Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"  He said to him, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?"  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."  And he said to him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live."
But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" 
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.  Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.  So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.  But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity.  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.
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.'
Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?"  He said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

Do you know who your neighbors are?If so, do you know how you’re supposed to treat them?Of course you do.  Your neighbors are the people who live next door to you or on your block.  And if they treat you well, you’re supposed to treat them nicely.  If they don’t, you’re supposed to build a really, really high fence, right?  The answers seem pretty simple.

Unfortunately, our definition of a neighbor is not necessarily the same as Jesus’ definition.  When Jesus talks about loving our neighbors, he’s not talking about loving the people next door or down the street.  His definition is much broader.  Unfortunately, we don’t necessarily grasp how broad his definition is when we listen to the Good Samaritan story.  Why?  Because the story is so familiar that we no longer hear it with the fresh ears that Jesus’ followers did.  We’re used to hearing the story very much the way you hear it in something like The Rhyme Bible Storybook’s version:

The Good Man
Jesus told this story one day: 
There once was a man
Who was on his way
To visit a town that was far away.

But out of the bushes
Jumped some thieves.
They didn’t say thank you.
They didn’t say please.
They took his things
And knocked him down
And left him bleeding
On the ground.

Not long after,
A priest came by.
He saw the man
And heard him cry
Did the priest help?
Did he even try?
No, he did not.
He walked on by.

Next came a Levite.
He saw the man, too.
And he thought to himself,
“What shall I do?
I’d rather not bother
With that kind of guy.”
So he stepped to one side
And walked on by.

At last a Samaritan
Came that way.
He saw the man
And decided to stay.
He bandaged his wounds
And he gave him a ride.
He fed him some food
And stayed by his side.

And then the Samaritan
Went on his way.
He counted his coins
And paid for their stay.

Then Jesus asked,
“Who did the good deed?
Now go do the same
For someone in need!”

 

We are used to hearing that kind of version of the story in our heads.  But Jesus’ followers heard a very different story.  The heard things in the story that we never hear because we are too far away from that time and culture.  Let me show you what I mean.

The story begins on the twenty-mile road from Jerusalem to Jericho, which was a very dangerous road.  Jerusalem lies on the top of what is called Mount Zion, a collection of flat peaks that are around 2300 feet above sea level.  Jericho, which is near the spot where the River Jordan flows into the Dead Sea, lies about 1300 feet below sea level.  The road drops 3600 feet, which makes it a steep and difficult road for travelers.  The road is also very dangerous because it winds through rocky canyons and crevasses, which make perfect hiding places for bandits and thieves.  For centuries, thieves and bandits have hid in the dark recesses of the rock to attack travelers.  It wasn’t until the 1940s that the road became safe.  For thousands of years it had a nickname:  the Red or Bloody Way.  When people traveled, they traveled in caravans for safety. 

The man who was injured was traveling alone, and probably at night, when he was attacked.  He would have known that it was dangerous, and that he was taking a risk by traveling alone.  Everyone knew that traveling that road at night was potentially a death walk.  Jesus’ followers probably would have immediately thought, “The fool!  He got what he deserved.  Nobody travels this way alone.  I’d let him lie there.  Why put my life at risk to help someone who doesn’t even care about his own life?”  He was a person worthy of scorn. 

Along came the priest.  Jericho was a town in which the majority of residents were priests and Levites who served in the Temple in Jerusalem.  Each priest served for two weeks a year.  At any one time there would have been over a hundred priests doing all sorts of tasks related to people’s worship and sacrifices.  The priest, traveling up the road, saw the man lying there, but he also knew what would happen if he helped.  If the man was dead, and he touched him, the priest would be declared unclean for seven days.  A huge chunk of his temple time would have been cut off, leaving the temple short-handed.  And he’d have to wait another year to serve.  His work was important.  He was serving God.  He seemed perfectly justified in going on his way. 

The Levite had similar reasons for doing nothing because he also served in the temple.  In addition, the Levite understood a favorite trick of bandits.  Often they would leave a man in the road, pretending to be hurt, so that when passersbys tried to help they could attack them.  The Levite had every reason to keep going, reasons that Jesus’ listeners understood.  You could almost hear them thinking, “Of course he would walk on by.  Why would he stop and possibly lose his life to help a foolish man who didn’t care about his own life?” 

Those listening to the story would have understood and even supported the decision of the priest and the Levite to keep walking.  The Samaritan, though, presented a different problem for the listeners.  The Samaritan was considered to be a rejected man.  The Samaritans were not Jews, but they worshiped the Jewish God.  They had their own rituals and temple.  I mentioned their beginnings several weeks ago when I preached on Elijah.  The Samaritans were the remnant of the Northern nation of Israel, and under kings Omri and Ahab, who had encouraged the worship of Ba’al.  After the Assyrian destruction of the nation, the Jewish remnant intermarried with Gentiles and created their own brand of Judaism, a brand that incorporated elements of other religions.  For the Judean Jews of Jesus’ time, the Samaritans were heretics and heathens.  For a heretic like this Samaritan to be the hero of the story, to be the one serving God by caring for the dying man, was an incredible concept.  You see, his compassion placed him in a precarious position.  He could have easily been accused of hurting this man, and of caring for him only to cover-up his crime.  Who would have believed a Samaritan?  This rejected Samaritan was the only one who had compassion enough to realize that caring for this wounded man was more important than anything else.  Jesus was saying that the rejected man was the one who loved his neighbor, not the two holy men who served God.

