Luke 10:25-37 "So Who Is My Neighbor?"

You know, one of the problems with being raised in the church is that the completely shocking and horrifying things that Jesus said throughout his ministry and God did throughout the history of the world don’t hold their impact.

Jesus’ teachings were revolutionary for their time and many of them, if taken seriously, would completely change the way we lived today. And yet, because we have grown up knowing the stories and hearing the teachings, they don’t hold the impact, they don’t have the punch, that they should have.

Imagine if you will, hearing Jesus’ teaching for the first time. He tells us not to worry about what we are going to eat or what we are going to wear. He tells us not to save up for a rainy day but to trust that God will provide for all of our needs. He tells us that when someone tries to steal something from us, to give them more than they ask for. He tells us that if someone attacks you, don’t fight back, instead allow them to have their way with you.

These are just a few of Jesus’ teachings; some of the ones that don’t much make sense to us. These are teachings that we read and hear, but file away as not really relevant to our world today.

And then, there are the teachings that do make sense to us, that we take very seriously, but still don’t hold their wow-factor. I think of the story of the prodigal son, an incredible story of a father’s love that shows how much God truly loves us and will accept us no matter how far we’ll stray. And yet, I am loath to hear someone preach on it because I’ve heard it preached on so many times.

And that is sort of where I am with the story of the Good Samaritan. It is a story I’ve heard so many times and heard so many sermons about that it seems somewhat pointless to preach about it myself. And yet, here we are, preaching about it today, seeing if it has anything new to tell us.

I. Moving Purses

My mother, since I was born, works the evening shift at the hospital. She would go to work about 3:30 or so and would get home after midnight. My parents decided to do this so that there were just a couple hours during the day where my sister and I would have to be with a babysitter. One night when I was in high school, my mom was driving home from work. There was a purse sitting in the middle of the road. She stopped to pick it up so that she could find who it belonged to and return it. She pulled over to the side of the road, left the car running and the lights on, got out of the car to get the purse. As she reached for it, it moved across the road to the other side. She screamed, ran back to the car, got in the drivers seat and began heading home. Suddenly she realized that someone could very well be sitting in the back seat of her car right now. She raced home, ran upstairs and got my dad, and they went out to check the car. There was nobody there. It must have been some kids playing pranks through the night.

II. The Good Islamofascist

The biggest obstacle to our understanding of the story of the Good Samaritan is not our familiarity with it, though. I think the biggest obstacle to our understanding of it is the fact that it is about Israelites and Samaritans two thousand years ago. The fact is that saying Good Samaritan does not seem like an oxymoron to us. Actually, we sometimes even shorten it up and when we see someone who is doing good for someone else, we refer to them as a Samaritan. There’s actually a superhero I like named the Samaritan. And he was created with all the positive baggage that that name comes with.

So even though we know that to the Jews of Jesus’ day, a Samaritan was considered a bad person, we don’t necessarily read it that way. If Jesus were telling this story in Israel today to the people of Israel today, he would tell the story of a Good Palestinian. And if Jesus were telling this story today to Americans in our world, it wouldn’t be about Samaritans at all, it would be titled the Good Islamofascist.

You see, for the Israelites of Jesus’ day the Samaritans were the enemy. They were the ones they were brought up to hate. They were taught to not see any redeeming qualities in them. And so when Jesus tells a story where someone gets injured and two upstanding citizens ignore the man because they are afraid of the consequences, it is the enemy, it is someone most unlikely, who comes to the rescue. And this is the neighbor that Jesus tells those around him to love.

The point of this distinction is, first of all, for shock value. Jesus was trying to say something shocking. He was trying to show that even an enemy could show kindness. He was trying to get those who were listening to him to move outside their comfort zones and think beyond their preconceptions. Even the people in the Middle East, who are daily trying to come up with ways to kill us, even the ones who want to take away our freedom of religion and force us all to worship Allah, even they are our neighbors. But there is something else going on in Jesus’ story as well. You see, the Good Islamofascist, the Good Samaritan, wasn’t good intrinsically. He wasn’t good because he was necessarily raised that way. He wasn’t good because he was a Samaritan. No, the reason he was neighbor to the man on the side of the road who was wounded was that he had a situation arise in front of him and he decided to do the right thing.

The Good Samaritan didn’t plan to do a good deed that day. This is not something he learned or trained for. It is not something that he could possible prepare himself for. It is great when someone can come up with some good deed to do for someone else, and plan it out and act upon that plan. But this is not the situation that is before us in this parable. No, the Samaritan was wandering down the road, minding his own business, when a situation rose before him. He was given a spur of the moment decision to make and he chose to help the man.

III. Quick Decisions

Being a good neighbor, which is what this scripture is all about, doesn’t have to do with what you plan out. It doesn’t have to do with all the good things you can think to do to show those around you how great you are. No, it has to do with those situations that arise spur of the moment, where you have to decide whether to do the right thing or not. These are the moments where we are called to be good neighbors. These are the moments where we are called to put the needs of others before our own needs. The priest and the scholar both were turned in on themselves. When they saw the man laying on the side of the road, they worried about what would happen to them if they tried to help this man. The Samaritan worried about the man on the side of the road instead of worrying about himself. This is not the smart decision, it is not the safe decision, but it is the right decision.

This last February, the evening of the great blizzard, Lisa and I were settling in. It was our first real blizzard since we’d moved to Iowa and we had plenty of supplies to get us through the weekend, so we were looking forward to sitting back and enjoying the weather. And that is precisely what we did until we got a phone call. It was police dispatch. There had been a driver trying to get to Sioux City and he got stuck in a drift about three miles from the intersection of Highway 3 and 29. They were looking for a place for him to stay for the night.

Lisa and I looked at each other. We weren’t exactly sure what to do. On the one hand it is nice to be able to help someone in need. That’s what the Bible tells us to do and all, but on the other hand. Lisa was getting close to being eight months pregnant. Someone foolish enough to try to drive in the blizzard probably didn’t always make the best decisions. Surely they could find someone else who would be more comfortable housing a stranger. The dispatcher told me that they were just asking and we could easily say no, they wouldn’t hold it against us.

It was a true Good Samaritan moment. There were so many reasons that it would be easier and better to say, “Sorry, we can’t help you this time.” But we knew what the right thing to do was.

So we got the guest room made up, turned on the porch light, grabbed my sword and put it next to our bed, just in case, and waited for this stranger to come to our house.

We had a wonderful visit with the gentleman who visited and hopefully began a friendship with him that will continue. Because we were open to taking even a small risk to help someone in need, we were blessed by this experience in a number of ways. And, I hope, God taught us not to be as stingy with all that he has given us.

The wise thing to do is be distrustful of strange situations like purses in the middle of the road. The smart thing to do is to just leave things there so you don’t open yourself up to getting hurt. But the parable that Jesus told us says that protecting yourself is not the most important thing in life. Sometimes being a good neighbor means that we are called to go out on a limb for someone else; even someone who hates us. When we are doing that we then answering the call that Jesus has put before us. When we are doing that, then we find that God can use us in ways that we didn’t even think possible.

Being a good neighbor isn’t about planning and working at goodness. It is about being open to God’s leading when certain situations arise. It is about putting others above your fears and trusting, truly trusting, that God will protect you. This is the life that God calls us to. It sounds scary, but it also is freeing. It means we don’t need to live in bondage to our fears. It means we can live much fuller and healthier lives. It means that God can work through us in ways we can only begin to imagine.