Who is My Neighbor?

The following sermon was preached at Holy Spirit Anglican Church on July 14, 2013.  The audio version can be found here.  As always, the audio version is slightly different than the text below.  Feedback is always welcome.

                How many of us here today played the question game when they were little?  This is a game in which each person had to speak only in questions, and if you did not you lost.  An example of the game might be this, “what’s your name?”, “you don’t know my name?”, “why should I know your name?”, etc.  It’s very challenging, perhaps you should try it out later today if you didn’t play enough when you were a child. 

                Someone who would have been very good at this game is Jesus Christ.  Throughout his ministry, Jesus is constantly being asked questions, and like he’s playing the question game, he responds with another question.  But these questions that go back and forth are so much more meaningful than “What’s your name?”  They are some of life’s important questions.  Over the next few weeks, through the summer here at Holy Spirit Church, we are going to be looking at these questions which come up in the Gospel readings.  We’re calling this series ‘Inquiring minds want to know…’  This morning, as you might be able to guess, revolves around the question which comes in our gospel reading, ‘who is my neighbor?’  Jesus’ response to this question, given through the parable of the Good Samaritan, calls us to love even our enemies as our neighbors, as Christ has loved us, in the strength which he gives us.

                We enter our reading today into a conversation between Jesus, a recognized Jewish rabbi and teacher, and a young expert in the law.  They are talking about the Law of God, revealed to the Jews in the Old Testament.  The expert in the law, a man who spent his life studying and interpreting the law for the common folk, has already pointed out the summary of the law, the most important points in it which hold the rest of it together.  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength” and “love your neighbor as yourself.”  These are agreed upon in Jesus’ day to be the commandments which summed up the rest.  However, there was a debate at this time as to who was included in the word ‘neighbor’.  Different rabbis had different takes on it, and this man wants to know Jesus’ view.

                Some rabbis taught that only the most religiously observant Jews qualified as your neighbor, they had to earn that status.  Other rabbis, the more liberal of the bunch, taught that such a restriction was surely not what God wanted, and that the word neighbor here applied to any Jew.  Both groups agreed that neighbor did not mean everyone else in the world.  I’m sure that the expert in the law expected Jesus to pick between these two opinions, but instead Jesus goes even further, using some very controversial figures in his parable to answer the question.  Through his telling of the parable, he answers the question that we are to love even our enemies as our neighbors.

                Jesus begins by describing a man who, while walking on the road down from Jerusalem to Jericho, is attacked by robbers, stripped, and beaten, left half-dead.  This road of which Jesus speaks, which most of his audience would have walked before, knew that this was a particularly hot, dusty, windy, and dangerous road.  They could picture in their minds eye, this man lying in a ditch on the side of that road, covered in his own blood and the dust of the earth, with the sun beating down on him.

                Next, Jesus tells us, a priest just happens to be coming down the road.  Ah, here comes a hero!  The priests were the ones who offered up the sacrifices in the Temple and were supposed to be the holy men of Israel.  Jesus says this man ‘just happens’ to be coming down the road, a word which the Old Testament had used to describe when God had providentially arranged events.  By using this word, Jesus is setting up his hearers to expect this man to be the hero.  And it becomes all the more shocking when the priest is not the hero, rather, on seeing this man so sorely in need of aid, he crosses the street to avoid him, and goes on his way, too busy to be bothered by helping this fellow Jew.  Well, what about the next man to come down that hot road?

                Next is a Levite.  Levites were the assistants in the temple.  They helped the priests and kept the Temple grounds.  Think of them as the acolytes of that time.  Like the priests, Levites had a reputation for being holy. But, in this story, just like the priest, the Levite passes by on the other side of the road. 

                Jesus uses these two characters because he knows that they have the reputation of being the good guys in Israel.  Kind of like describing a building on fire, with people inside, and then saying Superman came by and, instead of helping, passed by on the other side of the street, and then Spiderman comes along and does the same thing.  But if they don’t help, who will?

                It’s hard to imitate the shock that Jesus’ hearers would have experienced when Jesus said his next sentence, “But a Samaritan…”  In our day, the reputation of Samaritans is a good thing, mainly because we have hospitals called Good Samaritan, and we call people who do good things ‘good Samaritans’, because of Jesus’ story here.  But that is certainly not the case in Jesus’ day.

                The Samaritans were the worst of the worst, utterly hated by Jews.  It wasn’t one sided either, as the Samaritans hated Jews with an equal passion.  What made their hatred for one another so bitter is that they were related, and we all know family fights are the most bitter.  Samaritans were descendants of the northern part of the kingdom of Israel, the 9 ½ tribes who broke away and formed their own kingdom after Solomon died.  They were the first part of Israel to be taken into exile for idolatry.  In the centuries that followed the exile, those who were left behind in northern Israel mixed in marriage with the other people groups who had moved into the area, in direct disobedience to what God had commanded.  Thus, in the eyes of the Jews, Samaritans were half-breeds.  But worse than that, they had compromised their faith.  The Samaritans used part of the Old Testament, the first five books of Moses, but rejected the rest of the Old Testament.  They also built a rival Temple on Mount Gerizim, where they sacrificed to the God of Israel, but also to Zeus, and any other god they pleased.  So not only were they half-breeds but they were heretics and like estranged cousins the Jews and Samaritans hated one another but couldn’t get rid of each other.

                While the previous two characters were the ones who were supposed to help, this Samaritan was the one who was supposed to pass by.  But that is not the case.  It is this Samaritan, this bitter enemy of the Jews, who shows compassion and mercy upon the poor, beaten, hurting man on the side of the road.  “Which of these men was a neighbor to the man?”  The expert in the law is compelled to answer, “the one who had mercy”; as a Jew, he couldn’t bring himself to say that a Samaritan had been the good guy.

