Luke 10:25-37 July 11, Good Neighbors. [The sermon begins with a short video clip of the Mr. Rogers singing his theme song.]

Transcription

1 Luke 10:25-37 July 11, 2010 Good Neighbors [The sermon begins with a short video clip of the Mr. Rogers singing his theme song.] When I was growing up, my family didn t have a lot of neighbors. My family lived on Morse Road a few miles out from a little hamlet called East Concord, a few miles further from the village of Springville where we did our shopping and went to school. Morse Road is about two miles from end to end, and when I was a young child there were only five houses scattered along its length. Among these few neighbors the ones we spent the most time with were the Drumstas Don and Dorothy, and their three kids Kathy, Donnie, and Damon. We did most of the things that neighbors do my mom and Dorothy would chat on the phone something made more interesting because just about everyone on Morse Road shared a party line. (If you re younger than fifty or so, someone may have to explain that to you.) And we kids played together. When we all got together there were seven of us in all enough for a decent game of kickball in the yard. I remember the Drumstas taking us into Springville in the back of their station wagon to trick-or-treat at Halloween. Sometimes when my dad needed an extra hand, Don would come up and help, and when Don needed a tractor for a couple of hours for some project on his property my dad would lend him his. I especially remember the summer just before my senior year of high school when our spring-fed water supply was playing out, and I was given the job of driving the quarter mile down the road to the Drumstas' 1

2 house a couple of times a day to fill a big galvanized trash can with water from their well. They didn t even have to be home they just left the garden house out and the basement door open. Being good neighbors wasn t really all that complicated. It was something we just did because we lived down the road from each other. As that great Presbyterian theologian Fred Rogers has reminded us already this morning, being a neighbor is so simple that even a child can do it. Why is it then that we make it so complicated? Our greatest biblical insights into the art of being a neighbor come from the tenth chapter of Luke. The story begins with a man who comes to Jesus to ask him a question. On the surface, his question to Jesus makes him seem like a sincere seeker after truth just like many others Jesus had met in his travels. This man asks Jesus, with all due respect, Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? But there s more going on here than meets the eye, because Luke tells us two other things about this man. He s a lawyer. And he has come here not on a quest for eternal life, but to put Jesus on the spot. The lawyer asks his question, and he s poised to engage Jesus in a vigorous theological debate. But Jesus shows his own skill by handing his question right back to him. He asks the lawyer a question, What is written in the Law? How do you read it? And the lawyer gives Jesus his best Sunday School answer, even quoting it right out of the catechism: 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. 2

3 From Jesus perspective, that s all there is to it: Do this and you will live. End of discussion. Thanks be to God. Amen. It s so simple! By why do we make it so complicated? I can almost imagine the lawyer doing a double-take as he turns to walk away sort of like Elmer Fudd after he s been duped by Bugs Bunny for the thousandth time. But momentarily, he comes to his senses and starts thinking like a lawyer again. Now, it s all well and good to say, Love your neighbor as yourself. It s a wonderful ideal but it doesn t make for very good law. If in the hands of a good lawyer it s possible to argue over what the meaning of the word is is, defining something like love is all but impossible. And there must be volumes of case law and precedent on the question, Who is my neighbor? Jesus, however, doesn t exactly take the bait. The lawyer may be hoping that Jesus will start citing chapter and verse from the Torah and that they will be able to argue fine points of Hebrew grammar and plumb the depths of hermeneutical theory. But Jesus just tells a little story. The gist of the story is that loving your neighbor is so simple that even a Samaritan can do it. It doesn t take a legal degree or a theological education or even orthodox beliefs just compassion and common sense. When you see a stranger lying in the road naked and beaten half to death, you administer First Aid the best you can and call 911. You follow the ambulance to the hospital. You take a personal interest in making sure his medical bills get paid. It s so simple a Samaritan can do it. 3

4 But we, who would like to think we know better, make it complicated. And we re good at analyzing why it s so complicated. Our prayer of confession this morning captures it well. We are too selfish or too pessimistic, too hollow or too hardened, or just too tired to give ourselves to love s demands. So we make excuses, take shortcuts, and seek our own pleasure. I find it fascinating in listening to sermons and even reading learned commentaries on this story, how preoccupied we get with trying to understand the motives of the priest and Levite who left a man lying there dying in the middle of the road. We hear about the dilemmas they faced. For instance, how they were being forced to choose between helping the stranger who may have been dead for all they knew and the higher duty of remaining pure for their service in the temple. But the really fascinating thing is that this is Jesus story to tell and he doesn t care why they walked by! He doesn t spend a single word on explaining it he just tells us that s what they did. It doesn t take a lawyer to love our neighbors, and it shouldn t take a psychoanalyst either. Last week I mentioned a book by a United Church of Christ pastor, Anthony Robinson. He has suggested that our changing times call for churches by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to rethink the basic assumptions behind who we are and what we do. He calls it transforming congregational culture. So I spoke last week of a transformation of our spirituality from seeing ourselves as givers to seeing ourselves as receivers of God s grace. Another transformation Anthony Robinson suggests is from a culture of fellowship to a culture of hospitality. 4

5 I feel a need to tread lightly here because one of things I love about this church is its strong culture of fellowship. I ve had a chance to experience it in a variety of ways in meetings of the Inner Mission Committee, and going out with elders to take communion to our shut-ins, eating with dinner groups and going to the Thursday morning men s prayer breakfasts. I ve experienced it in the way this church celebrates, and the way people gather around each other in times of need. And I can add to that the way you all have been embraced me, and worried with me about Lorri and Anne and Christine through our transition, not to mention all the free meals I ve eaten the past couple months. An important paragraph in the MAP report produced during the pastoral interim begins with this statement, Our members are a homogeneous group who value the relationships the church nourishes. The transformation we re being called to isn t about losing the relationships but about moving beyond the part about being a homogeneous group. One writer expresses this in terms of the difference between friendliness and hospitality. To quote, When we extend hospitality to the stranger, we make no assumption that the person will have anything in common with us, much less that we will like one another. It could be someone unpleasant, even dangerous; we are still obligated to extend our hospitality (John McFadden, quoted by Anthony Robinson, in Transforming Congregational Culture, p. 108). Hospitality being a neighbor is about welcoming folks without requiring, or even expecting or hoping, that they will be like us. 5

6 When it comes down to it, the line between welcoming strangers and welcoming God gets pretty blurry. The letter to Hebrews encourages us, Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it (Hebrews 13:2). And in his parable of the sheep and the goats Jesus says that when we welcome the stranger we welcome him. When I think back to my childhood neighbors, the Drumstas, we may have been good neighbors, but in many ways we didn t have a lot in common. The Drumsta kids didn t even go to school with us. The Drumstas were of Polish Catholic heritage, and the bus dropped them off at St. Aloysius. Don and Dorothy were a little bit on the loud side, and Dorothy had a habit of calling my mom, Aggie, which she really didn t like. And they drank beer. Even as kids playing together we didn t fit all that well Kathy was almost too old, and the boys were younger than we were. And whenever Don came to help my dad with something, it was obvious that they were transplanted city folks who knew nothing about farming. But as I think back on how different our families were it really didn t have anything to with being good neighbors. We were neighbors just because we were there. It really wasn t any more complicated than that. But then being a neighbor is so easy that even a child, or a Samaritan, can do it! Amen. Rev. David A. Spaulding First Presbyterian Church, Dixon, IL July 11,