Who is my neighbor?

The Good Samaritan is one of my all time favorite bible stories because it’s all about helping people. It affirms for me that the whole of scripture is based on the great commandment “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” However what does it look like when you are loving your neighbor as yourself. To us modern folk, we tend to look at it in psychological terms, as a matter of self esteem. We will treat our neighbors just as we treat ourselves. However, we must remember that the modern psychological concept of self esteem was not on the radar of the gospel writers. The people that lived during the time of Jesus depended on their families and clans in order to get their basic needs met such as food, protection, housing etc. However, it was also important to care for those who were not part of your family and/or clan. Some believe that “when Jesus said, ‘love your neighbor as yourself,’ he was essentially saying, ‘treat all those around you as you would your own flesh and blood’—that is, as sisters and brothers in one family, deserving of equal honor and special care.” (1)


At first glance this story feels very warm and fuzzy. I read it and it makes me feel good because I like to help people. However, when I read it in the context of the audience that Jesus was telling this story to and the characters that he used to prove his point, this story becomes a bit uncomfortable for me. Let me retell the story as Jesus would if he were among us here today preaching from this pulpit now….

A Michael, a young man was riding his bicycle across the park one evening from downtown to his neighborhood. He was a bicycle messenger and had just finished another hectic shift riding his bike from office to office delivering mail and messages. As he rounded a corner on the bike path two robbers jumped him, knocking him off his bike and stealing his messenger bag and wallet. Because Michael was not wearing his helmet, he was knocked unconscious by the fall and lay bleeding. The robbers dragged him to the side of the path and ran off, leaving Michael for dead under a tree in the park.

The sun was setting as Steve walked through Park that evening to get to his car. Steve is an executive Vice President for a multi-national bank and so it was not unusual for him to work a bit later into the evening hours. He parked his car at a mile away from downtown so as to avoid the high parking fees and get some exercise. As he took a shortcut through the park he noticed a person lying underneath a tree. He shakes his head in disgust and thinks to himself, “uuughh, those drunk bums, dirtying up our city. They just sleep all over the place with no regard to how it looks to others. Should I wake him, no…don’t poke the bear I say. Why doesn’t he just get a job?” Steve looks away from Michael’s body and walks faster towards his car.

Evening turns into night as young Pastor Hilary is walking across the park on her way back from downtown where she had attended a concert that she read about in the paper. She decided to walk back and forth to the concert instead of driving and she was now a mile away from her house. She didn’t realize that it would get dark so soon after the concert and was a bit anxious as she entered the park. As she walked down the bike path, she nervously scanned her surroundings in order to feel somewhat safe. She then notices a body underneath a tree and jumps back. She edges up to the body and turns it over. She sees blood across this man’s forehead and becomes even more anxious. She thinks to herself “This man needs to get to the hospital; I have to call for help. Where’s my cell phone…oh darn I left it a home. I have to find a phone to call 9-1-1. The minister reluctantly leaves the body and runs back towards downtown in hopes of finding a phone.

It is 11:00 pm now and Michael’s body has been left beneath the tree for several hours. Alejandro is walking across the park from his apartment to his car in order get to his third shift job at the meat packing plant. Alejandro is a new resident in this city, as a matter of fact, a new resident of America. A few months ago, he crossed the border illegally from Mexico into Texas in order to make a better life for himself and his family. He misses Mexico, especially his wife and children whom he had to leave behind. But life in Mexico was hard, having to live in a shanty town in a house made of corrugated steel. There was no drinkable water or even plumbing to speak of. The raw sewage streamed down the middle of their village, where his children often played. It broke his heart that he and his family had to live in such conditions, and so he made the decision to go to America to make a livable wage and send money back to his family in Mexico so that they could move out of the Shanty town into better living conditions. In America, Alejandro worked many jobs, migrant farming, sweatshop factory jobs, roofing, gardening…any job that he could find that was “off the books” so that he wouldn’t be found by the INS. Being seen anywhere in the city was a dangerous thing for Alejandro because he could be found out as an illegal immigrant and arrested at anytime.