I don’t know what word to use to give us the same shock as Jesus’ original hearers would have felt.  Perhaps, “But a Raiders fan…”  Or, more closely, “But an Al Quaida imam came by, saw the man, bandaged his wounds, and then took him to an inn and provided for his recovery.”  These are controversial figures but they get at the same point.  Here we have the two bitterest of enemies, and yet this one who is supposed to be the bad guy, extends love, compassion, and mercy to the other.  Jesus uses these characters to make his point, that is, in God’s eyes even our enemies are our neighbors. 

              Can you imagine the stunned look on the crowd when Jesus finishes this story?  “Go and do likewise,” he says.  Go and love your enemies.  Well that’s not so easy, is it?  Hold on a minute, Jesus, you mean we’re supposed to walk towards those people who want to hurt us?  What if they don’t respond to our love?  What if they strike back?  This all seems a little odd, Jesus.  Why would you even want us to do that?  Jesus calls us to love even our enemies as our neighbors, not because he wants us to get hurt, but because that is how he loves us.

              We believe that Jesus is the eternal Son of God, who existed in eternity with God the Father before all things were made.  That means that Jesus knew exactly what he was getting into when he chose to be born into this world.  Jesus knew that this world and all its creatures were in rebellion against God.  We hated God, didn’t want anything to do with him.  If we would have come upon him on the side of the road, we would definitely have crossed to the other side.  We show this by our sinful actions and our sinful attitudes, which outright reject the idea that we’re responsible to a divine Lord.  Jesus knew what he was getting into.  He knew that if he came among us, we would hate him and we would kill him.  And yet he came.  In his ministry he knew that he would disagree with the religious authorities, he knew that they would not accept him as the Messiah, and he knew that if he went to Jerusalem, they would conspire together to kill him, and yet he came.  Jesus constantly moved towards his enemies and he still does it today.  The Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, “God shows his love for us in this, that while we were still his enemies, Christ died for us.”  This is the love which Jesus shows to us.  Even though we would kill him, even though he was innocent, he still chose to come, and to go to the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, not his own.  Jesus died for his enemies, in order to make them his family.  That is the love which God has for us, a love which is extended to enemies as neighbors.  And, as Christians, we are being transformed into the image of Jesus, we are his disciples who are meant to mirror his character, which means that we are called also to live this kind of love; to love even our enemies as our neighbors, following the example of Christ.

              Leo Tolstoy, in his book War and Peace (which Fr. David has read four times), writes this, “You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.”  Tolstoy got this principle from Jesus Christ.  So we have seen that Jesus calls us to love even our enemies as our neighbors, as Christ loves us.  But how, how are we to do this?  Tolstoy points out that this is a divine love, something which does not come to us naturally.  In order to do this, we must depend on God’s strength.  To love our enemies as neighbors requires us to shift our mode of thinking, to see those who hate us not as the world sees them, but as Christ sees them.  It requires us to not fear for our own selves, our reputations, or our lives, but to care for that other person.  To do these things is not in our human nature, a nature which is all about self-protection.  And so, it takes God’s intervention in our lives to bring about this kind of love.  It takes God’s love in us to love others as Christ has loved us.  This comes to us in the Holy Spirit.

              In that same chapter of Romans, Paul writes, “The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, which has been given to us.”  As followers of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the presence of God, comes and dwells within us.  It is only in depending on the Spirit to guide us that we will ever love as Christ loved.  I don’t think that there is a magic formula for this, a follow these three easy steps and you will instantly love your enemies as your neighbor.  The human heart is far too complex for that.  But I do think that in order for this transformative love, shown to us in Christ, to have effect, we will have to pause, to pray that God will give us that strength, and then intentionally approach those who we have held far away as our enemies.  It’s likely that this other person will push us away, will not accept the love which we are to show to them, and we’ll have to pray for them as well.  But this is the love which God commands us to show, the very love which he showed us. 

              A scene which powerfully demonstrates this is found in Victor Hugo’s book, Les Miserables.  In the scene, Jean Valjean, a convict of nineteen years, earns his release from prison.  However, no innkeeper will let him stay at their inn so he wanders through village streets for four days.  Finally, a bishop allows him to stay the night, despite the fact that he is a hardened criminal.  During the night, Valjean steals the silver plates and cutlery while the bishop sleeps.  He is caught the next day by the police.  They drag him back to the bishop in order to return the silver and then they intend to put Jean Valjean in prison for life.  But the bishop’s response is not what everyone would have expected.  “Oh there you are!  I am delighted to see you!  Did you forget that I had given you the candlesticks as well?  Why did you not take them?”  He then proceeds to tell the police that he had given the silver to this man, he was no thief, and they let him go.  He then tells the shocked thief, standing before him, “Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good.  It is your soul that I am buying for you.  I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God!”

              This bishop showed this man, Jean Valjean, the love which Christ shows us.  Even though he was clearly his enemy, and he did not know if his gesture would have any effect, still, he treated him as a neighbor.  It is a powerful example of one who loved his enemies as neighbors, as Christ loved us, in the strength which God gave him. 

              Jesus ends his conversation with the expert in the law with the words, “Go and do likewise.”  These words are addressed to us as well.  Let us take time now in prayer, to ask God how we are to go and do likewise.  Ask the Lord who is it whom you need to approach this week, to love as a neighbor as Christ loved us.  Then let us ask him for the strength to do this work, knowing that it is only through his strength that we can love as Christ loved us.  Let us pray.