So what does this parable teach us? Well, it’s about much more than the need to help strangers.  This parable is about both who to love and how to love. 

Let’s start with what it tells us about who to love.  It is one of the many stories in scripture that tell us about the nature of love.  It is a story that tells us that it is more important to look into people’s hearts and minds than their outward condition.  In fact, if you read the gospels, most often the heroes of the stories are not the holy, righteous, religious people.  The heroes are the rejected ones who break through their condition to love God and have faith.  They are people like lepers, who have been rejected as sinful by the holy and righteous Jews.  They are paralytics who have faith in Jesus.  They are Canaanites, considered to be pagans by the Jews, who still trust in Jesus.  They are people like the Roman centurion, whom the Jews hated, but who has faith in Jesus.  They are people like Matthew the tax collector, who not only has faith and humility, but follows Jesus as a disciple. They are people like the Syro-Phoenican woman, who recognizes Jesus for who he is and spreads the word.  They are people like the woman hemorrhaging for 12 years, who, being declared unclean, could never touch her children, eat a meal with others, or hug her husband and children; yet who had faith enough to trust Jesus.  And they are people like the Good Samaritan.  What they all have in common is that they are rejected by the holy ones, yet who are holy themselves because of their faith and love, regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or occupation. 

I want you to engage in a short exercise this morning.  Get a picture in your mind of a kind of person, or a class of people, whom you can’t love for some reason.  Do you have a picture of that or those people?  Then think about this:  they are your neighbors.  They are the ones you are called to love. 

Jesus doesn’t only teach us who to love, but he also tells us that how we are to love.  What did the priest and the Levite have in common? They both had legitimate reasons to do nothing, and so they did nothing.  But to Jesus, legitimate human reasons for doing nothing are not reasons.  Think about all the legitimate reasons we have for not caring about certain populations that are hard to care about.   It doesn’t matter what their situation is, we are called to do something.  For instance, right now there are 58 million people in this country who are uninsured.  Many more are underinsured.  Most are middle classed because if you are poor you become eligible for government-funded insurance.  Are we supposed to do nothing about their condition?  There are legitimate reasons for doing nothing.  We all remember the Clinton administration attempts to create nationalized insurance.  Many hated the idea of using taxes to pay for insurance.  And the attempt failed, probably for a lot of good reasons.  But since then we’ve done nothing as insurance has gotten more expensive while covering less.  We complain that it costs too much for businesses to insure workers, which is a legitimate complaint.  It’s all legitimate, but does that mean we should do nothing.  And when we do nothing, we become like the priest and the Levite.  By the way, I have no idea what we should do, but I also know that not knowing what to do isn’t an excuse for not caring and not doing anything.  There are legitimate reasons for doing nothing:  not wanting to pay higher taxes, not wanting to incur higher business costs that lead to inflation.  Still, to tolerate doing nothing is to not care, and that’s a million times worse than higher taxes or inflation, at least from God’s perspective.

Going further, there is a class of people in our society who are treated like modern-day Samaritans.  You may disagree with me, but this is my belief.  According to researchers, 6%-10% of our population are homosexuals.  And if you talk with many of them, and I would say a majority of them, they believe that the Christian church hates them.  I don’t mean that they feel like they don’t fit in the Church.  They believe that good, God-fearing, churchgoing Christians actually hate them.  And they feel this way for good reason:  there are many, many Christians who consider them to be immoral and sinful.  And it gives them a legitimate-seeming reason to discriminate against gays and lesbians.  How are we supposed to treat homosexuals who feel hated by Christians?  To what extent are they modern-day Samaritans, especially if they happen to be homosexual and compassionate towards others? 

I think we can look at the whole issue of immigration in a similar way.  How do we look upon illegal immigrants who flood to this country in order to escape grinding poverty in their own country?  There are legitimate reasons for barring them from this country and for forcing them to go through the long process of becoming citizens or legitimate guest workers.  But by making them go through the legal process, are we forcing them back into poverty?  Is it okay to do nothing about poverty in other countries?  And if we do nothing, is that being Christian?  Again, I don’t know what the answer is.  I don’t know what we should do, but I also know that to constrain our love to only those who are citizens of the U.S., while failing to care about the poor in other countries, is to be like the priest and the Levite who both had legitimate reasons for not caring and doing nothing.  What are we called to do to care about immigrants trying to escape poverty?

I don’t know that I’m proposing a certain course of action, but I do want you to think and pray about these things because how we vote, the extent to which we write our representatives, and the extent to which we try to do something, even if it is something small, is a measure of our willingness to love our neighbor, who may be uninsured, a homosexual, or an illegal immigrant.  Loving our neighbor isn’t just a matter of taking care of people’s wounds (although when it comes to the insurance issue, it is a matter of that).  It’s a matter of the degree to which we are willing to put aside our own interests to care about others.  To follow Jesus’ teachings means that we may have to give up something of our own in order to give to another in need. 

In the end this passage is presenting us with a challenge.  In the end it’s telling us that God is not going to judge us on how pure our faith and belief are so much as God is going to judge us on who we loved, and how we loved them.  When you come face-to-face with God, will God consider you to be a Samaritan? 

Amen.