Neighbors? Lectionary Reflection for Pentecost 5C/Proper 10 (Luke 10)

 

Van Gogh, Good Samaritan

Luke 10:25-37 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

²⁵ Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” ²⁶ He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” ²⁷ 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.”²⁸ And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” 

²⁹ But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” ³⁰ 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. ³¹ Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. ³² So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. ³³ But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. ³⁴ 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. ³⁵ 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.’ ³⁶ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” ³⁷ He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

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                Who is my neighbor? That's a good question. Is it the person who lives next door? Is it someone who lives in my neighborhood or maybe my hometown? That's the question a man asked Jesus after first asking Jesus what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus responded, as he often did with a question of his own. "What is written in the Law? This should be easy for the man who was by trade a lawyer. The man had a quick answer. Love God with your whole being (Deut. 6:5) and love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18). That was something he had been taught as a child. But, the lawyer isn't through with Jesus quite yet. Since this is designed to be a test he wants to clarify things a bit. So, he asks Jesus to offer a definition of neighbor. If he's going to love his neighbor, where might Jesus draw the line? Who qualifies and who doesn't? 

                Jesus has an answer to the question that is going to cause the lawyer something a headache. That answer comes in the form of a parable/short story. This parable we know as the "Parable of the Good Samaritan" is well known, even to folks outside the church. 

             The parable of the “Good Samaritan” tends to be used as an example story, without fully understanding what Jesus was up to. A Good Samaritan is a person who stops and helps people in moments of distress. You're driving down the road and you see someone stopped along the side trying to change the tire. You see they're struggling, so you stop and help. There's nothing wrong with such actions, but is that what Jesus is up to when he tells the story? 

         We might want to start by taking note of the question that elicits the parable. Who is my neighbor?  We all want neighbors who will help us when we’re in distress, but what if our neighbor is a Samaritan? You might respond, well, why would that matter? The Samaritan stopped to help the man in the ditch, what more do we need to know? 

          As with many of Jesus’ parables, we often miss the point because we don’t understand the context. It’s important to remember that Jews and Samaritans were not on friendly terms. In fact, they saw each other as enemies. Yes, they despised each other to such an extent that they would not welcome each other as neighbors. They would go out of their way to avoid each other. In other words, in conventional terms, they weren't neighbors! Nevertheless, in this parable, the hero is someone whom the hearer might consider not  to be a neighbor but an "anti-neighbor." Yet, the despised one the hero of the story, the one who rescues the person in distress, at great cost to himself, and his inclusion in the story is both surprising and offensive to the audience.

             The parable is designed to answer the question of who is the neighbor. The lawyer answers Jesus by pointing to our hero, but he doesn't use the word Samaritan. He simply said that it was the one who showed mercy. I might be reading something into the story, but I can imagine that it would have been incredibly difficult to say that it was a Samaritan. He would have assumed a priest or Levite would stop and help, for these are holy ones, but a Samaritan? Surely not! 

                As we ponder the identity of the Samaritan, we might want to ask who the Samaritan is today? Who fits this character in our context? I don't think anyone is concerned about a Samaritan getting commendation from Jesus. So, who is it? If Jesus were to tell the story in our context, who would surprise you? Another way of asking the question might be to ask whom you would prefer not to move into your neighborhood? A Muslim? A Hindu? A gay couple? How about an African American family or a Latino family? Homeowners are always concerned about property values. If certain people move into the neighborhood they could bring down housing values, at least that's the way it used to be. Even today, realtors know how to steer customers to “appropriate” neighborhoods. Back in the day, especially in cities like Detroit and many of its suburbs, there were deed restrictions that prevented persons of color from moving into the neighborhood. When these restrictions were deemed unconstitutional and thus illegal, people fled the cities for the suburbs. White Flight was abetted by government policies that determined who could receive home loans and what neighborhoods they could be used in. Thus, the FHA loan system in the 1950s denied loans to people of color, which allowed for the creation of newly minted suburbs that were almost completely white. At the same time, the urban areas became increasingly non-white. Thus, a city like Detroit is now over 80% African American, while many of the outer-ring suburbs are predominantly white. When we’re allowed to choose our neighbors, it appears that we like neighbors who look like us, talk like us, believe like us, etc.

              Quite often we define the other according to stereotypes and deem them unworthy of being our neighbors. How could a stranger, someone so different from me, offer me anything of value? The two figures in the parable who stand out as poor examples of neighborliness—the priest and the Levite—are the kind of people that the lawyer would have considered good candidates for being a neighbor. Wouldn't you? After all, these are religious leaders. In fact, they're people like me! Surely they would take care of their neighbors! 

