim to be Christian that are not Christ-like. We have to do a better job of showing the world real Christian love. And we need to say to the ones who have twisted the message of God's loving gift of grace – you do not speak for me. I am choosing to love and leave judgment to the creator.

The familiar story of the Good Samaritan is more than just a nice subject for coloring books and telling as a bedtime story for children. It is a pretty graphic bedtime story anyway – the tale begins with a man being beaten and left to die on the side of the road. Which was a real danger to people traveling from town to town during the time of Jesus' life. A lot of Jesus' parables were relate-able stories – he talked agriculture and fishing and the settings were familiar...just like sermon illustrations of today. Jesus was a great storyteller like my favorite author – Dr. Seuss. You can find yourself in the story – maybe you are the man in the ditch hoping for help, or you are the good but flawed priest or Levite...seeing the need but hurrying past, afraid to get involved. Perhaps you are the Samaritan? Stopping to bind up the fellow human's wounds not knowing even if your help will be accepted or rejected. Are you Horton? Are you the Whos? Maybe you are like the friends of Horton or the Samaritan whispering “you're crazy to get involved.”

We know that Jesus' audience for this parable included a rule-minded highly educated seminarian. Luke characterizes the man's question as meant “to test Jesus.” He begins with the false respect of a trickster by calling Jesus “Teacher.” Reminds me of the character Eddie Haskell in Leave it to Beaver. He had that smooth way with the adults in the show...buttering them up, “Mrs. Cleaver, your mashed potatoes are so good.” or “Mr. Cleaver, your workshop is always tidy. You must be a great craftsman.” But I knew, as flattering as Eddie Haskell was, the Cleavers saw through that thin veil of respect. Jesus knew this man's heart and gave him enough leeway to create his own trap. Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life? To inherit eternal life (KJV, NRSV), to receive eternal life (GNT). He's asking the wrong question. The verb “do” suggests a single, limited action. He is thinking of something to check off his to-do list; recite a prayer, offer a sacrifice, drop off a box of macaroni for a food drive, put a twenty in the collection plate. If he's efficient, he can inherit eternal life before lunch. But in the new grace-paradigm of Jesus – one does not “do” anything to “inherit” eternal life. It's that old way of thinking. Is eternal life a commodity to be inherited or purchased on the basis of a particular action rather than a gift freely given? This religious leader is focused on the wrong path – he focuses on eternal life – his OWN salvation – when he should be focused on loving God and neighbor, honoring parents, not stealing, killing and so on. And he is asking obnoxious questions to which he already knows the answer. In typical Jesus fashion, he evades the trick by appealing to the lawyer's ego and answering the question with a question.

Jesus invites this learned man to answer his own question. What is written in the law? How do you interpret it? And the law-minded man gave a textbook answer from the Torah known to all practicing Jews then and now. The first is Deuteronomy 6:5 which is part of Judaism's daily liturgy. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Luke, who was no mental midget himself, adds, “all your mind.” The second verse that he cites is Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The same book in Leviticus which lists statutes ranging from those commanding reverence for parents and keeping the Sabbath to those forbidding idolatry, stealing, swearing falsely or lying, profaning the divine name (a list much like the 10 Commandments). It also MANDATES care for the poor, the blind, and the deaf. Thus love must manifest itself in action. The lawyer knew the commandments and he would have known the context...but did he really understand?

Jesus replies, Good answer. Do it and you will live.

But there's one more question. Our law-expert wants to justify himself, wants to be sure he comes down on the side of right. He needs a little clarification on who he has to love. Just who IS my neighbor? The question has legal merit. One needs to know who is under the same legal system and who is not. But in the context of love, his question is not relevant. This question is just as misguided as his first question! To ask “who is my neighbor” is a polite way of asking, “who is not my neighbor?” or “Who does not deserve my love?” or “Whose lack of food or shelter can I ignore?” or “Who can I hate?”

And Jesus doesn't give him a straight answer. He gives the opportunity for the lawyer to come to the truth himself. He tells the story of the Good Samaritan. A traveler gets attacked by robbers on the road and is left stripped, beaten, half-dead.

A short parade of visitors comes by – (feels like an old joke, a priest, a rabbi and a Samaritan walk into a bar... - I just don't know what the punchline is). The priest and the Levite see the injured man but walk by on the other side of the road. Then the Samaritan comes along and tends to his wounds, transports him to a safe place and arranges for his long-term care.

