SERMONS

The Sermon of the Week is from Rev'd Brian Dawson (or at least it's the one he wrote, which may or may not resemble the sermon actually preached!)

SERMON OF THE WEEK

The 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 11 th January 2010 – Who is my neighbour?

Reading : Luke 10: 25-37

If I were to ask you which were the two best known parables in the Bible, what would you say? My picks for the top two would be the Parable of the Prodigal Son and this one, the Good Samaritan, and both of the se parables, I believe, have two things in common: firstly, the y're both so well known and we've heard the m so many times before, that when we hear the m again we don't really listen because we think we know what we're going to hear. Secondly, both of the se parables could be considered poorly named. The Prodigal Son could be just as easily – and perhaps more accurately – called the Parable of the Loving Fa the r, or perhaps the jealous bro the r, and the Good Samaritan – who at no point in the story is actually called good – could perhaps be better titled the surprising neighbour.

So let's imagine for a moment that we don't already know what this parable is all about and dig a little deeper in search of some meaning, beginning maybe with why Jesus tells it. “Just the n a lawyer stood up to test Jesus.”

I want to be clear, this isn't a lawyer as we understand lawyers. A lawyer in the scriptures was someone who studied the Law, and specifically the Law of Moses found in the Torah under which the Jews lived and continue to live today. Lawyer's get a had time in the gospels, the re's no denying that, and in Mat the w and Mark especially the y're usually mentioned in relation to trying to trap Jesus with some kind of technical question, but Luke is a bit different. In Luke Jesus rarely criticises the Law or the lawyers, but he does often enter into debates with the m, which was – and this is important to note – the way that the lawyers did the ir lawyering. All the old jokes about Jews answering a question with a question come from this method of studying the Law. So when a lawyer stands up to test Jesus I want to encourage us not to immediately assume, as some people do, that the lawyer is trying to trap Jesus somehow.

"Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" The lawyer asks a question. “What is written in the law?” Jesus asks a question back. "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." This is Judaism 101 – every child knew the se two rules. "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live." Just do what you already know Jesus says. “But wanting to justify himself,” the lawyer needed to show that he wasn't a complete dunce who didn't understand the bare basics of his religion, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

Right the re is the heart of this reading and this parable. Who is my neighbour? The lawyers were those who were dedicated to the study of the Law so that the y could define the Law. There are 613 laws in the Torah, but the definitions of those laws, and the ways in which each and every one of the m should be interpreted, number in the thousands, and it was the lawyers who worked on interpreting those interpretations, which was an important job. If you know that your salvation, your fulfillment of the Law, rests on loving God and neighbour the n knowing who your neighbour is becomes a point of literally life and death. So when the lawyer asks Jesus that precise question it isn't necessarily about trying to trick him, but ra the r perhaps a genuine attempt to answer a vitally important query.

21st century Havelock North is a very different place to 1 st century Palestine , but I suspect the re are a few similarities. Among the m, the entrenched belief that a neighbour is someone close to you – not necessarily in terms of friendship or family, but close geographically and culturally. Our neighbours are those who are more or less like us; the y share our communities, our cultures, our beliefs and how we live the m, and those who don't share those things are the o the rs, strangers. Much the same was true in 1 st century Palestine . The traditional interpretation of the ‘love your neighbour' rule was that it meant looking out for fellow Jews. That was usually qualified with some complex equations about how far away the y should live and the difference between neighbours, strangers and enemies, but essentially a neighbour was still someone more or less like yourself.

Jesus tells a story. A man is travelling on a well known dangerous road when he's attacked by robbers. Left for dead, his traditional neighbours – a priest and a Levite – pass him by without offering assistance. Instead the one who comes to his aid is – shock, horror – a Samaritan, who binds his wounds, takes him to an inn, pays for his care, and promises to cover any additional costs later.

We know about the Judean-Samaritan issues. We know because we've all heard this story before, Non-Jews reading or hearing Luke's gospel for the first time knew because he has previously told a story about Jesus being rejected by a Samaritan village and James and John wanting to call down fire from heaven against the villagers, and those hearing Jesus respond to the lawyer knew because, well, the y were living it.

In the Greek the effect is even stronger. After the priest and the Levite pass by the very first word in the next sentence is ‘Samaritan'. The Judeans hated the Samaritans because the y had always hated the Samaritans. They went to the wrong Temple and worshipped in the wrong way and followed the wrong rules, and the refore God too hated the Samaritans. And the Samaritans hated the Judeans because the y had always hated the m. They went to the wrong Temple and worshipped in the wrong way and followed the wrong rules, so God too hated the Judeans – do we get the picture? These two peoples did not like each o the r, the y despised each o the r, and deep down it's pretty obvious the y were actually afraid of each o the r, which is what's usually the case with people we really dislike.

A Samaritan stops to help. A Samaritan goes out of his way to offer assistance and to go on offering assistance to a man who, although we're never told so explicitly, must have been a Judean because he was on a Judean road, and the fact that a Samaritan was on that road just added to the shock value. Who is my neighbour? A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho …

At the end of his story Jesus yet again answers the lawyer's question with a question, “Which of the se three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" There is a danger, I think, in oversimplifying this story, and I know I've been guilty of that. It's to easy to say, ‘oh my neighbour is the person I least expect, or the person I most dislike'. Both of those are true in this case, but that's not really the point. And again, the re's a great danger here in making this story overly complex – that's what I believe the lawyers were doing, and why Jesus tells the story the way he does. Attempting to strictly define who is a neighbour and who isn't, who's in and who's out, who's one of us and who is o the r – those complexities miss the point as well.

Which of the se was a true neighbour to the injured man? The lawyer said to him, "The one who showed him mercy."

The lawyer answers his own question. Who is my neighbour? The one who shows mercy. But the re's an implied question within that answer and, indeed, within the question itself. When Jesus told a parable he did so in such a way that those who were listening could put the mselves into the story; the parable of the sower, most of the audience could relate to the challenges of middle eastern horticultural, the parable of the hired hand, many had been unemployed. In today's parable the invitation is to place yourself into the story, and that means considering not just who is my neighbour, but also who am I a neighbour to?

To be a neighbour, Jesus says, means to help those who need help, to not ignore the needs of those we become aware of, to show mercy. It's an important word ‘mercy', it means much more than just to help. It implies awareness of need, but even more, a willingness to accept the cost of meeting that need.

It's debatable how much it would have cost the priest and the Levite to help the injured man. Yes, the y may have been on the ir way to the Temple, and yes, the re were probably some ritual cleanliness issues at stake, but the Hebrew Law is pretty clear that helping a neighbour, in fact helping pretty much anyone who is in mortal need, trumps most o the r concerns, but still the re would have been a cost. Certainly that cost was much higher for the Samaritan. For him this injured man was worse than a stranger, he was an ‘o the r', someone he had been taught from birth to despise and avoid. To ignore that ingrained truth would have been emotionally costly and potentially costly in o the r ways if his fellow Samaritans found out about it. And of course the re was a financial cost to caring for the man.

A neighbour is the one who stops, who shows helps, who bears the cost; who shows mercy.

There is, I believe, a wider message in this parable. It's a message about trying to contain or restrict God's love and mercy, and as such the re is a challenge to the lawyer here and to all who try to strictly define what God calls us to do and be. The Law says simple ‘love your neighbour', the lawyers wanted to define precisely what ‘neighbour' meant, but the story of the good Samaritan challenges those definitions. As with many o the r examples in the gospel, Jesus seems to imply that wherever the re's a question God opts for the biggest possible answer.

Who is my neighbour? The one who shows mercy. Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."