Sermon for Proper 10, Year C, RCL: Luke 10:25-37 (Parable of the Good Samaritan)
St. Faith’s Episcopal Church, Cutler Bay, Florida – July 11, 2010
Preacher: The Rev. Jennie Lou D. Reid+

Love does no wrong to a neighbor;
therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Amen.

People who lived in South Dade County in 1992 remember that Hurricane Andrew, the most devastating storm of the century here, brought a blessing in its wake. As folks struggled to cope with the challenges, neighbors reached out to each other. In some cases, neighbors met each other for the first time! People fired up their grills and gathered neighbors for a feast before the food spoiled. On the roads drivers actually paused so that others could enter into their lane. Strangers greeted each other with a friendly remark. For many months we shared our experiences, listened to each other, and offered honest sympathy and encouragement. This good-neighbor spirit was a restoring pleasure, and we were thankful for this grace.

Luke the Evangelist records Jesus’ snapshot of the concept of neighbor in the parable we call “The Good Samaritan.” This parable is nestled in a dialogue between Jesus and a religious lawyer, a scribe, a student of the Torah, the Law of Moses. The dialogue is in the style of a typical debate between a rabbi and a member of his congregation, who discuss the law in order to fine-tune its interpretation. If you have ever tried to have a conversation with a lawyer, you know that often the lawyer’s questions are a set-up, leading to the point the lawyer wishes to make. (This habit from court is hard to break!) It is the scribe who opens the dialogue with his test question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Please notice that his question is based on the premise that eternal life is a reward given to one who does the right things. This premise sets up a kind of living that is calculated from the head, rather that responsive to the heart. Perhaps instead eternal life happens while we are engaged in the right activities and attitudes.

Jesus responds by giving the questioner an opportunity to answer his own question from the perspective of his expertise. The man is a lawyer, a student of Jewish law. He will know the law and have ideas about its meaning. Thus Jesus asks what the law has to say on this subject and how the man interprets what he reads in the law.

In response the man combines two portions of the Pentateuch. The first comes from the passage in Deuteronomy that a faithful Jew would know by heart and recite regularly: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” The lawyer adds to the old formula the idea that a person needs to love God also “with the whole mind,” pouring out love to God not only with will and essential being and stamina, but also with intellectual understanding. Then the lawyer adds a prescription from Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus affirms the lawyer’s answer and adds, “Do this and you will be alive.”

Luke suggests that the lawyer is bothered by Jesus’ response. Perhaps the man thinks the easy solution makes his original question look stupid, but I think another possibility is more likely. After living with a Miami lawyer for over 39 years, I have developed an instinct for discerning the search for a loophole. And in my judgment this lawyer is looking for a loophole when he asks, “And who is my neighbor?” He knows the neighbor is not just the person next door, but he wants to know how far he must fling the boundary.

In all fairness to this scribe, we should remember that in Jesus’ day Jewish society is controlled by strict boundaries. There are expectations for the interactions between Jews and Gentiles, priests and Israelites, men and women, adults and children, slaves and free persons, immigrants and citizens. Jesus, who has been crossing these boundaries by conversing and eating meals with outsiders, seizes this opportunity to help us see a world where all are of value because they are human beings.

Jesus tells a brief story about a man traveling alone on a notoriously dangerous road. We know nothing in particular about him: not his race, his ethnicity, his religion, his status, or his trade. Highway robbers set upon him, take everything he has (including his clothes), and beat him up. His battered, naked, half-dead body reveals no personal identity and looks like a corpse. Three people happen to pass by. The first two – a priest and a Levite – are typical characters in an ethical story. They are kind of like a priest and a deacon in Episcopal jargon. We see first how the professionally religious people respond. Like the lawyer, a priest and a Levite will know the Torah. To touch a dead body causes ritual defilement and requires certain procedures for restoration. However, a priest is required to bury the dead, even a stranger found accidentally. A response for the priest will take time and effort. He journeys on a remote road. There are no witnesses. He decides to walk by on the other side rather than to get involved. The Levite chooses the same response. Getting involved is costly.

Shockingly Jesus identifies the next traveler as a Samaritan. This would be jarring, like the choice of an Arab terrorist today. Jews associated with the Temple in Jerusalem despised Samaritans. When the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel and its capital Samaria in the late 8th century B. C., some of them settled in Samaria, bringing their pagan idols and practices with them. Eventually there was intermarriage between Israelites and pagans, and there was widespread acceptance of diverse worship practices. Jews considered Samaritans unrighteous infidels.

But in Jesus’ story the Samaritan outsider is the one whose heart leaps out to the battered man. He feels deep compassion for the hapless soul and responds with loving care. The Samaritan uses what he has on hand to respond to the man’s needs: wine as an antiseptic, olive oil to soften the wounds, transportation to the nearest public inn, and nursing care through the night. The Samaritan even pays the innkeeper to continue caring for the man as he heals.

Jesus turns to the lawyer and flips his question. Jesus asks: “Which of these three does it seem proved to be a neighbor…?” The neighbor is someone identified not by category or by address, but by behavior. Although the lawyer knows the answer is “the Samaritan,” he chokes on the name. He makes a generic reference instead, saying, “The one who showed mercy.” Jesus replies to him and to us, “Go and do likewise yourself.”

Being a good neighbor involves expressing loving-kindness in the world. It has to do with noticing the people around us and reaching out to help, even in simple, practical ways, like holding a door for the person behind you, pausing a few seconds before beeping the horn after a light has changed to green, or donating food frequently to the church’s outreach ministry. In order to be a good neighbor, we need to be willing to set aside our own agenda and become involved with others, acknowledging them, listening to them, sharing who we are and what we have. This is an engagement with the world that invigorates life.

During many recent decades America’s preschoolers experienced the friendship of a man who served as a model for the good neighbor. He had gifts as a songwriter and puppeteer, and he had a passion to reach out to children with love and warmth through television from its infancy. Wearing a zip-up sweater and comfortable shoes in the calm, focused space of his television living room, this host invited his young viewers and their parents to be his neighbor. In song and word he emphasized that “You Are Special,” “I’m still myself inside,” and “It’s you yourself, it’s you I like.” He believed that children who feel affirmed and accepted have the emotional strength to recognize mistakes and try again and again to behave and choose well. He taught us to notice our feelings, even the scary ones, and to talk about them in our family. He trusted that in learning to love ourselves, we become able to love others. The ancient law in Torah affirms this principle. Every day this host, Fred Rogers, told children, “There is nobody else exactly like you.”

In 2002, less than a year before he died of stomach cancer, this gentleman explained to Dartmouth College graduates, “When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch – that deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive: love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed. So in all that you do, in all of your life, I wish you the strength and the grace to make those choices which will allow you and your neighbor to become the best of whoever you are.”

Day-by-day Mr. Rogers welcomed others into his company. Day-by-day he affirmed others. Day-by-day he took time for people he did not even know. Day-by-day he shared with those who paused to gather in his Neighborhood his creative gifts and his wise observations about living well. To be a good neighbor, go and live this way yourself. Pay attention to others, and share yourself and your talents with them. And in the midst of such living you will find yourself in heaven on earth! Amen.

.............

Romans 13:10
Deuteronomy 6:4-5
from Leviticus 19:18
The New Interpreter’s Bible, volume IX, page 229