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Sunday, March 15, 2009
WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?
11th in a series on Questions from the Bible
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Scripture: Luke 19:25-29 Good News Bible Translation 25 But they said to him, "Sir, he already has ten coins!' 26 "I tell you,' he replied, “that to those who have something, even more will be given; but those who have nothing, even the little that they have will be taken away from them. 27 Now, as for those enemies of mine who did not want me to be their king, bring them here and kill them in my presence!' " 28 After Jesus said this, he went on in front of them toward Jerusalem. 29 As he came near Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, he sent two disciples ahead.
The verses that follow the question we hear from the lawyer, WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR, contain one of the most famous stories that Jesus ever told. It is the story that people will recognize even if they have never read even one page of the Bible. Do you remember what the story is? We call it the story of the Good Samaritan even though it would not have been labeled that way in Jesus’ time because the Jews and Samaritans were enemies. The Samaritans were considered mongrels, former Jews who had intermarried 700 years before Jesus and who worshiped the wrong god or who worshiped God wrongly and in the wrong location. For Jesus to make a Samaritan the hero of the story, as he did, would have been grossly shocking and highly offensive for his listeners. After all, in Jesus’ time, every male Jew from the time he was a boy was taught this prayer: “I thank you God that you did not create me as a Gentile, a Samaritan, or a woman.” All those persons were considered inferior by a very prejudiced and patriarchal culture. Let’s look closely at the interchange that precedes today’s question from the Bible. The person asking the question is a teacher of the law, at least, most translations call him a lawyer. He was not the kind of lawyer we think of today, an expert in the laws of our country and state and municipality. He was a specialist in religious law, the law code of the Old Testament. His motives were not sincere; he was trying to test Jesus or to trap him. Jesus asks the lawyer a question and the lawyer gives a good answer. He says that he is, like us, expected to love God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength and to love his neighbor as himself. Jesus commends him for his answer and says something very important. If the man does this, loves God and neighbor in the same way he loves/respects/cares for himself, he will have the best life he can hope for! By the way, to LOVE, in Jesus sense of the word, is not a feeling of affection, it is willing and acting for the well being of another person. Love in this sense means to will and to act for their good, no matter what our feeling is about them. The lawyer does not stop with that dialogue. He asks another question: WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR? He probably has a narrower view of that word than Jesus does. He probably has thought that this was a fellow Jew who lived nearby, someone very much like himself. He wants to justify himself, Luke says, and he wants to be sure he is not extending good will and kindness to THE WRONG KIND OF PEOPLE!! As usual, Jesus tells a story to make a point and the story does what Jesus’ other parables do; it explodes the lawyer’s conventional thinking and rocks him and us back on our feet. The story is about a Jew who was going back down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. He had probably been to the temple in Jerusalem to worship and now he was traveling down a steep decline, 2000 feet in altitude, to get back to his home in Jericho. This was a dangerous road and still is today, full of twists and turns and switchbacks. It has many places for thieves and robbers to assault and rob a foot traveler. That is what happened to the man. He was robbed and beaten and left by the road to die. Two religious people saw him there and passed him by. They should have stopped to help but they did not. Then his enemy, his despised adversary, came by, bandaged him up, took him to a hotel and paid for him to stay until he got better. It was and is a scandalous story. In the story, Jesus broke many boundaries and offended every member of his audience. He gave us some hard lessons in just a few verses. Here they are: The first lesson is that if we take this great commandment seriously, we will be helping people who are not like us, pretty seriously not like us, but people who need us. There were few people Jesus could have chosen for the story who would be less like each other than a first century Jew and Samaritan. And, to go further, Jesus is talking to a Jewish audience and he makes the hated Samaritan the hero! It would be like telling the story of a wounded American and the hero who saves him is, an Iranian. Jesus says: if we want to love our neighbor as ourselves, we will have to move across some artificial boundaries that we have created. Who do you think of who needs your help and who is very much not like you? The second learning from today is that a neighbor is not just someone close by; it is anyone who needs help that we can give. The man lying wounded on the road needed help and his enemy, the Samaritan, could help him so he did. The third lesson from the story is that caring for our neighbor might involve some risk. Let me hasten to warn you against stopping on a road today because you don’t know if a stranded traveler or hitchhiker will mean harm for you. But the Samaritan in the story was taking a risk when he stopped to help. One risk he took was that if someone else came by, another Jew, they would assume that the Samaritan was himself the perpetrator, the evil doer, the one who had robbed and injured the unconscious traveler! I don’t want you to stop for dangerous situations on the road, but I think it is probably not possible, across the board, to be a neighbor and care for a neighbor without some kind of risk. The fourth lesson from today’s question is that caring for our neighbor, following the great commandment, will probably take each of us out of our comfort zone. If our goal as followers of Christ is just to do what is comfortable, we will not be able to truly follow Christ. People have taken steps out of their comfort zone to try new things. We are commissioning ten people to go to Belize, Central America this morning to continue our construction of a preschool there. It has become a model of education for the whole country. For some people who have not done much building, this will be out of their comfort zone. Most of the new adventures Christ leads us into will be out of our comfort zone! The fifth lesson from this question is that Jesus is more subversive than we think! Many people don’t know Jesus well enough. He challenges us. Jesus had a habit of subverting people’s conventional ideas about God and about listening to God. Jesus made people uncomfortable; in fact people felt threatened by Jesus, threatened when they became smug and complacent and self absorbed. If we fall into complacency and selfishness and idolatry and tribalism, Jesus will make you and me uncomfortable. We can rely on it. The last insight is from being in the season of Lent. Lent is all about growing closer to Christ and being willing to deepen our faith. It is not about giving up chocolate or sweets or desserts for a few days only to gorge ourselves again after it’s over. It is about being willing to be a little uncomfortable, being willing to stretch into the next step of faithfulness and to let our lives be even more consistent with the life of Christ. Lent is about risk and sacrifice and offering more of our prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness for Christ to use. Who is my neighbor? Your neighbor is the person who needs the help that you can offer. Let me close with a story Judy and I saw on Monday night’s, Nightly News, Making a Difference/Good News segment. The story featured a very practical way we can care for each other, for people we don’t know, for people who cannot afford to eat. The name of the café is the SAME CAFÉ. SAME stands for, SO ALL MAY EAT. People go there and eat and pay whatever they are able. If they have no money, they can still have a meal and not be hungry. If they are able to pay more than the usual cost, people do that so that others can have a meal. Our family went there on Friday for lunch and it was a chance to share food and to share life with a variety of people. Here is the NBC News report from Monday evening, March 9, 2009, that tells about this chance to help a neighbor and to be a neighbor. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#29604041 Who is my neighbor? It is someone who is probably not like you, someone who may be very different from you, but someone who needs the help that you can offer. And you may not have to look around very hard for that person. You might come across someone like that each week, just as the compassionate Samaritan did.