8th Sunday after Pentecost -- 14 July, 2013

(After about a week at the Lutheran-Anglican Joint Assembly, it was my turn to preach again.)

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

• Now we all know this story – inside and out. Since the story is so well-known, it can be hard to preach on. On the other hand, since it is so well-known, the necessity of preaching on it is that much greater. Well-known stories are often reduced to silence since “everybody knows them” and everybody knows what they mean. On the other hand, they are so often repeated and so well known because they are just so important.
• So it is with the story of the so-called Good Samaritan, the hated outsider who goes out of his way to take care of a person who might have crossed the street to avoid meeting him under other circumstances.
• If this were a simple morality fable, it would be the priest or the Levite or the traveller who stops to help a beat-up Samaritan. So “Go and do likewise”, right? One good reading of this parable proves that this is NOT the case. If we try to moralize this tale, we are doing violence to the story and minimizing it's effect on ourselves.
• The lawyer in the story is an expert in the Law of Moses, not a barrister or attorney. He may have been trying to trap Jesus in asking what he must do to get right with God, to earn eternal life. The man said “inherit” but the meaning is the same: What exactly do I have to do to be in the front of the line when the vouchers for eternal life are given out? Jesus answers and in a sense, turns the question on it's head. “You're a student of the Law and you don't know? You tell me!” When he does, Jesus approves of his answer.
• That should've settled it, but wait! There's more!But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" No bumpkin preacher from backwater Galilee is going to put one over on him. So he asks the further question. The answer comes in the form of a parable which is often misinterpreted and misunderstood.
• Here's the problem: we tend to think like this “lawyer.” We often think we need to scan the society around us to see who will count as our neighbour. The parable of the so-called Good Samaritan confronts this. It is not a morality tale or simply an example fable; it is a parable of the Kingdom of God, and one that turns all our usual thinking on it's ear. The Samaritan is not only the unexpected one; he is the unwanted one, the one by whom the parable's hearers would not want to be loved. Notice that the lawyer cannot even acknowledge the presence of the Samaritan in the parable, even though he admits that the Samaritan - "The one who showed him mercy." - was neighbour to the victimized man. The parable of the “Good Samaritan” makes more Gospel sense if we understand that Samaritans were never considered “good' by most of Jesus' listeners.
• In his parable, Jesus says that figuring out just who is 'neighbour' is less important than making sure that we ourselves act as a neighbour to everyone we meet. By matching his story to his hearers, he is also saying that they (and we) are to become “Samaritans.” Not turning into people from Samaria, but possibly becoming what we have once despised. So much is turned inside-out and upside-down. The old boundaries cannot hold. We cannot decide who our neighbour will be based on religion, nationality, age, mutual interest, or any other category because we can rarely choose our neighbour!
• This can be painful and upsetting. It may involve dealing with people we think are unworthy of our attention because they're the wrong sort of people. That's how it is with grace. The old categories no longer hold, especially in light of the Kingdom of God and of grace.
• Following the Great Commandments still has to be our way of life as disciples of Jesus Christ. They are linked, coupled, and as disciples we really cannot do one without the other. Being “right” with God is not about what we think in our heads about God or the knowledge we have of all the intricacies of theological conversation. Being right with God is loving God with all we’ve got and loving our neighbour as ourselves.
• So this delightful parable – the basis of so many good deeds – is really quite challenging and, in a way, very subversive. Just like all the rest of the words of the Kingdom.