           As for the person needing help, that person isn't identified, except that he was a man traveling the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. We know he's been attacked by robbers who stripped him and beat him. Beyond that, we don't know why the priest and Levite chose to avoid helping. We’ve often assumed that they passed by because of their priestly duties, but Jesus doesn't tell us anything about that, including which direction they were traveling. Were they heading toward Jericho or Jerusalem? If they were concerned about their priestly duties they would have to go to Jerusalem, but that's not part of the story. If they were heading to Jericho like the man who was waylaid, then questions of ritual clean/unclean wouldn't have been an issue. They could fulfill their purification rituals before returning to Jerusalem. Even if they were heading to Jerusalem, if they were concerned about touching something that would make them ritually unclean, surely they could perform the necessary rituals so they could take their place on the duty roster. So maybe the issue of clean and unclean had nothing to do with it. Perhaps they were afraid that if they stopped to help they could be waylaid by the robbers as well. Now, that's understandable. After all, this was a dangerous road. Whatever the case, they failed the test of being a good neighbor. While they didn't act like a good neighbor, the person that Jesus’ audience would least expect to serve the role of being the good neighbor becomes the hero of the story.

                So, when Jesus was asked to define what a neighbor whom one was to love was, he offered the story of the Samaritan.  As we who are Christians ponder this question in our context, I’m sure we all want to believe that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Stanley Saunders reminds us that the question that led to the conversation as to the identity of the neighbor had to do with salvation. He writes:

Salvation is found not in building walls, but in joining arms with the enemy and the alien---notions directly contrary to current political tendencies. Are our deeply held and ever-hardening political binaries congruent with our own faith?  Finally, when we read this story through our modern highly individualized and self-interested notions of salvation, we may end up in the same camp as the lawyer, who seems to have the right answers, but the wrong questions. How does this story challenge narrow, individualistic, formulaic, and self-justifying notions of salvation? [Connections, p. 158]

 

What then are the questions we should be asking? How might we hear Jesus' message so that we don't fall victim to "narrow, individualistic, formulaic, and self-justifying notions of salvation?"

           As we ponder these questions, I want to bring into view a community of communities that are often targeted by fellow Christians, especially white American Christians (people who look like me and profess the same faith). In our current climate, when we think of who fits the role of the Samaritan, could it be the immigrant who stands out, especially one who is either undocumented or a refugee? Even though the Statue of Liberty declares that America welcomes the teeming masses, the current mood is anti-immigrant. There is the fear on the part of at least some Americans who look a lot like me that an influx of immigrants from places like Central America, Mexico, Asia, or the Middle East, will somehow undermine our nation's cultural identity. Interestingly enough, in my experience, most of the immigrants I know are friendly, gracious, and generous people. They’re the kind of people you would want to have as your neighbors!  Even though they might have belief systems different from my own, my immigrant friends who are, for instance, Muslim or Hindu, and I have recognized in each other the presence of God. They are the kind of people I want as my neighbors, people whom I am to love as I love myself! While Jesus told a story to help get this across to the lawyer. I think in our day we need more than a story. We need to find ways of being in relationships with neighbors different from ourselves. 

              As we ponder this question of who is our neighbor, I offer this word from a book by Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz. In their book Public Faith in Action, they speak of Jesus as “Christ the welcomer.” They suggest that we should imitate him, for Jesus is the “incarnation of a welcoming God” (p. 126). Then they write something that’s germane here:

Embracing others is just what love of neighbor looks like when our neighbor is a “stranger.” Such welcoming love is the first basic Christian commitment that should shape public engagement related to migration (Public Faith in Action, p. 127).

There are other principles involved as well, like justice, but this is the starting point. We talk often about economics and cultural interests, but as Volf and McAnnally-Linz remind us, we should be thinking in terms of “welcoming embrace and justice.” Obviously, there are different factors to be considered when a nation welcomes the stranger—including economic and security issues—but how do we determine what those limits should be?

                So the question still stands: who is my neighbor? 

Picture attribution: Gogh, Vincent van, 1853-1890. Good Samaritan, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54697 [retrieved July 4, 2016]. Original source: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-JxomvlRi2uo/SDTc3ruAVoI/AAAAAAAANxw/L07CjJU2AOo/s512/The%252520Good%252520Samaritan%252520by%252520Van%252520Gogh.jpg.