Rev. Dr. Chris Montovino Luke 10:25-37 September 17, 2017 The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor 1 Perhaps you have heard of Fred Rogers. He is better known as "Mr. Rogers" and he once had a television show called "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood." Every show began the same way. Mr. Rogers would enter his home, take off his jacket and shoes, and put on a sweater and comfortable tennis shoes while singing his theme song "Won't You Be My Neighbor." The song started out like this... (if possible, sing it) It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood A beautiful day for a neighbor Would you be mine Could you be mine And it ended like this... Won't you be my neighbor Won't you please, won't you please Please won't you be my neighbor When Mr. Rogers died several years ago, he had millions of "neighbors" all over the world and, although he was quite famous, he never thought of himself as a TV star. He said, "I always thought I was a neighbor who just came in for a visit." Mr. Rogers knew what it meant to be a good neighbor. One day, a lawyer asked Jesus what he had to do to have eternal life. When Jesus asked him what God's Law said, the lawyer answered, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus answered, "You are right. Do this and you will live." But the man wanted to make himself look good, so he asked Jesus another question. "Who is my neighbor?" he asked. To answer this question, Jesus told a story about a man who was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers. They beat him, took his money, stripped him of his clothes, and left him beside the road to die. A priest came by and when he saw the man, he crossed over to the other side of the road and continued on his way. A little while later, a Levite who worked in the temple came along. He also saw the man lying there and passed by on the other side of the road. Finally, a man from Samaria came along, and when he saw the man, he stopped to help him. He put medicine on his wounds and wrapped them with 1 This sermon and sermon series is following the content provided by Mark Labberton, The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Press, 2010).!1
bandages. That isn't all. He took the man to an inn and took care of him. The next day, he gave the innkeeper some money and told him to take care of the man. "Give him anything he needs. If it costs more than I have given you, I will pay you the next time I am here." Then Jesus asked, "Which of these three men was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by the robbers." The lawyer answered, "The one who helped him." "You are right," said Jesus, "now you go and do the same." The world is full of people today who are in desperate need of a neighbor. "Won't you be my neighbor?" they ask. Just as the good Samaritan in the story helped the one in need, Jesus says to you and me, "Go and do the same." Dear Jesus, you have taught us to love our neighbor. Help us to be a good neighbor to everyone we meet. Amen. 2 As my friend Otis and I were hiking on the trail, we had just packed up our stuff and were getting moving for the day, when we passed a hiker who seemed somewhat distraught. There is an injured hiker about two miles up in the Cairn Basin. She messed up her knee and needs help. I m on my way to Cloud Cap Ranger Station to alert them but maybe you could stop and see how she is doing. Sure thing, we responded. Then began our conversations about this hiker and her situation. We had no idea what her story was but our minds got wandering and I m sure the questions we raised would have been a lot like the people in Jesus Parable of the Good Samaritan. What was she doing hiking alone? Isn t that irresponsible? Just think of the trouble and inconvenience she has caused for the rescue workers, let alone all the other hikers on the trail. What is her family going to say? They will probably be worried sick. Should we stop? Or should we trek on by trusting that other people would have stopped. I wonder if there is an alternate path we could take so we aren t bothered by her? I think we get the gist, right? But we did begin to pray for her as we walked along. There was no avoiding the huge HELP sign made with sticks in the middle of the trail with arrows pointing to her tent. So we stopped to check in on her. 2 Children s sermon found at http://www.sermons4kids.com/ Copyright 2001-2010 Sermons4Kids, Inc.!2
She gave us her story. What had happened and where. She had enough food and water to hunker down for a couple of days if necessary. She was worried that it would a while before help could arrive. And besides how were they going to get her out of there? I assured her that everything was going to be ok. People had to be rescued from trails all the time in even more challenging places. Help was coming. She needed to remain calm and patient not panic. And then I had a nudge from the Holy Spirit to say We ve been praying for you on the trail this morning. She burst out, God bless you guys. That is so sweet. Clearly there was an open door to encourage her and minister to her soul in that moment. So I asked if we could pray for her right there. More than water, food, or other help, we could give her, what she really needed was someone to stop, hear her story, and to pray for her. That was our call for the day. God provided other people, Good Samaritans, fellow trail hikers, who gave her food and water, ibuprofen, and who called for help. We checked on her when we got in cell range and indeed the rescue team showed up later that afternoon. Put her on a stretcher, and carried her back to safety. She was back at home and in the midst of doctors appointments. Its always interesting when God gives us opportunities to live into the scriptures like this. This summer we ve explored the ways that we are to treat one another in the family of God. That is very important. This fall, however, we will be shifting our attentions beyond our walls and toward the people who live right next door to us our neighbors. And so we will be dwelling in this parable a good bit as we explore The Dangerous Act of Loving Our Neighbor. Some of the topics that we will be considering are What Does God Require of Us? How Sometimes We See Others Wrongly. Seeing People as God Sees Them. Dealing with Broken Lenses. Correcting Our Vision. Naming and Renaming Others. Blessing, Showing Grace, and Entering into Other s Suffering. Practicing Dignity. Let us pray. Prayer of Illumination. Just before Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus and his disciples were traveling through Samaria where they were refused hospitality because they were Jews heading for Jerusalem. We know the story about Jews and Samaritans. They didn t just not get along. They hated each other.!3
