February 25: "Who is My Neighbor?" (2nd Sunday in Lent)

THE WORD IN THE GOSPEL  Luke 10:25-37

A legal expert stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to gain eternal life?”

Jesus replied, “What is written in the Law? How do you interpret it?”

He responded, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus said to him, “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.”

But the legal expert wanted to prove that he was right, so he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus replied, “A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. He encountered thieves, who stripped him naked, beat him up, and left him near death.

“Now it just so happened that a priest was also going down the same road. When he saw the injured man, he crossed over to the other side of the road and went on his way.

“Likewise, a Levite came by that spot, saw the injured man, and crossed over to the other side of the road and went on his way.

“A Samaritan, who was on a journey, came to where the man was. But when he saw him, he was moved with compassion. The Samaritan went to him and bandaged his wounds, tending them with oil and wine. Then he placed the wounded man on his own donkey, took him to an inn, and took care of him.

“The next day, he took two full days’ worth of wages and gave them to the innkeeper. He said, ‘Take care of him, and when I return, I will pay you back for any additional costs.’

Jesus said to the legal expert: “What do you think? Which one of these three was a neighbor to the man who encountered thieves?”

Then the legal expert said, “The one who demonstrated mercy toward him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

MESSAGE     “Who is My Neighbor?”

What do you think of when you hear the term, the good Samaritan?

In our society, people use the phrase “good Samaritan” to mean “charitable do-gooders.” We see the term “Samaritan” used in hospital names, such as Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Suffern NY or Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Islip, Long Island.

There’s an organization in Great Britain called “The Samaritans” that is dedicated to providing support, a 24-hour hotline, and other resources aimed at preventing suicide.

Samaritan’s Purse is an international evangelical Christian organization that provides spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world, including victims of war, poverty, natural disasters, disease, and famine, all with the purpose of sharing God’s love.

In Australia, there’s an organization called the Good Samaritan Donkey Sanctuary, which offers shelter, food, refuge and care for abandoned, neglected, mistreated or ill donkeys. It also offers a home for donkeys whose owners are no longer able to care for them.

Many countries around the world, including our own, have “Good Samaritan” laws, which offer legal protection for people who give reasonable assistance to those who are injured, ill, in peril, or otherwise incapacitated. The protection is intended to reduce people’s hesitation to provide assistance out of fear of being sued or prosecuted for unintentional injury or wrongful death.

So it’s safe to say that this story that Jesus told, and this man who came to be called the Good Samaritan, are pretty well known and popular.

As we journey through Lent, we are listening closely to Jesus by looking at some of the parables that he told during his ministry. Last week, I said that I’m using as a resource a wonderful book by Amy-Jill Levine titled “Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi.” In her book, Dr. Levine notes that Jesus’ parables were always designed to provoke people, confront their beliefs or attitudes, or make them feel uncomfortable. So if we view Jesus’ parables as a nice, happy stories that make us feel warm and fuzzy, then we aren’t hearing these story the way Jesus wants us to hear them.

As we listen to this story, I think our tendency is to put ourselves in the story as the Good Samaritan. We – as good, merciful people – are to care for and help those who are sick or poor or hurt. So, the message of the parable is that we should help strangers and be charitable toward others. There’s nothing provocative about that. In fact, it was a big part of Jesus’ entire message: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Part of the reason this story of the Good Samaritan doesn’t bother or provoke us is because we don’t understand the significance of the story. We are some 2,000 years removed from the first-century Galilean setting in which Jesus first told the story, so we aren’t hearing it the way the people of Jesus’ time would have heard it.

Jesus tells the parable as a way of answering an expert in religious law who, somewhat maliciously tries to test Jesus, first by asking what he had to do to attain eternal life. Jesus turns the question back on the expert by saying, well, what do you read in the law? The legal expert says, rightly, “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” But that’s not good enough for the expert, because he then asks Jesus to define who, exactly, are the neighbors that we are supposed to love. In other words, he wanted to know who he had to love, and who he could ignore or hate.

The stage is set for a provocative story. And so Jesus delivers one.

