Who is my neighbor?

When we moved into our home 10 years ago, we had an Irish water spaniel named Lucy who was food aggressive. By that I mean that she would stop at nothing to claim food as her own.  She would climb on cabinets, steal from plates on the table while you were looking the other way, dig through garbage.  So instead of installing our trash can in the universal spot under the kitchen sink, we screwed a trash can to the back of our basement door…a door which the dog could not open. For 10 years we opened the door to the basement each time we needed to throw something away.

We lost Lucy in 2016 to an aggressive cancer. I miss that big goofy prima donna, but I no longer have to worry about food on the countertops.  And sometime this winter, as we were reshuffling things in the house, we decided we could reduce the steps we were taking in the kitchen by restoring the trash to a more traditional location under the sink.

Do you know how many times I have gone to the old spot looking for the trash can?

Change is hard. It’s been about 6 months.  I STILL open the basement door about once a day to deposit a handful of kitchen scraps.  The neural pathways carved over ten years are hard to remap. Clearly 6 months are not enough to override the years of putting trash in one specific spot.

The story of the Good Samaritan is one of those that many of us have had ingrained in our hearts for a lifetime.  If you grew up in a church…if you’ve sat in the pews for a year or two, you’ve likely heard the story…and interpretations of the story. It’s likely that you have a specific way of reading this story – your own Good Samaritan neural pathways that have formed over time.

This text was, in fact, the topic of the first sermon I ever preached about in a church.  I focused on how it might have been interpreted through the ages, and we used different forms of reading with variations of language. I changed up the characters in one reading to include a homeless person, a police officer, an EMT and a gang member. And afterward, a retired clergy person informed me that I had missed the entire point of the text…

In his interpretation, this was an allegory about the ills of institutional religion and about the ways our neighbor might be someone unexpected and completely unrelated to our system of knowing right from wrong…Which is actually what I was trying to get at, but using different images, different vocabulary, a more contemporary setting.

But I was hurt by the scolding I got from the clergy person — I’m sure he’d argue that his reading of scripture – a very literal, historically and culturally bound one, was the correct reading of scripture, and mine was not. 

Let me be clear….I’m not an advocate for anything goes – I don’t believe that scripture can mean anything we need it to mean…but I do understand that when we are talking about texts that are thousands and thousands of years old, texts that have been translated, retranslated, back translated and revisited, there are best practices for reading and understanding, and there is room for us to bring our personal experience to the text we are reading.  And there is room for us as a community to wrestle with our understanding. And there is ALWAYS room for us to see a new thing, see a new way, gain a new learning.

Today, I want to focus on a way of understanding this text that might be a little different from what you got in Sunday school.

A lawyer…someone with power and position in Jesus’ society, and someone who would have been very good at teasing out the finer points of compliance, is asking for a clarification from Jesus, a rabbi, about the finer points of the law.  Actually, he begins by asking how he can achieve eternal life…no small endeavor.

There is a little bit of a power dynamic at play here…the lawyer, a man of answers and social position is testing this newcomer radical Rabbi – the one who seems to be gaining more attention and a larger crowd each day.

Jesus, in a way he demonstrates time and time again, is not going to just hand the lawyer a simple answer.  He’s not going to offer a black-and-white, universally understood declaration of how the law works here.  He’s going to make his listener think. 

Jesus answers the lawyer’s first question with a question – what do you read in the Law?

 (The lawyer) 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."

And Jesus says to him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live."

And then the lawyer seeks further clarification.  Yes, but WHO is my neighbor?

Still unwilling to give a simple answer, Jesus answers with a story that is by now so familiar to many of us:

"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.

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.

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.'

For a long time, a dominant interpretation of this story has been that it is a story about how bad the religious authorities are.  And perhaps at times there is important use for that reading. 

But I want us to pay attention here to what Jesus does.  The lawyer asks – who is my neighbor.  And Jesus doesn’t actually provide an answer to that question…he describes instead the actions that various people take in response to someone’s need. 

Jesus describes what a neighbor would DO.  Jesus describes who is BEING a neighbor. 

The first two come across the injured man hurried on…crossing to the other side. But the third person stops and cares for the person, takes on responsibility for tending their wounds, delivers them into the hands of safety and care.  That third person, who happens to be a Samaritan, extends compassion and care for the one in need.

I think we are inclined to read this story for what it tells us about how people are situated in society.  How the social structure works.  Sometimes we read it as a critique on position or righteousness.

But Jesus is also telling a story about how we choose to behave. What we choose to do in response to another’s need.  How we embrace with compassion the person that is before us.  No matter their status – no matter the labels society wants to put on them. 

With whom will we choose to behave as a neighbor? Who chooses to be a neighbor to us in our times of need? What does that look like?

When asked about how to obtain eternal life, Jesus accepts the answer that we are called to love God and our neighbor.  When pressed, he refuses to tell us who are neighbor is…but rather shows us how neighbors act.

The bottom line – we belong to one another.  Connected by common genes even when our experiences are worlds apart, we belong to one another.  We are responsible to and for one another.  We have been created by the same God, even if we don’t call out the same name for that God.

This week, I will be watching for the places I am hesitant to act like a neighbor.  I will watch for the places where I find myself unsure of who my neighbor is.  I pray I will be reminded that the answer lies in how I choose to TREAT as my neighbor.

Will you join me?

May it be so.  Amen.

Sources: 

Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship (Year C, Volume 3). Proper 10, Luke 10: 25 - 37, commentary by Stanley P. Saunders & Hierald Osorto.

Ministry Matters website (https://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/9716/power-play). Power Play by Rev. Dr. Amy Butler, July 10, 2019.