Your Neighbor as Yourself

Luke 10:25-37

July 10, 2022

            “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.”

            Does anyone else remember that State Farm jingle? I’m not sure if its ever used anymore. I suspect it has been replaced by, “Jake from State Farm.” But for a long, long time that was the one thing I associated with State Farm Insurance Company. If you hummed the first few noes of that jingle, I could finish them without giving it a second thought.

State Farm wanted people to know that they were good neighbors. They weren’t just a necessary part of life, or a company you had to deal with when things went wrong. They were like a good neighbor. From what the advertising implied, being a good neighbor was being there for someone when they needed them. It meant being there when the times got tough. They were the hand reaching out to help you up when you’d been knocked down. State Farm was a good neighbor, because they were there no matter how bad things got, in fact they were there especially when things got that bad. They were a good neighbor.

“Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.”

            Neighbor seems to be the key word for our passage this week. Just like State Farm’s jingle, the story of the Good Samaritan is one that I know by heart. All you would have to say is, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho …” and I could probably fill in with the words “and fell into the hands of robbers.” I bet many of us could do that. After all, if you’re like me, you have heard this story from the time you were a little kid. In Sunday School, if it wasn’t being read to us or diagrammed out on a felt board, we were acting it out.

            And even if you didn’t grow up hearing this story on repeat, the idea of the Good Samaritan is everywhere in our culture. If someone helps someone else out unexpectedly, that person is hailed as a Good Samaritan. There are Good Samaritan laws that protect someone from being held liable if they try to help someone in distress out and it goes wrong. When I lived in Iowa there were two skilled nursing centers that used the name Good Samaritan. Even if someone had never heard any other story about Jesus, there is a good chance that they have heard this one.

            And that’s the challenge. This is such a well-known parable, it is so familiar to us, and we think we know it backwards and forwards, that it is possible, just possible, it’s lost its shock value for us. In fact, we might even question using the term, “shock value,” because this is such a lovely parable. It should make us all feel good, warm, fuzzy, not shocked.

            But as scholar Amy-Jill Levine points out in her book about Jesus’ parables, his “Short Stories,” the parables were told not to make those listening feel contented and happy. They were told to shock them. They were told to ‘afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” Jesus’ parables were meant to have a punch, an unexpected twist. They were meant to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.

            The problem is though is that we are listening from a distance. These stories of Jesus have been told for centuries, and we are far removed by time and space from the first audience who heard them. And, in the repeated telling, they have become domesticated. They have become nice little tales instead of parables that shake us up and knock us out.

            So, what in this story is shocking? A lawyer asks Jesus a question.

            “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

            As I understand it, being a lawyer at that time was not just about understanding civic law.  A lawyer would have been well-versed in religious law, the Law. The distinctions between the two were not made as we make them. So, the lawyer would have known the Law. He would have known the commandments. He would have known the details of Leviticus and Numbers. Clearly, the lawyer did because Jesus turned the question on him.

            “What is written in the law? What do you read there?”

            And the lawyer was able to readily answer, “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 responds with, good answer! You know this. You got this. Go, and do likewise and you will live. But the lawyer wants to justify himself. I know that the text tells us that the lawyer wanted to test Jesus, but I’m not sure that this is one of those times when the person asking Jesus the question is trying to trick Jesus. I’m not convinced that the lawyer was trying to trap Jesus as the Pharisees and the other religious authorities so often tried to. I think he genuinely wanted to know what Jesus had to say, not as a trick but to get some clarity on the exact details of the law. Maybe that means he wanted to push Jesus to give him more specifics, not on what the law says, but on exactly who is his neighbor. And that is what he asks.

            “And who is my neighbor?”

            Jesus responds with a story, a parable, about a man going down on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. This man is attacked, robbed, beaten, stripped of even his clothes, and left for dead. Two religious Israelites pass by. The first, a priest, sees the man and sees the state he is in, but he moves to the other side of the road and keeps going. The second, a Levite, does the same thing. But then a Samaritan a SA MAR I TAN, comes down the road. The Samaritan sees the man who has been beaten, robbed, and left for dead, and he does not cross the road to get away from him. He crosses the road to go to near to him. The Samaritan sees the man’s wounds, and he pours wine on them to disinfect them, and he pours oil on them to keep them soft. He bandages the man. He picks him up and puts him on his own animal and he takes him to an inn so that he can more fully care for him. When the Samaritan has to leave the next day, he gives the innkeeper money from his own pocket, and asks the innkeeper to take care of the man. When he returns, he will repay the innkeeper however much more the innkeeper had to pay for the beaten man’s care.

            Jesus finishes the story by saying, “Now, who was the neighbor?”

And the lawyer responds, “The one who showed him mercy.”

Jesus says nothing else, but “Go, and do likewise.”

            Lets put this in terms that we can relate to. When we talk about the Good Samaritan, we think of the word “good,” as part of his title. Instead of Dr. Samaritan, its Good Samaritan. But the word “good” is descriptive. And Jesus does not call him “good” at all, does he? The good is implied. He was a good Samaritan, not because that was part of his name, but because of what he did, how he lived, how he treated the man who was beaten and left for dead. But here’s the kicker, the lawyer who asked this question of Jesus and the people listening to Jesus would not have applied the adjective “good” before a Samaritan. Good would have been the furthest thing from their minds. The Samaritans were enemies. They were not good.

            Take a minute and think about the group of people you can’t stand. Be honest with yourself. There probably is at least one section of society that bugs you, angers you, makes you fume. If you’re a Republican, maybe it’s the Democrats. If you’re a Democrat, maybe it’s the Republicans. Maybe its people of another country or another religion. Whatever that group may be, whoever they may be, insert their name in the place of Samaritan. Make sure you add the word, “good” in front of it too.

            How do you feel?

            How does it feel to consider one of these “others” as good? How does it feel to think about one of these “others” doing what the Samaritan did? Especially when two folks from your side of things crossed the road to stay away from the man left dead?!

            In the past, I have tried to minimize what the priest and the Levite did and didn’t do. They would have been ritually unclean if they had gone near the man, if they had touched him. It would have made them unable to fulfill their religious responsibilities. But they were going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, not the other way around. They were going away from the temple. It’s most likely that their religious duties were already fulfilled. And as Levine points out, the Law made it clear that helping someone in great need was more important than staying ritually clean. The priest and the Levite messed up. They failed. It doesn’t mean that they were horrible people. It means that they were human, and they failed. We all have and it’s a good possibility that we all will again. But the Samaritan did not fail. The Samaritan went near to the man. The Samaritan helped the man without thought for himself, for his own safety, for his own needs. The Samaritan did what was good because he showed the man mercy.

            It seems to me that what the lawyer really wanted to Jesus to make clear for him was not just what being a neighbor meant, but what the boundaries are on who is our neighbor. Okay, look Jesus, for real, who is my neighbor? Where do I get to draw the line? Who do I get to leave out of this equation?

            But Jesus made it clear that the boundaries we put into place on who is our neighbor and who isn’t are artificial. They have no real meaning. The person who is our neighbor is the person in need. The person who is our neighbor is the person who requires mercy. The person who is our neighbor is the person to whom we are called to draw near. It does not require political or ideological agreement on our part. It requires us to recognize who is being harmed and to realize that that person or persons are our neighbors. That might just mean that other sentient creatures are our neighbors. That might just mean that the creation itself is our neighbor, that the whole of God’s world is filled with our neighbors. Are we prepared to show them mercy? Are we ready to love our neighbors as ourselves? The lawyer realized that the neighbor was the one who showed mercy. Go, and do likewise, and we too will live.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia!”

            Amen.