Sermon

Being a neighbor to “those people”

Deuteronomy 30: 8-14        Luke 10:25-37

Try to picture this: the Israelites are in the land of Moab and they are chronic complainers. They are tired, weary, and not really trusting Moses their leader. Moses summons the people and reminds them they have entered into a covenant with God, but they seem to have forgotten it on their journey. He points out uncomfortable things to them: some of you, he says, have already turned your hearts from God. Others of you have a bitterness growing in you. Some of you think “we are safe” and then go your stubborn ways bringing disaster on everyone.

He reminds them that during all these years God has been faithful – your clothes have not worn out; your sandals have not worn out; you have had food; we have passed safely through hostile territories. Then Moses calls them to renew their covenant with God.

Moses is very dramatic in his charge to the people. I suspect that, as a religious leader, he had heard many times, “Well, Moses, I am not a prophet like you. I am just a member of the tribe.” Probably every clergy person can identify with Moses. Church members say, “Well, Reverend, I am not a preacher or a theologian. I am just a member of the congregation.”

This kind of talk gets Moses worked up. So he says, “Ya’ll come here a minute, I want to tell you something. This covenant thing is not too hard for anybody. It is not like it is up in heaven and we have to send somebody up there to get it. And it’s not like it is somewhere across the ocean so we have to find somebody to go across the sea and bring it back. No, children of Israel! The word is very near you – in fact it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe. You don’t have to be a religious leader; you don’t have to be a preacher; you don’t have to be a theologian. It’s real simple: love God with all your heart and with all your soul.”

You see, if you do that – love God with all your heart and all your soul – then you will also love yourself and you will love others, even others you may not particularly like from time to time. If God dwells in each of us, and if we truly love God with heart and soul, then we will love ourselves and others, because God dwells in each of us and in the other.

In a church I served some years ago there was a young farmer who served on the Church Board. I no longer recall what the issue was, but this young farmer got himself at odds with several of the other Board members. For some months the Church Board meetings would range from simply being a tense meeting to times when there was outright acrimony.

That Christmas the church had a children’s pageant and this young farmer’s little son was in the pageant. I happened to be seated where I could see his face. The love he had for his young son was so obvious and so beautiful to watch. I remember thinking how great it would be if those who were at odds with him could see the love in his eyes and face that evening. Because I believe they would have realized they were seeing God in him and perhaps there would have been a possibility that he would see God in them.

According to Moses this covenant with God is near to each of us – already in our mouths and our hearts if we will allow ourselves to have faith and live it.

Luke, in telling the parable of the Good Samaritan, points out how difficult it is to do what sounds simple – love God with all your heart and love your neighbor like you love yourself. When I read those words about loving your neighbor as you love yourself, I sometimes wonder if perhaps the problem for many people is that they do not really love themselves. Because they do not or cannot love themselves they become incapable of truly loving someone else.

If we believe (about ourselves) that we are not worthy of being loved, then it becomes difficult and perhaps impossible to love someone else. If we believe others view us as having little or no worth, then we look around to find someone who is even less worthy than we are in order to feel good about ourselves. Sometimes we refer to them as “those people.” I believe that goes to the very core of racism and class-ism and various phobias in society.

In Luke’s parable a lawyer wants Jesus to give him some legal definitive way to have eternal life. When Jesus gives him this simple answer – love God and love your neighbor as yourself – the lawyer wants to justify himself. So, he asks a follow-up question, again I presume, seeking a legal clarity. “Just who is my neighbor, anyway?”

Can you imagine that lawyer’s frustration when Jesus answered him with a story? A story about a man who was beaten and robbed and left by the road. A story where the priest himself crossed over to the other side to avoid helping. A story that had even the Levite, (the Levites were the ones who assisted the priests in their priestly duties) – in other words, the altar boys, the ushers, the greeters, the members of the guild or brotherhood – crossed over to the other side to avoid helping.

Who comes along to help? Some guy from the other side of the tracks; someone “beneath” me, the priest, and maybe even you, the Levite. I may be a priest, I may be a Levite, but at least I am not a Samaritan. I may be poor, but at least I’m not (and you can fill in the blanks).

When we lived in Kansas the agency I directed in Wichita had the largest holiday food distribution program in the state. The week before Christmas we served over 3200 families with boxes of food and with a food voucher good at any grocery store. The food boxes and vouchers varied to meet the needs of the number of people in a family and, in many cases, the ethnic foods of families. We had to have interpreters for seven different languages for the population served by that program.

Some families were “adopted” by a civic group or people in an office or a church. We encouraged those who wanted to serve a family to go by and meet the parents or head of the household to get some sense of what that particular family liked for the holidays.

