Amos 7:1-17 Ps.82
Col. 10:25-37 Luke 10:25-37
What can be a very galling thing? Well, what about when someone whom we’ve gotten in habit of disliking does something good and kind? Suddenly our preconceived notions is contradicted and we can get thrown off and challenged about our sweeping stereotypes.
The Gospel of Luke presents a wisdom story, a parable, of Jesus about a hated Samaritan practicing a kindness to a stranger that the very best of Israel religious society won't do. A Levite and a priest did not stop and render assistance to the man who was brutally beaten on the road. Perhaps they did it for good "religious" reason. If the man was dead, then if they got involved and touched a dead body, they would be ritually impure, and it would take some time for them to return to a ritual status which would allow them normal community interactions.
But what kind of normal community interaction can a robbed and beaten man have who has been left on the roadside?
Enter the hated Samaritan, who is only concerned about harmed person. He is not concerned about his own personal schedule; he accepted the interruption for a kindness to a stranger, a stranger whom he regards to be is neighbor worthy of immediate care.
But, the wisdom story is not really about the injured man being treated like a neighbor. The wisdom story is about the behaviors which exemplify who a neighbor is.
The set up for the wisdom story is in an encounter between a religious man and Jesus and the lawyer wants some affirmation from Rabbi Jesus who has become a popular teacher.
What is standard probate practice regarding inheritance? The wealth of the decedent would normally go to one's family.
The lawyer asked a question which revealed a total lack of his relationship with God. If a person is a child of God, then such a person would inherit the greatest gift that God can give, namely, eternal life, or life after life.
So, the lawyer was a child of God who did not know that he was a son worthy of inheritance.
The lawyer, who was born as a son, believed that he had to do religious things to be worthy of an inheritance.
Jesus, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus: You're a lawyer, you know inheritance laws. What does the law say? Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Loving God and loving one's neighbor is the practice of people who believe they are children of God in a great big family of neighbors. So, Jesus said to him, “you got it right, love God and love your neigbhor.”
But then the lawyer did a follow up question which indicated that he didn't get it. "Jesus who is my neighbor? Who do I have to love and care for in loving my neighbor as myself? Surely, it's enough to just love my homies and the people I hang around with? Jesus can we mean by neighbor, my favorite people?”
And then Jesus told the wisdom story to provide a "gotcha" moment.
What is the gotcha moment? The wisdom story reveals that the neighbor is not about who you have to love, it is about you, yourself, being a neighbor just like the Good Samaritan was. And if you are an active neighbor, then you are loving in neighborly caring ways, everyone, because like you everyone is a child of God in God's big family who are in line for the inheritance which comes from God, namely the eternal life, or the powerful qualitative kind of life which helps us be loving children and neighbors in God's family and neighborhood.
The delightful Mr. Rogers used to sing, "Won't you please, won't you please, please won't you be my neighbor."
What Jesus was singing to the young lawyer was, "Won't you please, won't you please, please won't you be a neighbor."
And what is a neighbor? One who is actively caring and loving the people of this world who are children of God, made in God's image and thus recipients of the inheritance that can't be earn, because we're already children of God, in God's last will and testament. The death of Jesus followed by his resurrection life is how the inheritance of eternal resurrection life was taught and lived in the early church.
We can seek to inherit what we have always had. So, we need to clear up the alienation in our hearts and minds which make us think that we're not God's children in the divine will.
The wisdom story of the Good Samaritan proclaims to us: Go forth and be the neighbor because we live in God's neighborhood with everyone else, the ones who are our neighbors.
May God help us know the secret of being neighborly today. Amen.
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