A Good Neighbor

Sermon Luke 10: 25-37 September 1, 2019

A Good Neighbor

The story of the Good Samaritan is a story you have heard since the cradle or just about that long. When you hear the words “Good Samaritan”, you might think of the parable or perhaps the many hospitals with that name or centers for assistance. Or perhaps the “Good Samaritan” laws for those who assist people along the side of the road after an accident. All these references are to “good deeds”.

We naturally equate this parable with doing good deeds, even Jesus tells the lawyer at the end of the story “Go and do the same”.

But this is not a story about good deeds;

it is a question about eternal life.

The lawyer’s first question is what brings us eventually to this parable: thus many would be led to believe that to receive eternal life we must go around doing acts of kindness. If we spend our lives picking people up out of ditches, then God will surely recognize us and then grant us our reward.

Unfortunately, this is how the words of Jesus have been reinterpreted through time. We seem to need a way to make excuses for the choices others make. When we provide rational excuses for someone else’s inappropriate behavior, then it gives us a way out for our inappropriate behavior-our excuses. “I would have stopped, but I was on my way to a doctor’s appointment I had been waiting for for months.” “therefore God, my eternal life is intact, right?”

First the lawyer:

Jesus has been healing the sick on the Sabbath, he has been associating himself with unclean people, he has welcomed known sinners and so this lawyer seeks to find out if Jesus really knows the Law; to clarify to Jesus That HE does not obey the Law.

Hosea 6:6 “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings”. From this verse we know God requires more than obedience.

Jesus turns the question on the lawyer and he responds with the correct formula answer.

He knows that God requires this double love; love of God and love of neighbor.

We have a God who is all about relationship. It would seem that eternal life has to do with this double love; the ability to love God and our neighbor. As believers we then conclude that eternal life is about doing, about loving and trying to do what is right.

So, the lawyer who understands justice and judgment wants Jesus to clarify and asks, “who is my neighbor?”.

Second, we enter now into the parable.

The focus of this parable is on two people, the person in the ditch and the one who rescues him.

The man in the ditch is without description. He is anthropos, everyman. Perhaps like the “everyman” in the 15^th century play who was looking for eternal life. Everyman, any man, humanity, was lying in the ditch in need of rescuing, in need of someone to come and save him.

Two religious people pass by and do not even bother to stop, as a matter of fact; they make a wide berth around the victim in order to avoid him.

We have justified these two people over the years by saying the priest was unable to come near anything unclean and that is why he could not stop and that the Levite was on his way to the temple and if he stopped then he would have too much ritual to go through to carry out his functions in the temple.

Yet, Jesus doesn’t give any explanation as to why they didn’t stop!

We want to rationalize their behavior because it helps us rationalize our own.

It is the Samaritan,

the one despised by the Jews

who shows pity.

In the apocryphal scripture Sirach they refer to the Samaritans as “stupid” people. Who are the people we refer to with that name?

It is exactly this detested person that Jesus gives the hero role to.

It would have been a whole lot better if the Samaritan was the one who was in the ditch. It’s always easier to do kind things for those who are considered less than ourselves. “We’re good people we serve soup to the poor every Saturday night”, We’ve turned our house into a shelter for the homeless, we went to Africa and built a school for orphans; all these acts of doing things for the “less fortunate” make us feel good, make us feel justified.

Remember friends, we don’t have the identity of the person in the ditch except “anthropos” humanity. He could have been wealthy, or poor, he could have been royalty or a common man.

What we have is the identity of the one who came to save,

a person despised by many,

a person oppressed, rejected,

acquainted with grief and

not held in esteem.

Do we recognize someone else who fits this description?

This person, this Samaritan, is moved with pity.

The Greek word actually means moved from your gut, a very deep emotion, one that musters up all of your body’s senses. Several places in Scripture Jesus is moved with the same pity, the same emotion.

Everyman (humanity) is lying in the ditch and receives grace and mercy from someone despised by others, everyman accepts this grace without a word.

Notice that the person in the ditch does not have a dialogue yet he is the object lesson for us. Everyman or humanity has the opportunity of receiving grace, has the opportunity to receive eternal life.

God’s justice and God’s grace is not limited to a select few, but is open to all.

A few years ago, I took a youth group to spend three days working at a homeless shelter in Louisville. The shelter was a hotel and those who lived there were learning all the skills of hotel work. Cooking, cleaning, management and so on. It was an eye-opening experience and a lesson about ‘all God’s creatures’.

I asked myself, ‘would I be willing to be vulnerable and get help from one of these people? I came to serve them, this was my mission to feel good about what I did not what they did for me.’  And yet, my life was altered and my tunnel vision changed.

I think the experience at the homeless shelter was recognizing the dignity restored to the men and women in the hotel.

People, once homeless, were given new life.

The men working in the kitchen were able to teach us how to do their job.

They taught us with pride and

helped me to realize that I wasn’t there just doing something to lift them out of the ditch

but

they were doing something to lift me

out of my short sightedness.

Thirdly, we then want to identify who is the neighbor.

Jesus, at the end of this parable turns the tables on the question who is my neighbor to who was the neighbor.

The answer was the one who showed mercy,

the one who approached others with grace.

Bonhoeffer says, “Neighborliness is not a quality in other people, it is simply their claim on ourselves”. I am the neighbor; you are the neighbor in this story.

Friday and Saturday our local CCYF (Community Christian Youth Fellowship) had a weekend experience at Camp OOTB. We had 11 youth gather to sleep in tents right on the water of Occohannock creek. We cooked our dinner over a fire, roasted marshmallows, made ourselves vulnerable to each other through challenge games, climbed a rock wall, went canoeing and swimming.

We learned a lot about each other.

We bonded.

We worshiped.

We grew in our understanding of our neighbor.

I think too often we choose not to participate in events or charity opportunities, or programs because the people involved are just not cool enough for us,

or the venue is only where ‘those’ people hang out.

Sometimes being a good neighbor is more about

 how we make ourselves vulnerable among the least of these

and allow them to be the teacher,

to be the ones who open the gates of heaven for us.

Perhaps, that’s the point Jesus was trying to make with this story more than anything else…perhaps.  

We as followers of Jesus Christ have the opportunity to share his grace with all those who we meet. We have the opportunity to share the good news of eternal life with humanity.

You see this parable of Jesus is meant to throw us into new awareness.

It is meant to help us understand the fullness of the Law.

The fullness of the Law is that it is about justice and grace.

The two go hand in hand, you can’t have justice without grace nor grace without justice.

If there was no grace in the Law then we’d all still be in the ditch.

But, grace is what lifts us out of the ditch and gives us new life, eternal life.

We are called to live our lives with the same grace that we have received.

The Good Samaritan is not just a good deed story

nor a rescue event,

but an example of how God

reached out to humanity through his son Jesus Christ

who gave his life for us so that we might reach out to others and so it goes…

Amen.