Won’t You Be My Neighbor? – February 21, 2021

Luke 10:25-37
February 21, 2021

“Won’t you be my neighbor?”  Fred Rodgers asked that question in his opening song for years.  Don’t you just hear it in your head?  And by the way, he did so with an amazing jazz trio!  Do you remember that?

Well, in our story for today, that’s what Jesus was teaching about.  He was teaching about loving neighbors.  And as I said on Ash Wednesday, Jesus taught a love and a social ethic that was different than that of the world.  It was love that hadn’t ever been seen before!  As I said on Wednesday, he was teaching us that we have to be different!  And if we’re not different than the world around us, we need to ask ourselves if we are following what Jesus taught!

Actually, this wasn’t a formal teaching time.  This wasn’t a time when Jesus sat down and addressed the crowds.  This story comes right after he had sent out the 70 people to “prepare the way” in the cities and towns he was going to visit.  And then, just before this, they had “returned with joy,” saying, “Lord, even the demons were subject to us in your name!”  You can go back and read that from earlier in this chapter.

So they were all there with Jesus, and this man, a lawyer, came to him with a question.  And notice, Luke doesn’t say he was a “scribe” or a “Pharisee.”  He just says “Lawyer.”  (So, you can insert your own lawyer joke here!)  The man asked, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  And it occurred to me this week, that to put it that way, “How do I inherit eternal life?”  That’s a “lawyerly” way to ask this.  But I also believe he asked this sincerely.  This was not a question that was meant to trap Jesus in his words.  Not all of the religious leaders were trying to do that.  This man was sincere.  I think there was no air of cynicism in his voice when he called Jesus “teacher.”  And I believe he was concerned about his spiritual well-being.  He really wanted to know!

So, Jesus answered, and I think sincerely!  He asked, “What is written in the Law?”  And notice, it’s not, “This is what the Law says.”  (After all, he was talking to a lawyer!)  No.  He let the man answer from his own understanding.  And the man said this.  “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.”

That was right out of Jesus’ playbook!  In Mark 12 Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment?  And he said the same thing.  Love God,” which is the first commandment, and he also added, “and your neighbor as yourself.”  And then he said, “All of the Law and the Prophets are contained in those two things.”  So again, this was no setup!  This was no trap!  This man was sincere, and Jesus knew it!  And he acknowledged it!  “You have answered right!  Do this, and you shall live.”  In Mark 12 – which may have been Mark’s version of this story – his response was, “You are not far from the kingdom of God!”

But here in Luke’s Gospel there was something else.  There was a further question from this man.  And don’t we sometimes have further questions?  Don’t we want further confirmation, beyond what we already know and understand.  I believe that’s a great place to be in!  We should always try to question further.  Because, when you dig deeper, you never know what nugget of truth you may discover!  And as this man did that, he asked Jesus, “but who is my neighbor?”  And in doing so, he took his theological concern to a practical level.

That’s so important!  We, as God’s people, cannot just say we love.  We are called to put love into practice.  In fact, as I always say, love is more than a feeling.  Love is the choice of how we treat one another!  Otherwise, when Jesus said, “Love your enemies,” it would have made no sense!  But when we think of love being a choice of how we treat people, it makes perfect sense!  Love is a practical thing!

So the man asks, “Who is my neighbor?”  That’s a great question for us today, isn’t it?  And again, it was right in Jesus’ wheelhouse!  That was the kind of thing he had been trying to teach people for several years now!  “Neighbor” is not a matter of “who you like.”  Neighbor is a choice you make!  It’s not about a neighbor who might be neighborly to you, and you then become neighborly to them – if you “feel like it!”  Jesus was teaching them what “love” really meant!  It meant loving, it meant being neighbor first, and not waiting to be loved.  And that’s a lesson our world needs so much!

I think Jesus was thrilled with this man and his questions!  And remember, the context here is that his 70 ambassadors had just returned from going out to many cities and towns on his behalf!  And that makes me wonder what kind of “neighborliness” they encountered on that mission?