It isn't a long parable. But there is a powerful followup question that Jesus poses to his interrogator: Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell victim to the robbers?

And the only reasonable answer is the Samaritan. But the religious scholar can't even bring himself to use the word “Samaritan.” Instead, his answer is the one who showed him mercy or the one who treated him kindly.

What kind of person was the Samaritan? He was a person who was neither frightened nor apathetic when he happened upon a situation of injustice in his community. The text doesn’t say why the Samaritan was walking the road from Jerusalem to Jericho that day. I don’t know if he was on his way home from visiting relatives, or heading to work. But my sense of the story is that he was not out on a mission to do justice that day. He was not on a mission trip, or on his way to volunteer at the local food pantry, or headed to Wednesday night fellowship at his church. In other words, he was not specifically engaged in being his “church self” at that moment.

The other two people who saw the robbed, wounded and half dead man lying on the side of the road are specifically named as church people. One is a priest, and the other is a Levite.

But we don’t know anything about the Samaritan other than his status as a Samaritan. Luke does not say he was a leader among the Samaritans. He is not identified as a priest, or even as a particularly observant Samaritan. The only thing we know about him personally is that he is a member of a group that is a despised rival of the Jews. And we know from the story that he was traveling along a well-known road, minding his own business, when suddenly he came upon a situation of violence and injustice happening right before his eyes. He saw a man who had been hurt, and his response was not to run in the other direction, but rather to immediately go to the side of this victim of a senseless crime and offer his assistance.

He is so moved with pity that he stops his travel plans in order to care for this man. He didn’t call for someone else, some professional, to come to the man’s aid. He didn’t summon the police or an ambulance. He personally cleaned and bandaged the man’s wounds, and then he loaded the individual on his own horse and carried the man to an Inn, where he presumably paid for a room and stayed with the man and nursed him overnight. The next day, he paid for the man to be able to stay there and rest until he was recovered. He asked the innkeeper to keep an eye on the man. And he promised to pay for any additional time the wounded man needed to stay beyond the days he paid in advance.

This Samaritan didn’t just do something for this wounded stranger. He took time away from whatever it was he had planned to do that day. He let an encounter with injustice change his course of action entirely. He delayed the remainder of his trip in order to stay and sit with the man until he knew the man would be okay. And he promised to come back and check on him.

Now I don’t know about you, but when I am on a road trip, and I see someone stopped on the side of the road, I don’t usually stop to help. Why? Most often because I don’t want to take time away from my own plans, nor do I want to make myself vulnerable.

Furthermore, if I saw someone in what looked to be a dangerous situation, someone who had been beaten, or who had been shot or wounded, I’m not sure what I would do. I might pull over and call the police, but I’m not sure I’d approach the car. I’m just being honest here. My tendency is to think first about whether my actions might put me in danger.

But Jesus answers simply – Go and do likewise.

I think when we read Jesus’ initial response we focus on the “do this.” And so we interpret the parable to mean that Jesus is telling the lawyer (and us) to go and be good Samaritans by noticing those in need and helping them.

But I want to submit a different way of reading the story. I would suggest that maybe Jesus wasn’t telling this man to DO something so much as he was challenging him to SEE the world around him, especially its people, in a different way. To put it another way, perhaps it isn’t as much about what we do as it is about how we live.

One of the things that I have had to learn is that I'm not always called to DO something. Sometimes our job is to simply BE with those in need. Our role may be to sit beside people during a time of need and be a loving presence.

It is easy to see why we get focused on doing when we read the parable. After all, the first question that the lawyer asked Jesus was a “do” question: “What should I DO to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus told him straight away what he should DO: “love the Lord God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind and your neighbor as yourself.”

That is what we are to DO as followers of Jesus Christ. But the second question, the one that prompted Jesus to tell the parable, was not a DO question. It was a BE question. The lawyer wanted to know whom Jesus considered to BE his “neighbor.” And Jesus’ meaning is clear. He told the lawyer in no uncertain terms that he must BE a neighbor to those he considered ritually unclean, socially unacceptable, and morally corrupt.

To inherit eternal life, we must be in loving relationship with all of God’s children, especially those with whom we disagree, would judge as sinful, or even despise. By living in this way, we participate in God’s transformation of the world.

