Won't You Be My Neighbor?
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
David C. Wright
Luke 10:25 - 37
October 18, 2009

          I am sometimes overwhelmed by all the appeals for help I receive. Just this week I received an email from a young man in South Africa who is trying to help his countrymen grow crops on land he has purchased.  He was asking for seed money, literally!  This week I also received requests for medical research, prison ministry, hunger programs, a potential missionary to Niger, NPR, and (this morning) the church!  How do we sort out all these requests?  And how do we keep from becoming callous to real needs around us? Needs we should respond to because we could make a real difference?  Someone once asked Jesus a similar question.  He responded with one of his best-known and best-loved parables, the parable of the Good Samaritan. (Read Luke 10:25-29)
          25  Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
          26  He said to him, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?"
          27  He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."
          28  And he said to him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live."
          29  But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?”
          The lawyer in the story was an expert Old Testament law, particularly in the first five books of the Bible.  The question he asks Jesus was a standard one often asked to test new rabbis.  “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus responds by asking this expert in the law what the law demands. 
          The lawyer quotes from Deut. 5, the “Shema,” regarded as the very heart of Old Testament law.  It demands that we love God with everything we’ve got.  He then continues with a quote from Lev. 19 that summarizes the ethical demands of the law: “love your neighbor as yourself.”  Jesus, who gave a similar summary of the law himself on another occasion, commends the man and challenges him to put his words into practice.
          But, the man becomes a little defensive.  He asks for clarification of the commandment to love his neighbor. “Who is my neighbor?” he wants to know.  The command to love our neighbor is too broad for him.  He wants specific rules to define it.  “Surely there are limits here,” he implies. 
          And so Jesus tells him a story.  “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.”  (Luke 10:30) The lonely seventeen-mile road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a notorious one.  It descended 3300 feet through harsh country following many twists and blind turns.  It was frequently the site of robbery.  A man would have had to be reckless or foolish or desperate to make such a journey alone.  And sure enough he was mugged and beaten and left half dead.
          “Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.  So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.”  (Luke 10: 31-32)
          There is irony here that a priest, a religious man who had likely just finished his liturgical duties in the Jerusalem temple, would ignore this injured man.  Why would he refuse to help?  Perhaps he suspected that the man was already dead.  If so, any contact he had with him would have made the priest ritually unclean.  He would then have to undergo days of time-consuming rituals to remove that defilement.  So he walked on.
          The Levite, also a religious official, could have had the same concerns.  Or, he could have been afraid that the prone man was a decoy, lying there as part of an ambush by robbers.  So he walked on.
          Whether it was because they didn’t want the inconvenience caused by breaking religious rules or because of fear, both men failed to show love to this dying man, to treat him like a neighbor.
          “But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity.  He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them.  Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.  The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’”  (Luke 10:33-35)
          The introduction of a Samaritan into the story would have been entirely unexpected by the listeners.  Jews and Samaritans hated one another, a hatred rooted in centuries of racial as well as theological matters.  Think about centuries-long religious and racial hatred in the Middle East today, and you’ll get the idea!  And to use a Samaritan as the hero of a story would have seemed unpatriotic!  It would be like making the hero of the story the good Taliban leader today.  It would have been that jarring.
          Notice how the Samaritan responds.  First, he was moved by pity.  Being a neighbor often begins with empathy, an ability to see things and feel things the way someone else does.  Having a soft heart. 
When I was doing graduate work in Marriage and Family Therapy at the University of Maryland, a professor asked each of us in a class to say a sentence or two about how our week had been.  As we went around the circle, the professor stopped after one young woman spoke.  “What feeling did you hear when Abby was talking?” she asked us.  She expected each of us to respond.  Now I didn’t have a clue, so I confess I just made something up.  Then the professor turned to Abby and said, “I heard tremendous sadness when you spoke.  What’s going on?”  Abby immediately broke down into tears, telling us that her father had had a heart attack earlier that day.  That professor had a tremendous sense of empathy, and I determined at that moment to try to develop that ability.  I’m still working on it.
I think many of us struggle to feel empathy today.  Some of us are so overwhelmed by the great needs around us that as a defense, we’ve learned not to feel any compassion anymore.  And sometimes our prejudices get in the way of us feeling empathy.  Can you feel empathy toward welfare recipients, drug addicts, prisoners, or people of other races or nationalities?  The Samaritan’s response begins with empathy and feelings of compassion.  But it didn’t end there.
          The Samaritan took direct action, bandaging and treating his wounds, and bringing him to an inn.  He also took indirect action, giving money to someone else to continue his care.  He took costly action.
          One Sunday this summer, my wife and I were filling in, by leading music for the 9:30AM service.  We had practiced with a member of the band during the week, but were supposed to meet him at 8:30 that Sunday morning to rehearse once more.  But he didn’t show up.  Finally we got word that he was on his way.  When he arrived we learned that while driving in to the church, he came upon an obviously drunken young man, who was reeling along the busy road, clearly a danger to himself.  Our band member stopped, called the police, and sat down with the man to keep him occupied and off the road until the police could arrive.  He even shared his faith with him a little bit!
          Now, our band member could have done nothing, rationalizing that it was the man’s own fault for getting himself so drunk.  Or, he could have just called the police and kept on driving.  But God gave him a heart of compassion for this man and that compassion led to very concrete action.  He stopped and helped, even though it caused him to be late for a church commitment.  He was a neighbor to that drunken man. 
          Back to our Bible story.  Jesus said to the lawyer, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”  He said, “The one who showed him mercy.”  Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”  (Luke 10:36,37) Did you notice how Jesus changes the lawyer’s original question?  The lawyer asked, “Who is my neighbor?”, seeking to limit what was required of him.  Jesus instead asks, “Who was a neighbor to the man?”.  You see, if someone can be defined as “not-my-neighbor,” then I don’t need to love him or care for her in a time of need.   Jesus thinks that’s the wrong question.  He says that your neighbor is anyone in need that you have the ability to help.
          In the movie “Walking Across Egypt,” Mattie, a widow, is moved by her pastor’s message to care for “the least of these,” just like you would care for Jesus.  She reaches out to a 16 year-old boy, whose parents abandoned him and who is serving time for stealing a car.  After she visits him at a correctional center, he escapes and flees to her house.  Thinking he has been released, she allows him to stay in her home until he is apprehended and returned to finish his sentence. 
          Mattie’s adult children are very upset about all of this.  They tell her that the boy is a no good thief who is taking advantage of her.  She tells them that no one ever loved him before.  Besides she adds, “The Bible says-“ her daughter interrupts.  “The Bible is full of wonderful stories, Mama.  It is a monument to humanity, but that’s all it is- it’s just a story book.”
          “The good Lord says that we must help the least of these thy brethren,” Mattie insists.  “That boy is one of the least of these.” 
          “You’ve already done plenty for him.  You’ve visited him, housed him,  fed him, and gone to bat for him,” the daughter replies.  “Doesn’t the Bible say when to stop?”
          Mattie replies emphatically, “No.”
And that is Jesus’ point in the story of the Good Samaritan.  We can’t decide that some people are our neighbors and others are not.  Now I am not denying that we are finite beings and we do have some limits.  But most of us and most of our churches haven’t come close to reaching those limits yet.

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