So Jesus took this man’s question and he “ran with it!”  And he told them this most iconic story, a story in which he “turned the tables” on them.  The way he told it would have been shocking to them, because he reversed the expected roles of these characters.  I don’t think we always get from our perspective.

You see, it would have been much easier in the mind of this man, and in the minds of the people listening to this, if Jesus had made this the “Parable of the Good Jew.”  Even that would have been a good lesson to the Jews about how they should treat people who they had not felt very good about for a long time!  But it wasn’t.  This was much deeper than that!  As I said, you never know what nugget of truth you’re going to discover if you dig deeper!  Instead, this became Jesus saying, “Here’s a story about a Samaritan who knew how to be a ‘neighbor’ – maybe better than you!”

As shocking as it was to them, Jesus told this story about a Samaritan who had compassion.  He told about a Samaritan who cared for the unfortunate man despite the animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans.  He told about a Samaritan who helped a man who may not have helped him if the situation were reversed!  I wonder how many people listening got that?  Because Jews didn’t like the Samaritans.  It had to do with how the Samaritans had inter-married with Gentiles!  (Or something like that!)

But it doesn’t matter.  There was that underlying animosity.  And besides that, the victim in this story had brought his troubles on himself!  Jesus began the story  by saying that “a man went up from Jerusalem to Jericho.”  Everybody knew that road!  They knew it was dangerous!  They knew it was a good place to be mugged!  And they knew that nobody in their right mind would travel it alone!  So when Jesus said, “he fell among robbers,” the people would have said, “Dud!  Of course he did!”  And how would they have felt if they were Jews, and the victim was a Samaritan?  They might have been thinking, “He got what he deserved.”

Jesus brought that point home by telling them about the Priest and the Levite who avoided the man.  They crossed the road so they wouldn’t have to walk anywhere near this half-dead man!  They could even act like they didn’t see him at all!  How many of his listeners would have been squirming at that point?  These were good Jews who should have helped the man!

But as Jesus tells this story, this Samaritan had compassion on this man who wouldn’t have helped him, or even have liked him, and would likely have “passed by on the other side” – as the Priest and Levite had.  And notice, he might not had known they had done that, but the listeners did!

Do you see what a masterful story this is?  And in telling it, Jesus was saying that you can have compassion for someone beyond the constraints of social systems.  And at the very least, Jesus was saying that that was a higher love, a higher form of neighborliness than anyone might have imagined! And that’s what he was calling them to!

And of course, that’s what Jesus lived, too.  He reached out to the outcast.  He dined with “sinners and tax collectors.”  (And I’ve always gotten a chuckle out of how tax collectors had their own level of sinfulness!)  But he did that!  And he reached out to prostitutes, he healed lepers – by actually touching them!  No one would do that!

He reached out to those about whom people would say, “We’re not supposed to love them!”  “We don’t want to love them!”  “It’s uncomfortable to love them.”  ‘It’s much easier not to love them!”

What was does this story say to this man, and to those who were listening that day?  And what does it say to us?  Jesus calls us, not just to love our neighbors, but to love neighbors as much as we love ourselves!  I hope you see what an incredible challenge that is!

Again, Jesus calls us to live differently.  And one of the ways we do that is how we love others.  And as he said in the Sermon on the Mount, “If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you?”  “Even the tax collectors do that!”  (And don’t you love how he used tax collectors as an example there, too!)

In this Lenten season, in this time of self-reflection, I hope we see how we are living differently than the world around us, or how we should be.  And I hope we see what a greater joy we will have in this life when we do.  Because ultimately, that’s what God wants for us.  He wants the best for us.  He wants us to have joy!  He wants us to have abundance!  And he knows that we can’t have those things if we are at odds with one another!

So as we go today, as we sign off Facebook today, may we take with us the question this man posed to Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”   And may we remember Jesus’ question at the end of all this.  “Which of these proved neighbor to the man who fell among robbers?”  And when the obvious answer was given, his statement was, “Go and do likewise!”

Prayer

Eternal God, in Jesus Christ you reached out to the unloved, you redeemed the undeserving, and you called the unexpected.  Help us to love those who are unloved, even those who would not love us.  Help us as we strive to be the light to the world of your amazing love.  For this we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.