Who is My Neighbor? 7-10-22
Who is My Neighbor?
Amos 7:7-9; Luke 10:25-37
Amos 7:7-9
This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said, “See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by; the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”
Luke 10:25-37
Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” 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.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “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.’ 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.”
Prayer – Lord Jesus, you have given us responsibility for one another. You have made us responsible for the needs of others beyond the bounds of our families and friends. Give us the grace to step up and live into the faith you have put in us in calling us to be your people who take responsibility for the needs of others, even though we may totally and completely different – amen.
In her book-length study of Jesus’ parables, Short Stories by Jesus, 2014, Professor Amy-Jill Levine suggests that religion is meant to ‘comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.’ She goes on to argue that we would do well to think of the parables of Jesus as doing this afflicting as he offered them to both learned folks and everyday folks in 1st century Palestine, anytime we hear one of his parables and think ‘I really like that’ or ‘worse, fail to take any challenge, we are not listening well enough.
The difficulty for me, and I assume, for many Christians, is that Jesus’ parables are familiar and beloved, so much so that we don’t experience them as afflictions for us in the 21st century. I know many of these parables inside and out, backwards and forwards – and therein lies the great danger – they no longer challenge me, and perhaps you. I read them, I nod my head, and keep walking through life without any hint that Jesus’ invitation for reflection, or worth the time of day seems about as good as it gets. The parables I love don’t lay me bare.
Our gospel passage this week – the Good Samaritan – paired with Amos’ commentary on the plumb line presents exactly this dilemma. I learned about the Good Samaritan in Sunday School a long time ago, and have known it by heart for years. A man got robbed and was left for dead, a priest and a Levite, who was of the priestly tradition, passed him by as if he wasn’t even there, but the Samaritan stopped, helped and made sure he was cared for. The Samaritan, a deeply scorned and judged person by God’s chosen people, showed mercy on the left for dead stranger; the Samaritan who was viewed as a not worth the time of day neighbor exemplified neighborliness. And then the plumb line statement – I should do likewise – ouch.
I wonder what Jesus’ original audience would make of my tongue in cheek reading? Would they agree with it? Surely there’s nothing wrong with reading the Good Samaritan parable as a go and do likewise story. After all, we are called to be imitators of Christ, to assist, to show concern, to offer compassionate care to those in need. The Good Samaritan offers us a beautiful example to follow, and we probably would do well to pay attention. But is that it? Is that all the ‘afflicting’ this story has for us? Or did Jesus have something more provocative in mind?
As Luke tells the story, a lawyer approaches Jesus with a million dollar test question. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” I know the scholars often give the lawyer a bad rap for testing Jesus, but I kind of like the boldness of the question. I’m giving a lawyer of all people the benefit of the doubt sensing that the lawyer wants to live fully. Every good lawyer knows to never ask question to which he/she don’t know the answer. This lawyer is not messing around in the shallow end of the pool; rather asking a deep and theologically challenging question.
Jesus is pretty savvy as well – as every good teacher answers a question by asking the student a question in response – “What is written in the Law?” The lawyer gives Jesus a concise and A+ answer – “You shall love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Perfect interpretation of the Law. Jesus congratulates the lawyer on his precision and then poses perhaps the harder part of the Law – ‘Do this and you will live.’
But the lawyer, perhaps miffed that Jesus wants more than the perfect interpretation asks for further clarification. “Who is my neighbor?” Or to put it contextually, “Who is not my neighbor? How much love are we talking here, Jesus? Can you be more specific? Where can I draw the line? Outside my front door? At the edges of my neighborhood? Along the cultural and racial boundaries I was raised with? I mean, there are lines in the sand of boundaries, aren’t there?”
I assume the lawyer would have loved to discuss ad nauseum the finer points of responsible neighborliness. What better way to put off getting one’s hands dirty than to talk theoretic theology for hours? But Jesus doesn’t take the bait. Instead he tells the story, a parable with a pretty clear plumb line. A story whose main character we know so well, we’ve named hospitals, nursing homes, relief agencies and philanthropic organizations after the Good Samaritan. Here in the US, we even have a law coined in his honor, any modern-day ‘good samaritan’ who stops and helps a stranger along the road will enjoy certain legal protections for their trouble.
As Jesus tells it, a man was walking down the Jericho Road which was known in those times as a little dicey trek when he was attacked and left for dead by bandits. They robbed, beat, stripped and left him there for the buzzards to pick over the remains. Soon afterwards, priest came by; seeing the wounded man, he knew he would become unclean by touching the bloody man and chose to walk on by. Shortly later, a Levite, who was of the priestly tradition, came upon the beaten man, and fearing contamination, the Levite chose to walk on by. Then the Samaritan came upon the broken and beaten and bloody man. The Samaritan drew close enough to see he was still alive; the Samaritan felt great compassion upon this man who would have been revolted by his presence and help if he were not beaten to a bloody pulp. The Samaritan reacted as a good neighbor, even though he would have never been seen as a neighbor, bandaged the man’s wounds, anointed them with oil and wine, carried him to the nearest inn on his own animal, and paid the innkeeper to nurture the injured man back to health. And then promised to return with more money as needed.
