Texts: Amos 7:7-17 Colossians 1:1-14 (Series C. 7th Sunday after Pentecost) Psalm 82 Luke 10:25-37
But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbour?" Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers...".
A certain woman went down from Montreal to the Eastern townships and ran over a lump of wood on the road. A nail was protruding from the wood. Which punctured her tire and left her stranded by the side of the road. After opening the hood of her car, she got back into her car, locked the doors and sat in the car, praying for help!
By chance, there came a limousine that way with a bumper sticker that read, "Smile, God loves you!" When the occupants saw the stranded woman, they moved over to the far lane and passed by quickly without smiling.
And likewise, there came a sports car with a mobile phone and a bumper sticker saying, "Honk if you love Jesus!" The man who was driving passed by, in fact put his foot down, moved over to the far lane and drove on. He didn’t honk or use his mobile to call the ACC about the woman's dilemma.
But a working man, as he travelled to his job, came to the spot where the woman was and, when he saw her open hood, and flat tire, he had compassion on her. He stopped his old beat-up pick up truck - which had no bumper sticker - and crossed the road, and offered to change the tire.
The man took out the spare tire, jacked up the car, removed the flat tire, and replaced it with the spare. When he had finished, the woman tried to pay him.
He refused the money, saying, "If my wife were stranded on the highway with a flat tire, I'd want some Good Samaritan to stop and help her out. "He returned to his beat up truck, smiled, honked at her, and went his way.
Which of these three was a neighbour to the woman who had a flat tire?
Of course, you recognised in this story the parable that Jesus told about the Good Samaritan. The reason why Jesus told this story in the first place is important.
A man who is knew his Old Testament law asked Jesus a question, not because he didn’t know the answer (or rather, he thought he knew the answer) but he wanted to trick Jesus into saying something that would point out that he was a false teacher.
"What must I do to inherit eternal life?" is the first question that the lawyer asks Jesus. The answer is simple. It comes straight from the Old Testament. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind"; and "Love your neighbour as you love yourself." Jesus congratulates the lawyer for this answer, saying: "Do this and you will live." (clap your hands).
But the lawyer isn’t going to let Jesus get away with simply quoting the "love God and love your neighbour" rule, so he asks, "Tell me mister, who is my neighbour?
The lawyer continues, "I am confused by the immense range of possibilities which this commandment places before me, Jesus of Nazareth! Shouldn’t we set up priorities of need?
Shouldn’t we stipulate certain types of "neighbours" who deserve to be helped over and above those who seem to abuse this "love God, love others" rule simply to get themselves out of trouble? All this must be cleared up first, Jesus of Nazareth, before I can begin to love my neighbour in a concrete way.
Tell me now, who is my neighbour?" The lawyer didn’t really want to know what the answer was. He wanted a precise definition about the meaning of the word "neighbour", and so long as everyone kept discussing, there was no need to get serious about doing anything.
Maybe he was hoping that Jesus would draw a line between those who were "neighbours" and those who were to be ignored. In this way he could feel quite justified in ignoring certain types of people like lepers, or tax collectors, prostitutes, people of colour or gays and lesbians or those hopelessly enmeshed in sin.
Whatever the lawyer’s motives were, Jesus took the opportunity to make this a teaching moment. Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan and ends with a disconcerting reversal of the question of who my neighbour is. The reversal runs as follows: Who among these - the priest, Levite and Samaritan - had behaved as a neighbour?
Who was a neighbour to the man who had fallen into the hands of the robbers? Was it the priest – a man dedicated to serving God in the temple, who most likely had just come from the temple since he was going down that road?
Was it the Levite – a teacher of the Law – someone who surely knew what was right and wrong?
Was it the Samaritan – an outsider, half-breed, not considered part of God's family, ignored and snubbed by people like the priest and the Levite? In fact, this stranger would have had every cause to just walk on by for this very reason. "Who acted like a neighbour to the man attacked by robbers", Jesus asked?
Imagine you were there when Jesus first told this story. There would have been voices of protects. "No, not the Samaritan. He can’t be the hero! This half-breed heathen can’t be the one who goes out of his way to care for his enemy! I can’t believe that Jesus is saying that if you want to be right with God, then be like the Samaritan".
The teacher of the Law must have found it terribly hard to say out loud, "The person who had been a true neighbour to the dying man in the ditch was the one who had been kind to him – the Samaritan.
As you know, this story inspires Christians over the years to help and show concern for those in desperate need - those "out there", those in other countries, the poor, the starving, the homeless, the refugee and so on. Generally we are very good at supporting "the neighbour" through Lutheran World Relief, World Vision, and so on.
But I want to also point out that our neighbour is also the person right here in our community, whom we often see, whom we often ignore, whom we often don’t want to associate with, whom we try to avoid because we know that it will cost us money and time.
Perhaps the neighbour who needs us at this time is the person sitting in front of you, behind you, next to you. Too often we look to far away places to find people whom we can be a neighbour to and overlook those who are right under our noses.
We don’t have to look too far to find people who are longing for some kind of human warmth, love, and kindness – people in our family, among our friends and relatives, those in our neighbourhood, and there will always be those strangers looking for compassion and kindness from us.
This story about the Good Samaritan is one that I have preached, taught and told many times, but it is a story that I always stumble over because in it I see just how many times I have crossed to the other side of the road and walked on pretending that I didn’t see the pain, the need, the hurt, because I knew that stopping would cost me something – maybe energy, money, time, and aggravation.
This parable hits us hard as it defines what kind of neighbours we ought to be.
This kind of neighborliness isn’t just a once in a while thing when it suits us, it is the full-time work of the Christian. Jesus says to us, "You go, then, and do the same." "Don’t just talk about it, do it!"
That’s hard, really hard. We all know how hard it is to be the kind of good Samaritan that Jesus is describing in this story. Rather than identifying with one of the three main characters in this divine drama, maybe it’s better first of all to see ourselves lying there in the ditch half dead, bleeding, crying desperately for help.
Jesus doesn’t pass us by but is filled with compassion, heals our wounds, and assures us that his care is ongoing – just like that of the Samaritan who booked the wounded man into a motel until he recovered.
The truth is, if our eternal life depended on the way we carry out Jesus’ command to "love God and to love others", then without a doubt we would be doomed. This command of Jesus to "go and do" reminds us just how much we need Jesus to be our Good Samaritan.
Having experienced this overwhelming love that knows no boundaries, the Holy Spirit stirs within us the will to be like Christ to others. We are stirred to take action right now as we hear again and again these words of Jesus, "Go, then, and do the same".
People get caught up in all kinds of things that turn their lives upside down.
There are people all around us who are half dead and lying in a ditch. Some are half-dead physically, others emotionally, others spiritually. They are powerless to do anything about rescuing themselves.
As we come to the Lord’s Table this morning.
May God grant us the will and the love to truly be good neighbours
not just to the familiar, but also the unfamiliar.
Amen.
Rev. Samuel King-Kabu
July 15, 2007