A man traveling along the road from Jerusalem to Jericho is beaten, stripped, robbed, and left for dead. First a priest and then a Levite, who was sort of a lesser priest, pass by without stopping to help. Jesus sets up a situation in which those listening to the story just knew that the third person would be the one to stop and show mercy to the man who was beaten.

And that’s when Jesus hits his listeners hard. That third person was a Samaritan, who not only stops, but cares for the man, cleans and binds his wounds, and takes him to an inn so he can rest and recuperate.

This would have shocked the people listening to this story. Not the fact that the priest and Levite didn’t stop to help, but the fact that a Samaritan did.

We don’t share the sense of indignation that Jesus’ audience must have felt because we don’t understand the complicated history and relationship between the Jews of Galilee and the Samaritans. The Jews and the Samaritans were sworn enemies – political as well as religious enemies. Both groups had their own temple. Both group claimed to practice true worship of the one God, and accused the other of false worship. At times, the hostility between the Jews and Samaritans would result in small-scale attacks on each other’s villages and towns. And at times, each group hoped for the annihilation of the other.

So for the Galilean Jews to hear Jesus describe one of their sworn enemies as a merciful, charitable person would have been absurd. To describe a Samaritan as “good” would be as ludicrous as calling someone a “good” murderer.

Both the Jews and the Samaritans painted each other with a broad brush of hatred and contempt and suspicion. Members of each group were stereotyped by members of the other group. To the Jews, ALL Samaritans were evil, and to the Samaritans, ALL Jews were evil.

The Jewish people hearing this story for the first time were probably thinking, “If I were left for dead in that ditch, I’d rather DIE than have a Samaritan help me.” “I’d rather die than admit that a Samaritan could possibly be good.”

Jesus’ point was to force people to realize that our “neighbors” include not only those we like, not only those who are like us, but even those who we consider to be sworn enemies.

If Jesus were telling this story today in this country, the Samaritan might very well be a Muslim. Because there are plenty of people who believe that all Muslims are evil, they’re all terrorists, they all want Americans to suffer. There are plenty of people – even plenty of Christians – even some prominent Christian leaders – who paint all Muslims with that broad brush of suspicion and hatred, just because of the actions of a radical few.

Just like the people of Jesus’ day would be shocked at the idea that any Samaritan could be good, there are plenty of people in our country and in our country’s churches who would scoff at the idea of that there could ever be a “Good Muslim.”

And it’s not just Muslims. There’s plenty of hatred toward people of color, toward immigrants, toward people on welfare.

Or, for instance, the Samaritan might be a Republican if you’re a Democrat, or a Democrat if you’re a Republican. You get the idea . . .

In this parable, Jesus is challenging his followers to be able to see that there’s potential for goodness in EVERYONE – even – and maybe especially – in those who we consider to be our enemies, in those we distrust, in those we hate, in those we fear.

Jesus is challenging us to stop painting whole groups of people with a broad brush of judgmental and derogatory stereotypes.

Jesus is challenging us to, instead, paint others with a broad brush of love – love that sees beyond the stereotypes, beyond the tendency to judge anyone based on the group to which they belong, beyond our inclination to hate.

At the end of the parable, Jesus asks the legal expert which of the three – the priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan – was a neighbor to the man in need. The expert says, “The one who showed mercy.” His answer is telling. He can’t even bring himself to say that hated name, “the Samaritan.”

And yet it is this hated one, this Samaritan, who reveals God’s love. So Jesus tells the expert, “Go and do the same.”

Being a neighbor is not a matter of national, racial, economic, political, or religious familiarity. Being a neighbor is not a feeling of love or even respect. Being a neighbor is acting lovingly and compassionately regardless of feelings or beliefs.

In her book, Dr. Levine ends her chapter on this parable by asking us, “Can we finally agree that it is better to acknowledge the humanity and the potential to do good in the enemy? Can we imagine that we can bind up our enemies’ wounds, and that they have the potential to do the same for us? Can we choose caring and love, rather than hatred and death?”

This parable challenges us to transform the ways we think about anyone who we might consider to be an enemy.

But it also calls us to confront anyone – and especially our Christian brothers and sisters – who would hate entire groups of people

I pray that we can always believe in the possibility of receiving goodness and mercy at the hands of anyone – even our enemies. Amen.