Who Is My Neighbor?

Luke 10: 25 – 37

 

(preached on July 14, 2019)

 

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”  Jesus called this the Great Commandment.  It would have been well known by religious people in his time.  So it’s no surprise that, early in our passage for today, from the gospel of Luke, Jesus praises the lawyer when he names this commandment as the way to eternal life.  It’s no surprise that the lawyer knows the commandment by heart.  But apparently he’s looking for more than a refresher course in the great commandment.

 

Maybe he’s looking for a loophole, or maybe he’s looking to put Jesus on the spot, in public.  Or maybe he just wants to make himself look good.  So he presses the point, and asks, “Well, who is my neighbor?”  In response to that question, Jesus tells one of the greatest parables of all time.

 

For generations, people have heard in this parable the simple message that it’s good to help people in need. That is certainly one meaning of the parable.  If that were the only message he wanted to give, though, Jesus wouldn’t have made a Samaritan the hero of the story.  Jesus wants to send a deeper message here.  In the parable of the Good Samaritan, he also sums up what it means to be the people of God.  He shows how God’s people would define a neighbor.  A neighbor, to you and me as people of God, is not only someone like us, someone who is easy to love.  For us, a neighbor might be someone we don’t know, someone we don’t understand, even someone we might want to write off or judge or despise.  A neighbor might be in the crowd on our southern border, waiting in desperation, in the blistering heat.  A neighbor might be a guard on that border, trying to keep order in the midst of all the suffering.

 

The Good Samaritan.  The term is so familiar that the word “Samaritan” has entered our common language.  A Good Samaritan is someone who helps people in need.  If you go on line and google the words “You tube Good Samaritan,” your screen will light up with links to video clips that show people going out of their way to help.  But in Jesus’ day, the term Samaritan would never have been connected with the word, “good.”  People in Jesus’ community despised Samaritans.

 

Jesus’ people had a long history of hatred for the Samaritans.  It’s a complicated, painful story, but it boils down to this: both Jews and Samaritans considered themselves heirs to God’s promises.  Both Jews and Samaritans considered themselves the rightful owners of the land God had promised to the people of Israel when God led them out of slavery in Egypt.  The people listening to Jesus that day would have bristled in anger when he came to the part of the parable where the lawyer admits that the person who helps the wounded traveler is a Samaritan.  Some of the people listening might even have walked away in disgust.  But it’s a Samaritan who turns out to be neighbor to the wounded traveler.

The parable begins with a man heading down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.  Actually, it wasn’t such a great idea for the man to travel this road by himself.  The road was rocky, full of twists and turns.  It descended steeply, from the mountains around Jerusalem, down to the town of Jericho, 1300 feet below sea level.  The road was known as a hangout for robbers.  Bandits might be hiding behind every rock.  A person who had to travel that road was advised not to go alone, because it was so dangerous.  Sadly, for this man the worst predictions about that dangerous road come true.  Bandits attack him, take his clothes, beat him up, and leave him for dead.

 

Fortunately for him, the road sees a lot of traffic.  It isn’t long before a priest comes upon this badly wounded man.  Now in those days the priests took turns serving in the temple, and when a priest’s turn came up, he had to make himself available.  But if a priest had had contact with a dead body, it would make him unclean, unfit to serve in the Temple.  Who knows what’s going through his mind when he sees the wounded man? It might have been something like, “I’d better not risk making myself unclean.  If I did, I wouldn’t be able to serve as a priest for a while.  Better not take the chance.  After all, people are depending on me.  It would not be fair to them.  No, someone else will come along and help this guy.”

 

So the priest goes on his way.  Then a Levite comes along.  Levites were those who helped set up the Temple for worship.  They often worked in shifts that might last for a month.  They were similar in some ways to deacons in our church: leaders of the Temple’s ministry, but with less authority than the priests.  So you might think the Levite would have less to lose.  But, if he had contact with a dead body, he would also render himself unclean, and, like the priest, he would miss his chance to serve in the temple.  He wouldn’t want to do that.

