at the First Congregational Church of Stoughton

United Church of Christ

"You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
Luke’s gospel updates these two greatest commandments, changing “might” to “strength” and adding “mind.” Heart, soul, strength, and mind represent the whole of human life offered back to God as a response to God’s saving acts. Nothing is withheld from God. On the face of it, it’s a simple formula for entering the kingdom of God.

A lawyer – an expert in religious law and teaching – wants to test Jesus and ends up answering his own question about what he must do to inherit eternal life. But then he asks, “Who is my neighbor?” A simple question, but the answer – the parable of the good Samaritan – must have been hard for him to swallow. Jesus’s parables are all subversive in some way, the intent being to turn our world-view on its head.

In 1908, Henry van Dyke wrote a travelogue of the Holy Land and included a vignette about his party’s journey on the Jericho Road. They found it was indeed dangerous. Going down from Jerusalem, as Luke says, van Dyke’s party found the road to be a wild place perfectly suited to robbers and violence. They even found the “Inn of the Good Samaritan.” Perhaps by 1908, tourism was beginning to supplant the more traditional ways to make a buck.

Why would the priest and Levite walk away from the guy in the ditch? Because they had responsibilities in the Temple for which contact with a dead man would have disqualified them. They had to make a choice between doing their duty and doing their duty. It’s a hard choice to make. Also, from what we know of the Jericho Road, the man in the ditch could have been a decoy for more robbers. If the priest and Levite were not being responsible to their offices, they were at least being prudent.

Now the Samaritan, to a first-century listener, was the exact opposite of the priest and Levite, and of the lawyer too for that matter. Samaritans were considered ceremonially unclean, social outcasts, and religious heretics. But as we get into the parable, we learn that it’s not who you are, it’s what you do that matters.

Samaritans were so despised in first century Judea that the lawyer in our reading couldn’t even say, “The Samaritan showed mercy.” He could only say, “The one.” A parallel in modern times might be, “Who won the 1999 World Series?” The answer, of course, is “that professional baseball team to our south that wears pinstripes and has won all those championships.” We can’t bring ourselves to say, “The Y------“. So imagine you’re the lawyer and Jesus has just revealed to you something about yourself and how far you extend your personal boundaries.

We’re all known to each other, but when we travel, what happens? When we were in Greece a few weeks ago, everyone seemed to know – somehow – that we were Americans. We dressed differently; we looked differently; we sounded and behaved differently. We stood out.
These days, some tribes wear red sox; others wear pinstripes. The same thing was true in the first century: Priests and Levites were identifiable by the robes they wore. Samaritans in Judea stood out in the crowd.

Now what about the guy in the ditch? Where was he from? We don’t know – the robbers had stripped him of his clothing, making it impossible to determine his tribe. He represents the universal man. But to the Samaritan, that wasn’t important. He saw and could identify only a man, and his tribe of origin didn’t matter.

We can give the innkeeper some credit too – only the two denarii in advance mattered to him, not the tribe of the one who offered them.
So where are we? Peter Gomes wrote, “Just because we may know what is right doesn’t make it any easier to do it.” That applies equally to the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan, and to us too.

What we see in the Samaritan’s behavior is a suspension of tribal rivalry. We read the news daily and see evidence from all around the world of people mistreating each other solely on the basis of who they are and where they are from. You name it, there’s conflict. Pick any spot on the planet where cultures and peoples mix and you’ll find suspicion. You’ll find inequalities. You’ll find one or more marginalized populations.
The Samaritan, perhaps because he was alone, perhaps because he was tired of conflict, but mostly because he was a compassionate man despite what cultural expectations said about his tribe, overcame the culture and did the right thing.

Rescuing his neighbor was more important than anything else he was doing at that moment. And it was worth it to him to spend a little money to ensure that the one he rescued actually recovered.

God set an impossibly high standard: “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” You shall. No ifs, ands, or buts about that one. No grey area; just do it.

There’s nothing wrong with high standards. At the beginning of every new sports season, when everyone’s record is even with no wins, no losses, no coach or player will tell you that they’re playing for second place. No one will say they want to get to the playoffs and then lose in the first round. Everyone wants to win the championship. Olympians go for the gold. And no one builds a house just hoping it will last ten years. So would God say, “You shall love only some of your neighbors”?

Loving our neighbors is not rocket science. We’re capable. But it can be a hard thing to do. There are so many obstacles to overcome, most of them within us, like Luke’s lawyer who can’t bring himself to say, “Samaritan.” Are some our neighbors while others are not? Which ones should we love? Do we love the really scary ones as much as we love the ones we like?

Jesus puts it another way: Who was the neighbor to the one in need? Not, as the lawyer asked, “Who is MY neighbor.” I don’t need to know as long as I am a neighbor to everyone. Jesus’s perspective is outward-facing, to be a neighbor to those in need.

We are all of us part of God’s creation. In return, we are asked – commanded – to love God. We love God in the way a child loves a parent: the parent provides food, shelter, an expensive education, and love. We give love and we get love. It gets tricky when we’re asked to love what God loves when God loves everyone, even those with whom we might disagree or find disagreeable. God’s way includes active compassion even in the face of personal risk or against cultural expectations.

That’s the challenge of a Christian, and it’s the good news preached by Jesus.

Amen.

¹Rev. Dr. William L. Self, “Doubt – The Prelude to Faith,” Day 1 Broadcast, April 15, 2007.