Being A Good Neighbor
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Introduction
Introduction
Well I want to start by saying thank you for having me today. Last time I was here was over the 4th of July weekend so I must not have been too bad if Pastor Dan allowed me to come back and preach. But I am grateful for the opportunity. For those of you who weren’t here over the 4th I will give a quick introduction to myself. I am Connor and I am Ron and Nancy’s grandson. I live out in Goddard and my home church is West Evangelical Free. I have a wife and two kids, the wife is unfortunately out of town this weekend and the kids are with their grandparents so that I could come here without them causing a huge ruckus. They are six and 2 and they both have a passion for talking while I am talking and interrupting me, so i figured it would be best for them to be with Grandparents this morning so I could talk in peace.
One of the hard parts about preaching one of sermons is that it is hard to figure out what you want to talk about. Normally when I preach I am doing a series so there is a format I stick to, but with this, I pretty much get to talk about anything I want, which can be scary if you know me. But as I was trying to think about what to talk about one subject kept coming up to the front of my mind, and I think it has to do with the fact that it is September 11th. September 11th was a turning point in our countries history, I was young when it happened but I still remember where I was when it happened and what I was doing. It was such a devastating event that changed the trajectory of politics, policy, and culture in our country. As I thought more about it, i was trying to relate where America is at now, to where America was back in 2001. Now keep in mind, I was only 10 years old and wasn’t paying as close attention to politics or much outside of my little bubble, but I feel like our country has changed so much just in the 20 years after that event. From my perspective at that time, September 11th was an event that united our country, there was no side to take, no hidden agendas, it was such a tragic event that it caused Americans to come together and put aside their differences for a short time. And yet here we are, 20 years later, and our country is divided more than it has been since the civil war. And this is just my observations having been alive the last 30 years, i can’t imagine how much it must have changed for those who were born before me.
And this division, social media has only made it worse. It has enabled people to say whatever they want with almost no repercussions and it is just creating an even larger divide. Isn’t it ironic something that was originally designed to connect us together is being used to drive us apart? I could go on for a long time about social media, but I wont, because that isn’t the point of the sermon today, but it does play a major factor in creating division within out country.
So how are we as Christians supposed to handle this division? How are we supposed to respond when we see people post some really dumb stuff on Facebook or when we are out and about and we see people who have different beliefs than ours? And dont get me wrong, i am not talking about a specific political party here. This isn’t going to be a sermon about republican vs democrats, or hot button topics. Our faith in God and relationship with Christ comes before any political affiliation we might have. While we obey the law and recognize it’s human authority, we know that there is one authority and he is in heaven and it is what he commands that is important. But often time we as Christians fall into the same trap that the Pharisees fall into. We know what the bible says, but we try to operate in the gray area. We know we are supposed to show love to people, but sometimes it is really hard to show love to certain people. So this brings us to our scripture today. Let us start in Luke 10:25 if you want to open your Bibles and follow along.
Main Body
Luke 10:25 “On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?””
So this isn’t the first time this has happened to Jesus, nor will it be the last. We see several times throughout the Gospels that Pharisees, experts in the law, lawyers, you name it, try to trip Jesus up and catch him in a theological trap. They were constantly trying to trap Jesus into accidently saying something that was wrong that way they could discredit him. Now this expert in the law is used to describe a scribe. Now these scribes were the undisputed spiritual leaders of the people back then. They knew the Torah like the back of their hands. And this man, he wasn’t just your regular scribe, he was an expert. And we know that he knows the law and even the answer to his own question because we see Jesus flip the question back on him in the next few verses, but the point is, this man was not genuinely interested in hearing Jesus answer, he was trying to trap Jesus. Now the question he asked isn’t an uncommon one either. It isn’t hard to think that Jesus had been asked this question before or in a slightly different way. An example being the story of the rich young ruler seen in Matthew 19:16. But the important thing here is that the man is asking what he must do in order to inherit eternal life. He wants to know if there is an action he can take, or can calculate what he has to do to meet this standard. Let’s read how Jesus responds and the mans response in verse 26-28.
“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
He answered, “ ‘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, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
Now we see Jesus pose a counter question, and they way he responds is similar to how rabbis engaged students in debate. He want’s to know how this man interprets the law, because the law could be interpreted many different ways. The man responds by quoting a combination of Deut 6:5
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
and Lev 19:18
“ ‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.
The Old Testament required both a love of God and love of your neighbor, and the expert in the law knew this so he gave this answer. We see Jesus give the same answer when asked a similar question in Matthew 22:36-40
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
So essentially, if you were to follow these two commandments, and only these two commandments, you would naturally follow the rest. So these two commandments then summarize the entirety of the law. Love God, and Love your neighbor. The expert in the law got the answer right, he already knew the right answer, but Jesus takes it a step further and says do this and you will live. Jesus may have dropped the subject here, this could have been the end of the conversation, but the script wanted to justify himself. Let’s read Luke 10:29
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
Now this word justify, the Greek word can have a few different translations into English, one of them being justify, another being proved right, another considered righteous and a few more. But what the scribe was trying to do here was make himself right. You see he wanted to know exactly who is neighbor was so that he could measure whether he had done enough to be considered righteous. Being so wrapped up in the legalities of the law, he wanted to know who he could treat with love, and who he didn’t have to.
