Stranger and Neighbor

How many of us can honestly say that we know every single one of our neighbors in the neighborhoods we live in? I’ll be completely honest and say that I know some. And by some I would venture to say that we really know about 10% of the people that live in our neighborhood. And to continue my transparency about our neighbors, there are some that I really like. There are some that go started on the wrong foot, and there are some that I have preconceived notions about.

And I’m sure that doesn’t just have to do with our physical neighbors. Perhaps it’s people you see in the grocery store. Or maybe it’s that lady at the gym that’s always there. Maybe there’s that one person or group of people at your office that you have thoughts about. We all do it; it doesn’t mean it’s the best thing we do, but it is something that I think we can all agree we do to some degree or another.

And this idea of having thoughts and opinions about people has been going on for forever. In fact during the time of Jesus there were a lot of thoughts and opinions about people. Tax collectors and sinners - bad. Pharisees and Sadducees - good. Romans - bad. Priests - good. Samaritans - very bad. Samaritans, and Samaria, are the remnant of the northern kingdom of Israel from when they first split after King Solomon died. What happened right away was that Rehoboam didn’t want his people going to the southern kingdom to worship at Solomon’s temple so he set up places of worship in his own kingdom. Over time, their style of worship changed as well as what scrolls were considered a part of their Tanakh.

All of these things combined, the splitting from the Davidic line, not worshipping/offering sacrifices at the temple, and changing the scrolls in their scripture lead to this deep hatred between these two peoples. This is exactly why in Luke 9 James and John react so harshly to the Samaritan village that didn’t welcome Jesus. The Samaritans were used to people traveling through their villages on their pilgrimage to the Temple, but it also created a lot of tension and opportunities of that tension to spill over into something more.

On the one hand I totally get the fact that since they are so similar in their worship and yet have these particular differences that these tensions could rise, especially when it comes to what people consider the right way to live out their faith. On the other hand, I don’t get how these two countries, who were once one country could have such distaste for each other. They are all tribes from Jacob. They all descended from Abraham. They were all called by God to be a holy people, a royal priesthood. I don’t understand how these two neighboring countries could become such total strangers to one another.

Which is why Jesus’ parable is such an amazing one. The legal expert, even though he has answered Jesus’ correctly, he wants to find out the answer to the question ‘who is my neighbor’. While this seems like an excellent question to ask, it has the potential to be very limiting. For example, in today’s society if we were to ask people who is your neighbor they would probably answer by telling you that Joe and Sally live across the street from me, and John and Bev live next door to me. In a similar fashion, there is a chance, if not a good chance, the legal expert is trying to get Jesus to give a definition that is narrow in focus like we would think of today.

After all, if we have a definition for something or document showing the exact parameters or what is included then we can know who or what to pay attention to and who or what to ignore or leave out. If my neighbor is literally those who live in my neighborhood then I can do my best to get to know the 30 houses on my street and be a good neighbor. I can love them the way that I love myself and then I will be in right relationship with God. That of course is also a very legalist way of looking at our relationship with God.

But Jesus doesn’t play that game. Jesus doesn’t play that game because God doesn’t use the kind of rules that we use. God doesn’t think in terms of narrow definitions and legal loopholes. We, like the legal expert, want to have a good solid definition of things so that we can check off our list be black and white about the matter and move on knowing that we have done our obligations to God and neighbor. God is bigger than that. God is more inclusive than that. In fact, I feel that God smiled the day that poet William Butler Yeats said, “A stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet.”

Because Jesus’ answer to the legal experts question in this parable is that a stranger is your neighbor. Not only is a stranger your neighbor, but the stranger that you haven’t met yet, is the very person that you would rather not be your neighbor. The very person that you hold deep deep grudges and resentment for is the exact person who was the most loving and caring person to someone who was in need. That is what it means to be a neighbor.

You might not like how they talk, you might not like how they dress, you might not like how they do this or that. You might not like them for any number of reasons, and most of them are probably based on what is years if not centuries of preconceived notions about them. What Jesus says is that a stranger is your neighbor. A person who is someone you might not associate with is also someone you should be love and care for.

While Jesus still asks the man to answer the question that was posed to him about who is his neighbor. Jesus seems less interested in the actual question in terms of ‘who’ but is more interested in the ‘what’. What is it that a neighbor does. A neighbor ignores stereotypes. A neighbor thinks of what it means to care for someone who is in need and asks the question what would I want someone to do if I were in this situation or maybe what will happen to this person if I don’t do something? What if no one else comes down this road after me? Then the neighbor responds by doing what is the loving and caring thing to do. Because if we are loving God will all our heart, being, strength and mind and God calls us to love others the same way we love God then loving the stranger, loving the outcast, loving the person that we don’t even like is what it means to love God and love self. May you feel that deep sense of what it means to be both stranger and neighbor and to know that God always sees you as a neighbor and invites you to go and do likewise. Amen.