Now the plumb line question, “So . . . Which of these three was a neighbor to the man who was robbed?, Jesus asks the lawyer at the end of the afflicting story. “The one who showed mercy,” the lawyer replies. “Go and do likewise,” says Jesus. And then to drive the point home again, “Do this and you will live.”
Do this. Draw close. Show mercy. Extend kindness. Live out your perfect interpretation of the law in hands-on care for other people. Don’t just think or believe the law, DO IT.
Okay, makes sense to me. But am I really afflicted; are you? What are we missing? The story changes I think on where we locate ourselves within it. If you are like me, you probably locate yourself in the priest or the Levite on bad days, and as the Good Samaritan on better ones. Sometimes we see need and pass it by because we are too busy, or just don’t want to help that homeless person standing at the corner stoplight. Sometimes we are too afraid, or overwhelmed with our own lives, or simply tired of seeing yet another person standing on the corner begging for help. And still, this parable of the Good Samaritan is still the plumb line we hope to achieve. The Good Samaritan is the example, the plumb line to strive towards.
Unless, he’s not. What if he’s not? What if Jesus’ parable is more than an example story? What if it’s a reversal story? A story intended to upset our categories of good and bad, sacred and profane, benefactor and recipient? If we too easily and comfortably identify with the Good Samaritan in this parable, maybe we’re missing the point. Maybe the whole point of the Samaritan is that he is not you or me.
At the time that Jesus told this story, the enmity between the Jews and the Samaritans was ancient, entrenched and bitter – think the partisanship in Washington today. The two groups disagreed about everything that mattered – how to honor God, how to interpret Scriptures, and where to worship. They practiced their faith in different temples, read different versions of the Torah, and avoided contact with each other explicitly. Truth be told, they hated each other’s guts. Though we are inclined to love the Good Samaritan, for Jesus’ Jewish listeners there was no such thing as a ‘Good Samaritan,’ unless the Samaritan was the one left in the ditch.
I wonder if there is anything we can do in our contemporary lives to recover the scandal of this parable? Because at its heart, it is scandalous. Think about it this way. Who is the last person on earth you’d ever want to deem a ‘good guy?” The last person you’d ask to save our life? At the risk of afflicting you, I’ll throw out a few possibilities:
An Israeli Jewish man is robbed, and a Good Hamas member saves his life. A liberal Democrat is robbed, and a Good conservative Republican saves her life. A white supremacist is robbed, and a Good black teen gangbanger saves his life. A transgender woman is robbed, and a Good Anti-LGBTQ activist saves her life. An atheist is robbed, and a Good Christian fundamentalist saves his life.
I don’t mean for one moment to trivialize the real and agonizing differences that divide us in our country today, but the enmity between the Jews and Samaritans in Jesus’ day was not just written on the internet as some fake news; it was embodied and real. The differences between them were not easily negotiated; each was fully convinced that the other was dead wrong. So what Jesus did when he deemed the Samaritan ‘good’ was radical and risky; it stunned his Jewish listeners. He was asking them to dream of a different kind of kingdom. He was them, and perhaps us, to consider the possibility that a person might add up to more than the sum of his/her political, racial, cultural and economic identities. Jesus was calling them to put aside the history they knew, and the prejudices they nursed. He was asking them to leave room for divine and world-altering surprises.
I wonder what it would like if we, both you and me, would identify ourselves, not in the priest, the Levite, or even the Samaritan, but in the beaten and bloodied man left in a ditch. Notice that the victim in our story is the only character in the story not defined by profession, social class or religious belief. He had no identity except a naked need. Maybe we have to occupy his place in the story – maybe we have to become the broken one, grateful to anyone who showed us some mercy – before we can feel the unbounded compassion of the Good Samaritan. Why I wonder? Because all the tribalism’s fall away on the broken road. All divisions of ‘us and them’ disappear of necessity. When you’re lying bloody and beaten in life’s ditches, what matter most is not whose help you’d prefer, whose way of practicing Christianity you like best, whose politics you agree with? What matters is whether or not anyone will stop to help you before you die.
William Rees once wrote a short passage about the average Christians view of not only who is my neighbor but how much are we willing to help the other. “I would like to buy $3 worth of God please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don’t want enough to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant worker. I want ecstasy, not transformation. I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3 worth of God please.”
“Who is my neighbor?” the lawyer asked. Your neighbor is the one who scandalizes you with compassion, Jesus answered. Your neighbor is the one who upends all the entrenched categories and shocks you with a fresh face of God. Your neighbor is the one who mercifully steps over the ancient and bloodied line separating us from them and teaches us the real meaning of Good. Your neighbor is the one who understands that loving God and neighbor is priceless and not a pound of the eternal in a paper sack – that is our plumb line – go and do it yourself – thanks be to God – amen.