Who Is My Neighbor?
Luke 10: 25-37
A long haul trucker is making a run across the desert. He’s over his load limit and he decides to take a detour around the weigh station. He just can’t afford the fine. It’s a little after dark when his fuel pump dies, and with it, his short wave radio. Of course, he had meant to charge his cell-phone, but forgot. He can’t stay with the truck and it’s a long walk back to the interstate. If he stays on this road, he should come to a truck stop about thirty miles down the road. So, he sets out to walk.
Not long after dark, his flashlight batteries give out. The trucker…let’s call him Hank, is getting a little spooked. He has only gone about five miles when he stops for a quick break. For almost an hour, not a single vehicle has come by. As he starts to get back on the road, he hears a hissing sound close to him. He sees it just as it strikes his the calf og his leg. The fangs go right through his jeans. He doesn’t know the exact type, but it is definitely a rattlesnake.
Hank makes a tourniquet with his belt, but it isn’t long before the poison begins to do its job. Hank is having a very hard time breathing. He can’t go on. He lies down on the side of the road to wait for help.
An hour goes by. Hank has passed in and out of consciousness. The red line of poison can be traced up his leg. A car comes by. It is a minister on the way back from prayer meeting. He slows down, but he still has one more appointment with a shut-in on his way home. The minister looks at Hank and surveys the situation. The guy on the side of the road could be carrying a disease. He could be faking it, waiting to lure a victim. It’s too dangerous and the minister has an appointment. The minister drives on.
Another hour passes. An elder from a popular church up the road comes by. He stops and looks at Hank, now barely breathing. The man stays in his car at a distance. He is wary. It could be a trap. What’s a man doing out here on a dark road in the desert in the middle of the night unless he’s up to no good? The elder too drives on.
Past midnight, a long haired dude with a pony tail is riding down this back road on his motorcycle. He has noticed the abandoned truck about five miles back. He sees Hank and pulls over. As he checks Hank’s pulse, he notices the belt improvised as a tourniquet. He sees the swelling in Hank’s leg. He is glad that he didn’t take his side car off the motorcycle. He gets Hank in the side car and takes him to the nearest emergency room some forty miles out of his way, where the ER doctor immediately begins anti-venom therapy. Hank is in for a rough several days. Meanwhile, our hero, the hippie, has made arrangements for Hank’s truck to be towed. He has agreed to be responsible for the hospital bill if Hank can’t pay. He has even hired a mechanic to put a new fuel pump on Hank’s tractor and left extra money for whatever else the mechanic might find. He promises to check back when he comes back through that way again.
In Luke’s gospel, a lawyer, an educated man, asks Jesus how to be sure of eternal life. Jesus answers the question with a question. What does the Law say? You carry it around on your wrist. Read it. Devout Jews of the time carried little leather boxes called phylacteries. Inside these boxes were favorite scriptures. So Jesus, referring to the man’s scripture box, literally says: “How do you read it?” The lawyer answers, quoting part of the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:5. We also know it as the Great Commandment from when Jesus quoted it: “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.” Yes, says Jesus. “Do this and live.” That is how you can be sure of eternal life.
I’m thinking about that minister and that elder who kept on driving. Don’t they know that’s not the way to inherit eternal life? Surely they of all people, Christian people, would know what to do. Surely they know more than this hippie on a motorcycle.
Back to luke. Although the lawyer has the answer, he doesn’t like it. He wants to narrow the playing field of responsibility. The lawyer is playing lawyer. He asks “And who is my neighbor?” And Jesus tells him a story, a story of a man needing help, lying on the side of the road.
A week later, the unnamed hippie comes back through the area. He stops at the hospital to check on Hank, who is now recovering from his ordeal. Hank has another visitor. The minister has stopped by to invite Hank to a church fundraiser. He is telling Hank what he must do to inherit eternal life. He ignores the man covered with the dust of the road. As the minister talks, Hank realizes he has seen this man. He says to him, “I know you. You pulled up across the road from me when I was lying there helpless, but you didn’t even get out of the car.” Overhearing the conversation, the hippie gets back on his bike and rides away, kicking up quite a cloud of dust as he leaves.
“And who is my neighbor?” asked the lawyer. “I must know my limits,” the lawyer might have said. “I need to know where this stops.” And Jesus told him a story, a story a lot like the story about our friend Hank the trucker. Then Jesus asked another question of the lawyer. Which of these three proved to be a neighbor? In our trucker story, was it the man with the religious training? Was it the upright citizen and church leader? Or was it the long haired stranger who dressed weird and rode a motorcycle?
The lawyer, a strong religious man, could not bring himself to answer that the good neighbor was a Samaritan, a man whom the lawyer would not be caught dead speaking to. So instead, he answered that it was the man who showed mercy. He was right, of course. It is the one who shows us mercy who is our neighbor.
Sometimes the best prayer meetings take place on the side of the road. Sometimes the most powerful witnessing for our Lord happens without a word being spoken. Sometimes mercy comes with a ponytail and a beard. Who is my neighbor? He is the man who helps me. She is the girl who offers me a cup of water. It is the church member who invites me to supper, the young man at the supermarket who stops to carry my groceries even though he doesn’t have a job there.
We cannot confuse religion with righteousness. We must not sacrifice mercy for convenience or even safety. We should never define Christian neighborliness by geography or ethnicity or social status. When we do, we try to limit a limitless Savior. We witness to those who would join us, but our witness is that the church may be a place of boundaries, a club instead of a sanctuary. We send a message to the Good Samaritan on his motorcycle that he is on the outside, that he cannot belong. We send a message that there are limits to our mercy. And so he goes on his way. He has seen the church through the minister who ignored both him and the man on the roadside. This is not his neighborhood.
If we want to be God’s people, we have to be neighbors. If we want God’s church to be open, then we have to carry it with us wherever we are and to whomever we meet under all kinds of circumstances. Everywhere we go, everything we do, becomes a witness. Someone is looking. Someone is measuring God’s love and God’s message by our love and our message.
Who is my neighbor? The one who shows mercy. “And Jesus said to him, ‘You go, and do likewise.’ ”
7/14/13
No comments:
Post a Comment