One year a member of one of the churches called and wanted that church group to be assigned a different family. The church member had gone by to meet the family, as we had suggested, and “lo and behold” the family had bought a turkey for Christmas. So, the good church folks concluded this family was not “poor enough” to receive a food box. Not only that, they even had a few wrapped Christmas presents. They preferred to serve a family who was a “little poorer.”

Now think about this: who do you think those church folk were giving that food box for? Was it so that a family could have a nicer Christmas? Or, was it so that those church folk could feel good about themselves because they had helped “those poor people?”

One day a woman came in with some used toys. She pulled out a coloring book to show me. She started thumbing through it until she finally found the four pages that had not been colored by her own children. She said, “My children don’t want this any longer. It has some pages left to color, so I thought I would bring it by since I am sure some child who would not have any coloring book could at least have something to color.” Can you imagine Santa Claus bringing a child a coloring book with only four pages and all the other pages have been colored? Can you imagine wrapping such a present for a child?

Many of the people who volunteered in the holiday distribution program were themselves recipients of food and toys. They volunteered as a way of helping and expressing their own gratitude. It just happened that day that one of the volunteers was there who was the mother of a young child. She walked over to the woman, took the coloring book, thumbed through it, and handed it back to the woman. Then this mother said to the woman: “Mam, if I was you, I would take this book home and I would put it under the Christmas tree. Then I would tell my kids, Santa Clause left this for you. He thought you don’t need a new coloring book since this one still has four pages.” And her final statement to the woman, “I will pray that you and your family will be blessed by Jesus’ love this Christmas.”

That last statement by that mother may sound like sarcasm on the surface. But I had been working with this mother for weeks, and I came to understand that she herself felt blessed by God, even in her poverty, and that she sincerely wanted others to be blessed. She also knew a truth – the way for someone’s heart to be changed comes from God. Understanding herself as one blessed by God – and she could name many blessings – she wanted others to experience that same sense of blessedness. She loved herself and this haughty woman with the coloring book, because she loved God.

A few days later when we were boxing food in the warehouse, the mother said to me, “Rev. Bell, you know that woman that brought that coloring book in here the other day? I’ve been praying for her. She could be so happy and so blessed if she would just open her heart and let God in. I’ve been praying that God will bless her.”

The lawyer’s question to Jesus was “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus turned the question back to him by asking the lawyer, “What does it say in the Torah? What is written there in our laws?” Of course the man knew the Hebrew law: 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.

The lawyer’s next question is disturbing. Perhaps I am disturbed because I can see myself too clearly and fear that I might ask the same question: Who is my neighbor? That is a disquieting question because it implies that there are people who are not my neighbor. The lawyer, also, obviously believed that – there are people who are not my neighbor, so tell me, who is my neighbor?

I suspect Jesus’ answer may have stunned that lawyer. Perhaps the answer both stunned and stung. At times when I read this scripture and I ask, who is my neighbor, this scripture condemns me. The answer, expressed in today’s vernacular is “those people.” Jesus made it clear that neither the priest nor the synagogue member was a neighbor. We don’t know about the victim, how he might have acted had he not been the one who was robbed and injured. We only know that a person who was looked upon with scorn, a Samaritan, “those people,” was the neighbor.

The one who showed mercy is the neighbor. As one who professes to be a follower of Jesus, I have to keep asking myself, “In today’s world, am I a neighbor? Where and how and to whom do I show mercy?”

Jesus uses this parable in at least two ways. First, he points out that the one who shows mercy is the neighbor – not the priest or the synagogue member who were apparently too busy with religious work. But secondly he uses as an example that despised, trashy Samaritan – those people – to make the point that a neighbor is one who shows mercy. “Go and do likewise” is both a command and a reprimand.

“Go and do likewise.” I want to encourage you when you go home, re-read this parable in Luke. Then, over the next weeks, actively look for those times and places where you have the opportunity to be a neighbor, to show mercy. Keep in your memory that modern-day Samaritan – the welfare mother in Wichita, Kansas. The woman with the coloring book with four whole pages that had not been colored was condescending and self-righteous. The welfare mother, seen by many as one of “those people,” was a neighbor and showed mercy. “I will pray that you and your family will be blessed by Jesus’ love this Christmas.”

Sinfully, over the years I have tagged various individuals or groups as “those people.” Maybe you have done that at times, too. For me, this parable is very clear about who is a neighbor. Also, for me, I want to be a neighbor even if in the past I may have thought of someone as “those people.”

I think God, through Christ, is asking me, and perhaps you, “Which of these three (in the parable) do you think was a neighbor . . .?” And if I answer that question, or if you answer that question, as did the lawyer, “The one who showed mercy,” then how will it change my life and yours if Jesus then responds: Go and do likewise.”

Amen.

Jim Bell

7/15/07