Luke 10:25-37
Who is My Neighbor?
Have you ever struggled to be nice to someone, especially someone different from you? Maybe they’re talkative and you’re quiet, or they are a gossip and you detest gossip, or maybe their skin is darker and yours is lighter, or yours is darker and theirs is lighter, or maybe they were Air Force and you were Navy. Sometimes it’s difficult to get along with people different from us.
Back in Jesus’ day, the religious elite—the Pharisees and Scribes and Teachers of the Law—they came up with a loophole to make life easier. Basically, you could be nice to people you liked and you could be mean to people you didn’t like, and best of all, you could justify it with scripture! They borrowed from something David wrote in one of his psalms, Psalm 139:21-22, where he says to God, “Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you? I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.”
Down through the ages people have decided who they like and who they hate based on who they believe God likes and God hates. Does God love only church-going people? Does he love white people and hate everyone else? Does he hate people with nose rings and tattoos? Does God hate gays? Does God hate infidels, as our enemies believe? Does God hate radical Islamists?
David, in his psalm, says, “God, I just hate those who rebel against you. Your enemy is my enemy.” The problem is, God hates in a different way than we hate. God somehow manages to hate the sin while loving the sinner. That is a very good thing for you and me, because the Bible says we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). So when we come across a difficult scripture such as when God said, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Malachi 1:2-3 and Romans 9:13), we can read the rest of the Bible and see that God calls us to “love our enemies” (Matthew 5:44-48) and that God’s will is for no one to perish but everyone to have eternal life (2 Peter 3:9). Somehow God hates the sin while he loves the one involved in the sinful behavior. Kind of like how we still love our children even when they willfully disobey us. So, if you want to hate like God, you need to hate the sin and love the sinner. That’s what God does.
So that’s the background for today’s story. And the story begins with a seemingly innocent question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” It’s like a student asking a teacher, “What do I have to do to get an A in this class?” It’s a fair question, unless it comes from a bad attitude, just wanting to do the minimum.
This time there is a false motive. How do I know? Well, the question comes from a lawyer. Need I say more? (I’ll apologize in advance to all the good lawyers of the world.) Do you know what the Lawyer's Creed is? “A man is innocent until proven broke.” Although there are good lawyers, verse 29 tells us this fellow was trying to justify himself. He wanted Jesus to answer in a way that made him, the lawyer, look good.
So Jesus answered the question with a question. He asked, “What does scripture say?” That’s always a good place to start! The lawyer responds with the two great commandments, “Love God” (Deuteronomy 6:5) and “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). It’s a perfect answer, an A+. In fact, it’s the same answer Jesus had given the question on a different day (Matthew 22:37-40). “Love God” and “love your neighbor as yourself:” that sums up everything. It gives us three great priorities: God, neighbor, and self. Or if you like acronyms: J-O-Y, joy, which stands for Jesus, others, and yourself, in that order.
Jesus replied, “Do this and live!” He quotes here from a couple of Old Testament scriptures (Leviticus 18:5 and Ezekiel 20:11) a promise that, if you keep God’s law perfectly, you will live perfectly. The problem is, none of us keeps God’s law perfectly. And that is why we need a Savior, someone to save us from our sins.
The lawyer should have admitted his guilt, that he—like each of us—fails at loving God and neighbor at times. Instead, he tried to justify himself. He tried to make himself look better by saying, “Well, exactly who is my neighbor then?” He was looking for a loophole. He was looking for a way out. Certainly it’s a good thing to love those who love you, to care for those close to you, but don’t worry about those tax collectors, or those prostitutes. Don’t worry about those Gentiles. And especially don’t worry about those ... Samaritans.
The Samaritans were Northerners who were actually half-Jews. When their kingdom had been conquered by the Assyrians some 700 years earlier, the foreign king had intermarried his own people among the Jewish population. The devout Jews from the Southern kingdom of Judah despised these half-Jews of the North.
So Jesus chose a Samaritan for his hero. Not a priest, and not a Levite, who was the priest’s assistant; in other words, not the chaplain nor the chaplain assistant. No, these religious people were too holy to be tainted by an injured man. They were too busy, maybe on the way to a church meeting. On the other hand, we don’t know that the Samaritan was a particularly religious person at all. All we know is that he was a Samaritan. As he traveled he saw a person in need. He didn’t think about hundreds of years of prejudicial hatred; he just helped out a fellow human being in need. And he did it at personal risk and personal cost.
After Jesus told the story, he asked the lawyer, “Which one was a neighbor to the injured man?” The lawyer couldn’t even find it in himself to say the “S” word, so he simply replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” And Jesus said, “Go and do the same!”
A couple of days ago we got together for dinner with some dear friends in our neighborhood, and they told us about a recent mishap on their way to Houston. Their car ran out of gas, and the husband, Matt, called Roadside Assistance, but was told it would be a two-hour wait, and he really needed to get his family on the road faster. He just needed a lift to the closest gas station but he couldn’t get anyone to stop to help. He said he was dressed nicely, but people just zoomed past him. Even a Sherriff’s Deputy failed to stop. Finally, a man stopped and asked how he could help. As Matt got a lift to the gas station, it turned out to be more than just gas. They also needed a jump start, which entailed another trip for jumper cables. On that second trip, Matt asked the guy, “Why would you stop and possibly put your family at risk, especially with a little baby in the back seat? You don’t know me!” And the man said, “We went through almost the same experience in Galveston a year ago. It even got so bad that we had to stay overnight, and the person paid for our lodging while our car was being repaired. When I tried to get his address to promise payment, he just said, ‘Pay it forward. Help someone else.’ So that’s what we’re doing today.”
Now I don’t necessarily recommend pulling over to help a complete stranger. It could be dangerous. I don’t recommend always giving money to someone at the street corner. It could be unhelpful to them. But I wonder, am I really in tune with the Holy Spirit, to watch for who Jesus will put in my path?
Who would Jesus pick for our neighbor? Would it be the person with a different skin color? Would it be a person who gets on our nerves? Would it be a person who brings trouble on themselves? Would it be that one person we try to avoid at all costs, because they grate on us? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Jesus says, “Love them.” Jesus says, “Serve them.”
The lawyer had assumed that people have to earn their neighborly status in order for us to love them and serve them. But Jesus makes it clear that we all have a responsibility to be a neighbor to those we encounter, especially to those in great need. The Apostle Paul would later write, in Galatians 6:9-10, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.”
Take on the State Farm mission: “Be a good neighbor.” Love those who love you, but don’t stop there. Love those who persecute you. Love those who differ from you. Love those whom God loves, for his will is that no one would perish. Let us pray:
God, your word is challenging. It’s not easy to love those who are so different from us. And it’s not always safe either. We don’t know how it’s going to turn out when we try to offer help, and sometimes we don’t know how best to help. Lord, we need your Holy Spirit to guide us, and we need your help to love people as you do. Help us to be that Good Samaritan to people you put in our path, in Jesus’ name, amen.
