Are we good neighbors?

July 14, 2018 * Luke 10:25-37

The Good Samaritan…possibly the most widely known of all the parables, if not of the entire Bible.  And I am sure that everyone here has heard it at least once.  It’s so familiar, and so comfortable…and that can be a dangerous place, because we begin to take on a sort of view of superiority toward the comfortable.  So what, then, can we learn from this text?  More than the simple phrase of “Strangers good, Clergy bad”, I hope….

Let’s begin by looking at what we’ve been presented.  We have the “reality”, where Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem.  This particular phrase, “set his face toward”, explicitly means he is on the journey to Jerusalem; his final journey that ends with his crucifixion.  This story is chronologically in order with last couple of Sundays.  Jesus encounters “a lawyer”; but remember, a lawyer would have been a religious leader, because their law was their religion and their religion was their law, so this man being a lawyer, was probably what you and I know as a Scribe.  He would have been an absolute expert of the texts.  He “tests” Jesus; this word “test” in the Greek is the same word used to describe the temptations of Satan during Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness; this has led many scholars to believe that this lawyer was directly challenging Jesus…maybe he had self-sanctifying reasons, maybe he had been asked to do this; maybe it was a reasonable question, coming from a legitimate place of theological concern, like to which confessions should I give assent?  Should I be sprinkled or immersed at baptism?  Are there other necessary actions that must be undertook to secure salvation? 

Jesus answered his question with a question:  What is written in the law and how do you interpret it?  This practice of answering a question with a question, while quite aggravating in our culture, is a pretty standard thing in the Jewish culture.  Where we like to think of Biblical interpretation as an end-sum game, Judaism does not.  It’s common practice to gather around the table, break bread, and question, debate, and respect the views of others surrounding the sacred texts.  Jewish persons believe there’s always something we can learn from it, and that learning more often than not comes from the perspective of others.  And we see that, in this case, the returned question does foster deeper study.

The law expert quotes, appropriately, the law:  it says in Leviticus you are to 1) love the Lord your God with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and 2) love your neighbor, and one that’s missed by most people, 3) love yourself.  Jesus validates his answer; and the expert volleys a question back:  so, who is my neighbor?

Who is your neighbor?  Who is my neighbor?  Who is our neighbor?  Apparently this is not as easily answered as we think….

To the expert, Jesus tells a story (or a parable).  There’s a man going down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.  The original text doesn’t indicate that he was going “down the road” the same way we say “I’m going to head on down the road”, instead this indicated that the road wound in a downward path…from a higher place to a lower place.  This road between these 2 cities was about 17 miles and notoriously dangerous.  It was full of curves and twists, which gave robbers ample place to hide and ambush unsuspecting travelers (both Jerusalem and Jericho were wealthy cities with wealthy people traveling this road often).  So this man...we don’t know how old he is, what nationality he is, we don’t know if he was savvy or foolish…what we do know is he fell into the hands of robbers who robbed him, right down to his clothes, and left him “half dead”, or by the Greek term, appearing dead. 

And, three people encounter him after he fell into the hands of the robbers…I’ll lump the first two together because they behave in the exact same manor and they’re both cut from the same cloth…they’re both religious leaders.  We’re told that both this priest and Levite are traveling this road when they encounter this man, and they both looked at him, and moved over to the other side of the street to avoid this man.  And we love to tell ourselves that they had to move away from them, because as we know he did appear dead, and if he was dead and they touched him…indeed if even their shadow touched him, they would be unclean and wouldn’t be fit to do their jobs at the temple….  But, the text tells us that they were both traveling “down” the road in the same fashion as this man, from Jerusalem to Jericho, so there’s really no concern over defilement here, and even though touching a dead body would render them unclean, they were, under the law, required to care for those in distress, even the dead, if they were first on the scene.  However they directed their paths as far from this man’s messiness as possible. 

At this point in the story, this would be where the hero of the story would show up:  the third person.  And I’m sure everyone within earshot was anxious to hear about the valiant Jew who saved the day for this mystery man; so imagine their shock and disgust when Jesus revealed that this third person was a Samaritan.  Samaritans and Jews hated each other with great passion and for many reasons.  When this Samaritan encountered this man, broken and close to dead, on this road, he was moved with compassion.  For whatever reason, he saw this man, and decided to stop.  He stops, on this dangerous road, and he doesn’t immediately load this man up and get him to safety, he puts himself in harm’s way by rendering aid to this man first.  He pours wine on the man’s wounds to disinfect them, followed by oil to dress them.  He placed this man on his own animal, and checked this man into an inn, and gave the inn keeper 2-day’s worth of wages to cover the cost of this man’s recovery. 

“So which of these three”, Jesus asks, “was a neighbor to this man?”  The law expert, choosing his words carefully, answers “the one who showed him mercy”; he couldn’t bring himself to say Samaritan. 

The context of this story can obscure the meaning, so I invite you to look at it through a contemporary lens, first as the person in the ditch, then as the person who took action. 