Alejandro sees Michael’s unconscious body from a distance and runs to him. He turns Michael over and sees that he is injured. Without thinking, Alejandro picks up Michael and slings him over his shoulder to carry him to the car. Alejandro drives to hospital and pulls his car into the emergency department driveway. He then carries Michael from the car into the lobby puts Michael into a wheelchair. As Alejandro wheels Michael over to the nurse’s desk, he tries to get her attention. The nurse asks Alejandro for his name, the patient’s name, any information regarding the situation and in broken English Alejandro says, “you take…you take.” She insists on information and all Alejandro can say is, “you take.” He then gives her a twenty dollar bill thinking that it was money that she is asking for but she refuses the money, and so he lays it down on the desk in front of her and rushes out of the hospital and into his car.

Wow….pretty amazing this story. In Jesus’ time it was a very radical thing for Jesus to lift up the Samaritan as the example of loving your neighbor as yourself. The Samaritans in Jesus’ time were reviled by the Jewish Community of which Jesus was a part of. The Jews and the Samaritans shared a common heritage but differed from each other in worship practices and cleanliness laws. (2) Often the Jews referred to the Samaritans with terms such as foreigners or intruders so as to distance themselves from this group of people that were not like them.

Can you imagine the sting Jesus’ listeners felt as they heard him speak of these strange people as exemplifying the great commandment. Similar to how some might feel at my retelling of the Samaritan story. It is hard to wrap our brains around it, however it is in this puzzle that Jesus frames what the whole of God’s commandments rests upon. The business man and the pastor, both highly respected people by standards of our culture, had good reasons for not stopping and/or helping the injured man on the road. They might have been in danger of being robbed themselves or even beaten up themselves. They are not to be vilified because their reactions were very appropriate given the circumstances. Some biblical scholars note that Jesus was not out to make the priest and the Levite the bad guys in his parable. “Their decision to pass by on the other side would not have been a surprise to, nor would likely have been condemned by Jesus’ hearers. The victim in the ditch no doubt seemed to be dead, and priests were forbidden from going where there was a dead body, even when the dead body was a parent.” (3)

It is not an easy thing to love our neighbor as we would ourselves or our own families. Our culture tends to hold up the values of individualism and pursuit of self interest over and above the care of our neighbor, especially when our neighbor is different from us. However in conversations that I have had with some of you folks regarding our recent immigrants, I do hear of your care and compassion for these folks and concern for such issues as the recently passed anti-immigration legislation that were passed in Arizona this last spring. Hearing the call from Jesus to love our neighbor, some of you here have reached out these folk by providing a coat to someone who was new to our state's cold winters or by contributing to the services they use such as the local soup kitchen. This concern and love for immigrants regardless of legal status is alive in many of our local churches in the UCC and it has moved our denomination in resolving to stand in solidarity with Immigrants and to advocate for them.

A colleague of mine who is starting her first pastorate in a small church asked herself what a healthy well rounded church small church looks like and she came up with this vision. They love God, they love each other and they love their neighbors. (4) I immediately thought of you all because all three of these things are in abundance here in this community of faith, Smalltown Congregational Church, UCC.

Thanks be to God!

Amen.

(1) Sarah Dylan Breuer, “Dylans Lectionary Blog: Proper 25 Year A”http://www.sarahlaughed.net/lectionary/


(2) James D. Purvis, “Samaritans” The Harper Collins Bible Dictionary, Paul J Aichtenmeier Gen. Ed (San Francisco: Harper Row Publishers, 1985), 898-899.

(3) Charles B. Cousar et. al. “Proper 10: Ordinary Time 15” Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV – Year C (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), 427.

(4) Hat tip to my fellow RGBP Mid-life Rookie.