Do you think that we ever fall into this same line of thought? We look at people and we judge whether or not they are our neighbors, and if we don’t think so then we are off the hook and don’t have to treat them with love. And the thing is, the scribe wasn’t wrong to ask this question, in his mind this was a subject that was up for debate. In first-century Juadism, a “neighbor” describe in the old testament, included strangers who shared the land with them, but not Gentiles. We see in Lev. 19:34
The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
But by the time the first century came around, they had worked out clear definitions of who a neighbor was and who was owed love and who wasn’t. And instead of answering outright, Jesus give us a parable. Let’s read Luke 10:30-32
In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
So Jesus sets up this story about a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. Now to give some context, the elevation of Jersualem is about 2,600 feet above sea level and Jericho is about 18 miles to the northeast and is 825 feet BELOW sea level. And Jericho was actually a very fertile land with lots of trees. The road from Jersualem to Jericho was windy and descended 3,400 feet through steep and rugged hill . In these hills are caves that robbers would stay in and mug people going down the road if they saw an opportunity. In fact, this was such a common occurrence that it is talked about in books outside of the Bible in a book written by Josephus called “The Jewish War”. So for Jesus to use this as the setting of his story is a very realistic scenario that very likely could have happened. His audience would have known exactly the dangers that this road had.
So we have a man who gets mugged by robbers and left for dead on the side of the road. Lucky for him a priest walks by. Again, this is not an unlikely event to happen. in fact the greatest number of priests who did not live in Jerusalem, lived in Jericho which was the closest large city. This priest could be returning to Jericho after having fulfilled his priestly duties in the temple. The man who was beaten would see this as good luck, surely the priest would help him, but for whatever reason the priest keeps on going. But it is this guys lucky day, a Levite is walking down the road. Levites were responsible for basically taking care of the temple and helping the priests out. They weren’t priest themselves, but were pretty close. Today it would be like someone who does alot of volunteering at the church and is always at the church helping the pastor. You would expect someone who spends so much time at the temple to stop and help you right? Wrong, he keeps on going. So at this point the crowd is expecting Jesus to say “Finally a Jewish doctor came down the road” or “a prominent member of Jewish society comes along”. But let’s read what Jesus says next in Luke 10:33-35
But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
Now this is the part of the story that we really need to understand the historical context of in order to fully grasp why this is so important. The Jews did not like the Samaritans at all. Event though some of them worshiped the same God, observed the same rites and festivals, and read the same Torah, they were different. Instead of worshipping God in the temple in Jerusalem, they worshiped God in a different temple on Mount Gerizim. Also, the demography of Samaria had been altered greatly over the last few centuries. The first following the fall of Samaria in 721 BC when the Assyrians resettled Babylonians and other Mesopotamians in Samaria, and the second when Alexander the Great resettled Macedonians in Samaria three hundred years later. Centuries of intermarriage between the different ethnic groups had made the majority of Samaritans Gentiles and ethnically contaminated in the Jewish eyes. Back the the Jews were a little racists. So the fact that the majority of the Samaritans were Gentile and add on that the ones that did practice Judaism worshipped at a rogue temple, this made Jews, including Jesus’ disciples really not like the Samaritans. To Jews, Samaritans were not simply outcast, they were enemies. So the fact that Jesus makes the hero of the story a Samaritan would have been a very shocking end to this story. The audience was expecting someone who was respectable, i mean if a priest and a Levite didn’t help then why in the world would a dirty Samaritan help? In fact, let’s see the response here in Luke 10:36-37
“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
The fact that Jesus made the Samaritan the hero of the story was so appalling to the scribe that he couldn’t event bring himself to say “The Samaritan” or even the word “neighbor” instead he says “the one who had mercy.” That is how radical this parable was. Jesus shattered the expectation of the crowd. And let’s not forget the original question, the scribe asked “What must I do to inherit internal life?” The answer was Love the lord your God with all your heart, mind , soul, and strength. But that wasn’t enough, the scribe wanted an example of someone doing the thing that will let them inherit eternal life. And who was the prime example of something following God’s commands, a Samaritan? If this parable was told today in a setting appropriate for us who do you think the hero would be? Jesus could have said something that would have truly shocked us by making the hero of the story an atheist, or maybe a Muslim or maybe something even crazier depending on the crowd, that is how shocking it was to hear a Samaritan. The reason Jesus does this is because he wants to show the flaw in the scribes thinking, you see when the scribe asked the original question “Who is my neighbor” he is using the word neighbor as a noun. To him “Neighbor” is an object to whom one owes duties—burdensome duties that the scribe wants to avoid. But when Jesus asks the question “Which of the three do you think was a neighbor to the man…?” Jesus is using neighbor as a verb. Who of the three became a neighbor, or showed neighborliness. For Jesus, one does not have a neighbor; one is a neighbor, or better, becomes a neighbor. The parable does not require the audience to convert enemies into friends, to do everything for everyone, or to solve the problems of the world. To be a neighbor is not a condition one inherits, but a choice one makes to help others when they need it regardless of ethnic, religious, or racial differences.
Closing
And often time we find ourselves thinking like the scribe. With so much division in the United states right now I can’t help but look at the relationship between the Jews and the Samaritans and compare it to our situation today. The easiest comparison would be republican and democrats, but I think there are quite a few comparisons we could make. We find it easy to look at those who think differently than us and to judge them or to say mean things about them or to them, or even to not want to help them when they are in need. But Jesus calls us to BE a neighbor to everyone. So I want to challenge you with this. Who are your samaritans? Who are the people in your life that you really just don’t like, and ask yourself, have I been a neighbor to those people? Jesus calls us to show love to everyone, not just those whom we agree with or think like us. And that extends to social media too. How we talk and interact with people online is still just as important as how we interact with people in person. So when we are out and about in town, or local, or even online, are we being neighbors to everyone? And I know that it is hard sometimes, especially when they attack us or say hurtful things to us or about us. But I will leave you with this passage from Matthew 5:43-48
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.