I think that the problem many of us have is the same problem that the lawyer had. We think that the way to inherit eternal life is to DO something: say the right words, believe the right things, have the right kind of baptism, give the right amount of money, join the right church, live the right way, and do the right things in this life. In this way of thinking, we have complete control of our eternal destiny. We simply earn our way to eternal life by doing the right things.

But Jesus says that the way to find eternal life is not by doing something, but by BEING something. Being the embodiment of the love of God. To all the world, not just those that we would deem worthy.

When I think about my own responses to Jesus’ challenge for us to be a neighbor...not just in situations in which we don’t have much information, but to be willing to take risks for anyone in need...I know that I have some work to do in my own practice of potentially world-changing discipleship. Jesus calls us to put not just our time, but our money and our very lives on the table in order to make God’s merciful presence known anytime and anywhere the opportunity arises.

This isn’t a story about finding easy opportunities to do some good works. It isn’t even a story about answering the call to give substantially to support those in great need, or to sacrificially go and serve in places in the world where people suffer.

This is a story about how we are to live as disciples every single day in our own neighborhoods and churches. It is a call to see the needs of the people we meet on a walk, or in the grocery store, or on our way to do something else, and to not think first about our own safety or our own agendas, but rather to live as people who willingly let the needs of the world around us interrupt our plans. THEN, we never miss an opportunity to offer mercy to all of God’s children. This, says Jesus, is how we transform the world.

Who was neighbor to the man beaten and left to die? While the answer to that question may appear to be obvious, “The Samaritan,” that is not the answer the expert in the law gave and that Jesus commended. The literal answer the expert gave was “The one who did mercy with him.” Jesus’ response, “Go on your way and do likewise” is exactly his response to us. The invitation here is for us to quit “feeling” merciful and actually start “doing” mercy. And it is to do it with those in need, not at them.

Follow the example of how the Samaritan in the parable did mercy...

1. He came near.
2. He was moved with compassion.
3. He went to him.
4. He bandaged the wounds.
5. He poured oil (a soothing agent) and wine (antiseptic) on the wounds.
6. He put him on his animal.
7. He brought him to an inn.
8. He took care of him at the inn.

These were things this man could not do for himself in his condition. So the Samaritan did them. But that wasn’t all. He did more after that.
9. When he had to leave, he gave the innkeeper money to keep caring for him, promising to pay more if needed when he returned. The Samaritan wasn’t promising to come back right away and keep fixing everything for the man. Instead, he was making it possible for this man to have some kind of community to get him back on his feet again. This was “ministry with.”

The Samaritan did mercy, and he did it, hands on, with the beaten man. This is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus who loves neighbor as self. Sometimes it’s about rescue, if that’s needed. Sometimes it’s about making sure the systems of care and community in a place have what is needed.

The key is seeing every other human as being one of God's children. I'll close with this story from Father Greg Boyle's book Tattoos on the Heart. Father Greg, who began Homeboy Industries – a tremendous gang intervention, prison ministry and job training program – in the poorest parish in Los Angeles, takes two former rival gang members as part of a three state set of speaking gigs. They visit Atlanta, DC and are wrapping up the trip in Mobile, Alabama. A man named John invited Pastor G, Memo and Miguel to go with him to visit his ministry to a community in Pritchard, Alabama. I quote, “We take two hours to dive and walk around in what I think is about the poorest place I've ever seen in the US. Hovels and burned-out shacks and lots of people living in what people ought not to live in. Memo and Miguel are positively bug-eyed as they walk around, meet people, and see a kind of poverty quite different than the one they know.

We return to the house where we're staying and have half an hour to pack...I look up, and Memo is standing in my doorway, crying. He is a very big man, had been a shot caller for his barrio and has done things in and ouot of prison for which he feels great shame – harm as harm. The depth of his core wound is quite something to behold. Torture, unrivalled betrayal, chilling abandonment – there is little terror of which Memo would be unfamiliar.

He's weeping as he stands in my doorway and I ask him what's happening. “That visit, to Pritchard – I don't know; it got to me. It got inside of me. I mean, how do we let people lie like this?” He pauses, then, “G, I don't know what's happening to me, but it's big. It's like, for the first time in my life, I feel, I don't know, what's the word...I feel compassion for what other people suffer.”

Seeing the shape of God in every person we encounter. Not stopping to decide if they are worthy of our efforts – just being with those in need. Compassion. Love God and Love Who and What God Loves, we are called to go and do likewise. Go and see with new eyes. Be present for those who are alone. The life that is changed will be your own.