FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: O Lord God, your mercy delights us, and the world longs for your loving care. Hear the cries of everyone in need, and turn our hearts to love our neighbors with the love of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
“And who is my neighbor?” Luke 10:29.
In this day and age, the parable hardly needs a sermon. If I were preaching this Sunday, I would be tempted to say following the gospel reading, “You know very well what our government has to say about who your neighbor is. It all depends on nationality, blood, soil and proper documentation. You have just heard Jesus tell you who your neighbor is. Neighborliness knows no limit. It extends to everyone in need of a neighbor. This is not rocket science. As Moses tells us in our lesson from Deuteronomy, “this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” Amen.
“But come on, Pastor! You know it isn’t that simple. Do you want open borders? Should anyone be allowed to come into our country? What about criminals? What about drug dealers? Sex traffickers? How many people can we take without burdening our own people? Where do you draw the line?”
This is precisely the sort of argument into which the lawyer was trying to lure Jesus. It is what lawyers do. As one who practiced law for eighteen years, I understand how lawyer’s minds work. Lawyers do not ask questions in order to learn anything. Good lawyers never ask a question unless they know (or think they know) the answer. The purpose of a lawyer’s question is to elicit an answer that pins down the one being interrogated. It is designed to box one’s opponent into a position that can be attacked and discredited. If only Jesus can be forced to concede that there is a line to be drawn between neighbor and non-neighbor, insider and outsider, then the argument boils down to a simple matter of where you draw that line. Your nation? Your home state? Your neighborhood? Your family? How far can Jesus be pushed?
Jesus, however, will not be drawn into such puerile sophistry. For the duty of neighborliness does not turn on any definition of the noun, “neighbor.” It is not as though I can determine the scope of my responsibility to love my neighbor by crafting a definition of the term conveniently excluding those I dislike. It is quite the other way around. I am called first to be a neighbor without any limits, conditions or qualifications. The scope of my duty is then defined by everyone who needs a neighbor, without exception. The proper question, therefore, is not “Who is my neighbor?” but “Am I a neighbor?” Hence, rather than engaging the lawyer on his own terms and assumptions, Jesus replies with a parable.
Unlike most of Jesus’ parables, this one includes some very specific details. We are told that the victim of the bandits was travelling on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. Why does that matter anymore than the country of the king in Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast and the ungrateful and unresponsive invitees? One possibility is that the parable was based on an actual event about which the lawyer and the rest of those listening were aware. If so, Jesus’ story would have landed with even greater force. Had Jesus’ parable been only a parable, the lawyer might have responded, “Nice story Jesus. But that would never happen. You don’t know those Samaritans like I do. Rapists, murderers, drug dealers…” But if the parable were based on an actual event, there could be no such off handed dismissal.
Though the robbery victim, presumably a Jew, would surely have qualified definitionally as a neighbor to the priest and the Levite, he would hardly be considered such to the Samaritan. So distasteful is the very idea that the lawyer cannot even bring himself to use the word “Samaritan” in answering Jesus’ query as to who was neighbor to the man who fell among robbers. He will only reply “the one who showed him mercy.” When it came to who actually was neighbor to the man in need, the lawyer could not deny that the Samaritan alone fit the bill.
The refugees seeking asylum in our country are neighbors for no other reason than that they are in need and we have the means to assist them. Martin Luther recognized as much in his commentary on the commandment against murder in the Large Catechism:
“In the second place, this commandment is violated not only when a person actually does evil, but also when he fails to do good to his neighbor, or, though he has the opportunity, fails to prevent, protect, and save him from suffering bodily harm or injury. If you send a person away naked when you could clothe him, you have let him freeze to death. If you see anyone suffer hunger and do not feed him, you have let him starve. Likewise, if you see anyone condemned to death or in similar peril and do not save him although you know ways and means to do so, you have killed him. It will do no good to plead that you did not contribute to his death by word or deed, for you have withheld your love from him and robbed him of the service by which his life might have been saved.” The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Translated and edited by Theodore G. Tappert (c. 1959 by Fortress Press) pp. 390-391.
My Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and its ecumenical partners have always recognized refugees as siblings and neighbors. For over a century we have been working with, advocating for, sponsoring and resettling refugees from all over the world. We do it quite simply because it is what Jesus commands us to do. We cannot recognize the authority of any civil, religious or military power that would limit the limitless scope of our sacred duty to our neighbors.
Here is a poem by Adreinna Rich about the boundaries we erect to divide ourselves into nations, tribes and clans, thereby diminishing our common humanity and eroding our capacity for neighborliness.
Boundary
What has happened here will do
To bite the living world in two,
Half for me and half for you.
Here at last I fix a line
Severing the world’s design
Too small to hold both yours and mine.
There’s enormity in a hair
Enough to lead men not to share
Narrow confines of a sphere
But put an ocean or a fence
Between two opposite intents.
A hair would span the difference.
Source: The Fact of a Doorframe, Adrienne Rich (c. 2002 by Adrienne Rich, pub. by W.W. Norton & Co.). Poet and essayist Adrienna Rich (1929-2012) was born in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father was a pathologist and professor at Johns Hopkins; her mother a former concert pianist. She graduated from Radcliffe University and married in 1953. She had three children with her husband, but the marriage ended with their separation in the 1960s. Rich’s prose collections are widely-acclaimed for their articulate treatment of politics, feminism, history, racism and many other topics. Her poetry likewise explores issues of identity, sexuality and politics. Rich’s awards include the National Book Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the Bollingen Prize, the Academy of American Poets Fellowship and a MacArthur “Genius” Award. You can read more about Adrienna Rich and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.
Peter's Outer Cape Portico 