 

To get back to those “you tube” videos of Good Samaritans, in most of them, the priest and the Levite, the two who passed by, come out looking like the bad guys.  They appear so full of their own importance that they can’t be bothered to stop and help.  But I’m not sure that Jesus wants us to see them that way.  He doesn’t give much detail about the priest and the Levite, but his listeners would have known that both of them face a serious dilemma when they see the man lying half dead in the road.  As Methodist elder Dee Dee Azhikakath explains, they take their responsibilities seriously.  They are caught between what they understand to be their responsibility to God, and their responsibility to another human being.

 

All of us live lives filled with responsibilities.  There are our families, our jobs, errands to run, food shopping to do. Family members need our attention and care.  People count on us.  So, ask yourself, if you were driving to pick up your child at school, and you saw a wounded person lying on the side of the road, would you stop the car, get out, administer first aid, call an ambulance?

 

Or if I were dressed in my best clothes on my way to an important meeting, would I stop and help someone sitting by the wreckage of their car?  Would any of us take the time to meet a recovering addict at the store and buy her some bread and milk for her kids?  Or would we go on by?  Would we tell ourselves that surely someone else would stop and help?

 

Once a homeless woman approached a pastor for help.  But because he was busy with what he considered more important responsibilities, he turned her away.  He offered to pray for her instead. The homeless woman, it is said, wrote this poem as a response too that insensitive pastor:

 

“I was hungry, and you formed a study group to discuss my hunger. I was imprisoned, and you crept off quietly to your chapel and prayed for my release. I was naked, and in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance. I was sick, and you knelt and thanked God for your health. I was homeless, and you preached to me about the spiritual shelter of God’s love. I was lonely, and you left me alone to pray for me. You seem so holy, so close to God, but I am still very hungry – and lonely – and cold.”

 

Let’s not be so quick to condemn the priest and the Levite.  They are, if we’re honest with ourselves, not that different from us.

 

“Who is my neighbor?”  For you and me, as God’s people, who is our neighbor?  Jesus is very clear that a Samaritan, someone people of his day would have despised, is neighbor to the wounded traveler.  You and I can be neighbors to a world in need when we reach out to help, even when the person in need is very different from us: the man just released from prison, the woman on welfare, the immigrant far from home.  And we are neighbors to a world in need when we reach out to help, even when taking the time to help means putting our own plans on hold.

 

On a May morning some years ago, a mountain climber named Daniel Mazur was climbing in the Himilayas.  He was less than 1,000 feet from the summit of Mt. Everest.  But he never got to the summit.  He abandoned his own climb to the top in order to save another climber, an Australian named Lincoln Hall.

 

The previous night, Hall had succumbed to the lack of oxygen that is a hazard in high altitudes.  Two guides tried to help him but they had to leave to save themselves.  Hall was declared dead.  When Mazur and his team found him the next morning, though, he was sitting up but disoriented. He was given emergency assistance and the team worked to take him to a base camp further down the mountain. Hall fully recovered from the experience. Unfortunately, Mazur’s group had expended so much energy helping Hall they could no longer complete the journey to the summit.

 

While Mazur’s team was helping Hall, two Italian climbers passed by en route to the top. They claimed they didn’t understand English and therefore couldn’t help. It’s also true that, in the world of high-altitude climbing, because of the risk that climbers might lose their own lives if they try to save a victim, it’s often acceptable to pass a climber in distress, especially if they’re judged to be too far gone.

 

But Dan Mazur made a different choice.  Because of his choice, he missed the chance to reach the top of Everest.  Not only he, but also the other climbers in his group missed that chance.  But Dan Mazur gained the chance to save a life. Daniel Hall was given new life in a base camp on the side of a mountain.

 

Who is my neighbor?  How do we as God’s people define our neighbor?  For you and me as God’s people, our neighbor might be someone like us, someone we trust.  But a neighbor is not only someone like us.  A neighbor might be someone we don’t know, someone we don’t understand, even someone we might want to write off or judge or despise.  Our neighbor might be someone who deprives us of the chance to fulfill a treasured dream.

 

When you love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind, your neighbor might not be who you expect.   May God give us eyes to recognize our neighbor, and hands that do no hesitate to help.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rev. Elva Merry Pawle

Pentecost 4