Anytime we process information, it’s only naturally that we inject ourselves into the scenario or scene.  Often times we are tempted to align ourselves with the man on the road, who’s been robbed, beaten, and is all but dead.  We easily see ourselves in need of help, needing someone to just stop.  Amy-Jill Levine is a Jewish Scholar, a Professor at Vanderbilt’s School of Religion, and an author.  In her book, The Misunderstood Jew, she poses the question, “Is there anyone, from any group, about whom we’d rather die than acknowledge ‘She offered help’ or ‘He showed compassion’?”  She continues, “More, is there any group whose members might rather die than help us?  If so, then we know how to find the modern equivalent for the Samaritan”.  And, she’s right.  That’s when this gets real personal, and as much as it scares me and I don’t want to, it’s my job to make it personal.  If a Muslim walked by you, knowing the things you’ve said about Muslims and Islam, them knowing the things you’ve said about Muslims and Islam, would they stop?  What about a person with brown skin?  What about a convicted felon?  A gay or transgender person?  Who in your life have you shown hatred toward, that if they passed you on the street, gravely injured, might not stop?  Because that, is the modern day Samaritan.  The way Samaritans of Christ’s day were treated was no different than those people I just listed out.  They were hated, mocked, discriminated against…likely by the very person he encountered; but instead of letting that’s person of him dictate how he acted, instead of allowing his anger toward the things that person had said or done against him and his identity as a Samaritan, he did the one thing that probably made him an outcast in his community:  he showed mercy.  He showed justice.  He showed compassion.  Potentially…to his enemy.

I have really struggled writing this sermon, because if you examine this text with the seriousness it deserves, pretty quickly you’ll wind up with a lump in your throat, and as the preacher, I was thinking of ways to get out of doing this.  With great duty comes great responsibility…and I have to be more concerned with your eternal lives than making you happy or keeping you from getting mad at me…which means, we have to have hard conversations….and today is one of those times. 

Instead of identifying with the mysterious man in the ditch, think of yourself as the Samaritan.  Think of yourself as the person with the means to offer help to someone else…the person who has the opportunity to “love your neighbor as yourself”.  I don’t think anyone will disagree that this is the point Jesus is making with this parable.  There is, of course, one giant caveat:  Neighbors do not recognize certain things like social class, race/nationality, gender, sexual orientation, citizenship status, or any of the other qualifiers we use to calculate our actions. 

But, mercy is never the conduct of a calculating heart, just like eternal life is never the reward for doing prescribed duties or following harmful policies.

Right now, we have a situation in our country where children are being separated from their parents, are housed in detention centers around the country.  I’m not here to debate the conditions, the news coverage, or any of the distractions we’re bombarded with; the fact is, there are families who are risking everything, even their own lives, to escape the horrors of their home.  They are coming to us because we are the land of opportunity, with our amber waves of grain and our purple mountains’ majesty.  They are coming, because we have the space, the means, and the potential for the compassion to offer them justice and mercy.  These are facts.  And when they survive, when they make it to US soil, they’re detained, and honestly, right away if they’re lucky, and not later on through some raid or other means.  Then we separate them out into these for-profit detention facilities.  Our records are kept so poorly that there’s slim chance of reuniting them, if they survive their detention.  Children; the older ones, 12 or 13, caring for the younger, some newborn.  We deny them soap, toothpaste, and even beds and blankets, because “the law” didn’t detail out that we do this.  We need policy to tell us when to show mercy, and how much.  We know this is wrong.  You know this is wrong. 

The argument is:  they shouldn’t be here, or they should come in legally.  That’s both easy and convenient for us to say, being that we are here and at no risk of having that taken away from us.  We say we should take care of our people here at home first; and my personal favorite is:  we have homeless veterans who go to sleep hungry.  Yes, we do.  So what are you doing to remedy that?  How are you showing them mercy?  How are you bringing justice to that horrible injustice?  If we were taking care of those things, I might be inclined to go with one of these arguments…but the fact is, we aren’t.  We choose to turn an apathetic eye to any and all these situations, citing reason and excuses to justify our calculated callousness.  We, ladies and gentlemen, are the priest and the Levite.  We are highly religious people who fail to act in compassion.

At the end of the parable Jesus tells the legal expert to “do this and you will live”.  It isn’t a suggestion, a recommendation, or under the pretense of convenience and popularity.  This is the key to eternal life.  Being a neighbor is defined as active, not passive. 

It is time we demolish the boundaries that keep us from going, and doing likewise.  In full disclosure, those boundaries are going to be really comfortable, and I guarantee you’re married to them more than you’re aware. 

This is one of those texts that really, really discourage me.  It reminds me just how much I’ve missed the mark.  It demonstrates to me just how far away I am from perfection…as difficult as that may be for you to imagine (laugh…it’s a joke).  But just as the priest and Levite still belong to the covenant people, we too are grafted into that same covenant.  And even though my love fails, God’s love never fails.  Even though I will fail to show compassion to my neighbor, God never fails to show me the compassion I deny others.  Even though I group people into groups, assigning values that make them worthy of grace, God’s grace knows no boundaries.

And for that, thanks be to God.