"God's Neighborhood"  Luke 10:25-37

A Sermon Preached By

Rev. Peter W. Shidemantle

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time,  July 11, 2004

PEBBLE HILL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

5299 Jamesville Rd., Dewitt, NY  13214 

Phone:  315-446-0960

                                                                                    phillchu@twcny.rr.com

            “Who is my neighbor?”   This is the question that Jesus responded to with perhaps his best-known parable, the Good Samaritan, the parable which, as one commentator puts it, “… has been worm smooth by long familiarity.”  At the end of the parable Jesus asks his interrogator, “which (of the three) proved to be neighbor to the man…?” – and the lawyer responded, “the one who showed mercy.”

            When we think of the word “neighbor” I think it carries something of this sense for us, that our neighbor isn’t just someone who lives nearby, next door or down the street.  The word implies more of relationship than that.  And when we think of “neighborhood” we think of it more than just a geographic area defined by its boundaries.  There is a sense of connection, where there are common concerns, where people look out for one another and help one another.  These days we often speak of these things in nostalgic ways – about how things “used to be” – when folks talked to each other over back yard hedges, when you didn’t have to lock your doors at night, when people felt free to drop by unannounced, and so forth.

            We often bemoan how these practices aren’t so common now.  As many neighborhoods, particularly in the inner cities, have changed due to economic and other forces and folks have moved out, those who remain fear for their safety and spend most of their time behind locked doors.  And in more affluent neighborhoods people are often so busy that “neighborliness” becomes more of an inconvenience than anything else.  One’s home becomes a fortress where one escapes from the world, surrounded by the things that make us comfortable. 

            Much has been written and said about the breakdown of community and our connections with one another in this society.  The explosion of suburbia since World War II, the development of so many of our modern conveniences, has had the effect of isolating us from one another, with the goal of each person or family becoming a fully self-sufficient unit, having all that is needed at our fingertips – not needing to share or cooperate to any significant degree, aside from banning together when our “quality of life” is challenged or threatened.

            In some ways it is harder to be a neighbor these days than in the past.  It takes more of an intentional effort, like the effort to be part of a church community, for example, to step out of our easy isolation, and to some degree step out of our comfort zone, to be part of a community, a gathering of people whom you would not necessarily choose to associate with otherwise.  It takes a decision to be part of something that is bigger than my own small world of concern – to become vulnerable, in a sense, to the needs and demands of others when you don’t really have to – and not to bolt at the first sign of discomfort.  That decision is hard to make these days because most of what is out there to offer you happiness and fulfillment in life is directed toward your needs, wants and desires.

            One of the most famous applications of the parable of the Good Samaritan was by Martin Luther King, Jr., who made reference to it in his last sermon the night before he was assassinated.  He was exhorting his audience that night to overcome their fear and cultivate what he called “a kind of dangerous unselfishness.”  He wondered about the thought processes of the priest and the Levite as they passed by the man laying on the side of the road.  He thinks that they recognized the man was injured and probably even wanted to help him.  But the road between Jerusalem and Jericho was, as today, dangerous territory – as the ancient historian Josephus, put it, the road was “desolate and rocky,” and often when travelers took it, they carried weapons to protect themselves from robbers.  Perhaps these two wondered if the robbers were still around, waiting for their next victim.  So they thought to themselves, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?”  But the Samaritan reversed this question and exhibited a “dangerous unselfishness,” asking “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”  That’s the right question.

            That’s still the right question, but it’s hard even to ask it when we live isolated lives, not just physically isolated, but isolated by the concerns and life styles that are dedicated to the promotion and well-being of “our own,” while the promotion of the well-being of the “other” is at best secondary, or an occasional concern.  This parable is not the only place in the gospels where Jesus makes it clear that we tend to keep at the margins of our concerns and efforts, God places front and center.  And so the question becomes for us how we are to make God’s concerns our own.

            This is what Jesus was constantly about – what he taught and modeled in his holy life.  Here he does it by redefining the concept of “neighbor.”  It would not have been missed by his first hearers that the man who stopped to help was a Samaritan, an unclean outsider from another, foreign neighborhood, whom any good Jew would avoid at all costs.  No longer is “neighbor” to be defined by race, region or religion.  The whole world is God’s neighborhood, since “in Christ there is no east or west, in him no south or north” (as the old hymn puts it), since, in St. Paul’s words, “there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, but all are one in Christ” – then all distinctions and all categories that this world so willingly uses to divide people from one another are moot, and for the follower Jesus Christ what becomes the primary motivation for neighborliness is not our own needs and concerns, but the needs of others.  For Jesus, “neighbor” is an active word, not a passive one, as is “love,” as is “faith.”

            You see, discipleship means engagement.  It means risking our comfort, our security, our lives if need be, for true life.  This whole exchange, you’ll remember, started off with the lawyer asking Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  He didn’t mean “What do I have to do to go to heaven when I die?”  He meant “life” in God’s kingdom now, life that is God-filled, God-inspired, God-infected, God-enjoyed, life.  And Jesus answers in the words of the greatest commandment – to live out the love of God, of others, and of self.  Such are those who have been touched by the kingdom of God.

            The message remains as simple and as difficult as it has always been.  It remains the challenge before us as we set our own needs and the needs of our own alongside the needs of others.  It calls us to live outwardly, and to let our inward lives, our life of devotion and prayer, be shaped and enriched by what we encounter there.  God did not create us to live in the rarified air of our own concerns, even “spiritual” ones, but created us for each other, for community, for solidarity, for love – love of God, others and self.  That’s where true life is, now and eternally.

            Making God’s concerns our own.  If that is the movement of the Christian life, then there is no better place to start, and start again, than with our neighbor, as defined not by what that person does for us, but what is within our power to do for them.  There is life there, because it opens us to a world of blessing that we cannot know without it.  Judith Brain of Pilgrim United Church Christ in Lexington, Massachusetts, tells this story:

            My son is a jazz musician.  My husband and I went to hear his band one night, at a club in Roxbury.  It was a warm, interracial, friendly spot.

            At the table next to ours a big, friendly African-American man attended to a tiny, twisted human being on a wheeled cart.  A paralyzed man with a puppet’s body and large misshapen head lay on the cart, sipping his beer through a straw and watching the musicians attentively.  He seemed alert, but only his eyes moved so it was hard to tell how much he really took in.

            His friend captured our attention.  He seemed alive to every nuance of this poor, deformed man.  He leaned close to hear him speak in that noisy club and his manner proclaimed love.

            I thought about how wonderful this scene was.  The club that embraced this broken person.  I felt part of that embrace.  I, too, was reaching out in some way with a friendly smile.  “I accept you,” I was saying.

            The room was smoky and my contact lenses gave me trouble.  I popped them out, sloshed them in my water glass, and put them back.  In a few minutes, the tall man came over to our table and gave me a bottle of eye drops.  “Here, you need this.”

            “Oh, thanks,” I gushed.  “You noticed.”

            “No, my friend did,” he said, pointing to the man on the cart.  On that crooked face was a big grin.

            He took pity on me.  I came out of my arrogant pharisaical fog.  “I accept you.”  What presumption!  I thought I was the giver and he was alien, the last person in the world who could help me.  But the tables were turned.  That twisted man in the jazz club became an unexpected source of kindness.

            The turning of tables is a common side effect of life in Christ.  If the blessing of others is our goal, we will find ourselves blessed.  It’s like the Dalai Lama says, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.  If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

            We live in God’s neighborhood.  It is our primary place of residence.  May God open our eyes and open our hearts, more and more, to the astounding life that God gives us to live, to the neighbor whom we bless, and who blesses us.      

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