James and John, two of Jesus closest disciples and hot headed Sons of Thunder, were very angry about being refused a place to stay and so they asked Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to destroy these folks? Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they went to another village. Now the story picks up a few verses later when an expert of the religious law has joined them. He asks Jesus, What must I do to inherit eternal life? In other words, What good works must I do to get my fire insurance so that I will have a spot in heaven? Jesus asks him a question in return. What is written in the Law? The man answered, Love God with everything you ve got and Love your neighbor as yourself. Interesting how Jesus completely sidesteps the man s concern about eternal life and instead focuses on the here and now. Do this and you will live. Now if only the expert of the law would have just stopped there. But he doesn t. So he drives his point further. He wanted to justify himself, so he asked And who is my neighbor? I bet he never expected that Jesus would do what he did next. Tell a story with a Samaritan as the hero. Jesus goes right to the heart of our deep seated prejudices and hatreds toward people who are not like us. He lifts the veil in this parable and makes us all extremely uncomfortable. He exposes our unwillingness to accept that our neighbor is likewise created in the image of God just as much as we are. But before we can grasp just how radical Jesus story is, let s take a pitstop and dive into this Jewish Samaritan history. Why so much bad blood between them? Remember Jacob and his twelve sons? Remember what they did to Joseph their brother, dad s favorite? When Joseph was taken as a slave to Egypt he ended up marrying an Egyptian woman and they had two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. Once Jacob was reunited with Joseph and he and his sons returned to Israel, Jacob gave each an inheritance of land. The land given to Joseph and his sons was a very fertile valley in the northern Kingdom of Israel. When the Assyrians came and conquered that land in 722 BC, they brought Gentiles to settle there as well. These foreigners brought their own values, culture, and religion. Eventually Joseph s sons and their families intermixed with these foreigners and the land became a huge melting pot of people, known as Samaria. Sound like America today? A short time later, the Babylonians conquered the southern Kingdom of Judah in 600 BC and took captive the best and brightest of Judah s people. For seventy years. When those years were completed, some of these folks were!4
allowed to return home and rebuild Jerusalem. Something Samaria vigorously opposed. When the full blooded Jews returned, they witnessed just how much their cousins to the north had changed. They detested the mixed marriages and worship practices of the Samaritans. Huge walls of division rose between the two which lasted for centuries. Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans and vice versa. In fact, as they traveled to Jerusalem for festival worship, they would typically go out of their way to avoid traveling through Samaria. Except Jesus. He made sure that he and his disciples went through Samaria in order to get at the root of the racial prejudices that poisoned their hearts. One commentator said, It is not the person from the radically different culture on the other side of the world that is hardest to love, but the nearby neighbor whose skin color, language, rituals, values, ancestry, history, and customs are different from one s own. 3 Mark Labberton, the president of Fuller Theological Seminary, wrote The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor after which I have crafted this sermon series. In this parable, Jesus mentions a few things that indeed make loving our neighbor dangerous. Something which I believe Jesus is inviting us into today. Loving our neighbor may require us to put aside differences and enter into the mess of a relationship with them. As we do so, we need to ask ourselves, Can we trust that God will settle whatever issues and differences we have? Can we leave those things in God s hands? Loving our neighbor may require us to slow down and actually engage someone conversationally who is different from us. My friends, stopping and talking with the people who live right next door is probably the most important and impactful missional work that Jesus is calling the Church to today. For it is through these heart felt conversations that relationships of trust are built which God can use to share the Good News of Jesus Christ when the opportunity arises. I m starting my third year volunteering at Silver Star Elementary School. Just recently someone at the school had a family emergency. When they saw me, they stopped, and asked me to pray for them. Sometimes it takes years to develop that relationship of trust. But we have to know what is going on in our neighbors lives so that when the Holy Spirit prompts us to pray for them, we jump on it. Loving our neighbor may require us to get into the messy details of our neighbors lives. And we ve all got messes that we have deal with, right? Amen! John Ortberg, once wrote a book titled Everyone s Normal Until You Get to Know Them. Isn t that so true? We may need to get down in the mud and mire of their 3 Posted on bible.org at https://bible.org/illustration/hatred-between-jews-and-samaritans!5
circumstances in order for the healing presence of Jesus Christ to come into their lives. Loving our neighbor may cost us our time, energy, and resources. The Samaritan in the story gave from his own stash of first aid bandages and antibiotic ointments. He gave up his own donkey to carry an injured Jewish man to an inn where he could rest and heal. And then he gave his own money to cover the victim s room and board. And finally, loving our neighbor may require us to check up on them from time to time. Maybe a simple phone call or text message letting them know that we are thinking about them and praying for them. Because of his sense of being this man s keeper, the Good Samaritan does that. That is sacrifice that mirrored what Jesus made on each of our behalves. Why is loving our neighbor so important? Our witness as disciples of Jesus Christ and the Church is at stake. People will know that we are Christians by the way we love others. When people see us loving some people and not others, we send confusing and mixed signals to them about how much we love God, who loves all people. I m reading a book right now about intergenerational congregations and helping young people discover and love our church. One of the things that research shows that young people look for in a faith community is a group of people who Equips others to be the best neighbors who will love and shape their world. Many of us are already doing just that. But we could do more. We need to dive into the probing questions that Jesus asked his disciples. Who do we have no dealings with? How are we justifying our prejudices and actions or inactions toward others? What if we took a risk a dangerous one at that to spend time with folks who are different from us? What if we discovered that we actually have more in common than we do in difference? What if we loved our neighbor as we loved ourselves? How might that make the world great again? Jesus says, Go and do likewise. And see what might happen. Amen!!6
The Good Samaritan (based on Luke 10: 25-37) How kind the good Samaritan To him who fell among the thieves! Thus Jesus pities fallen man, And heals the wounds the soul receives. O! I remember well the day, When sorely wounded, nearly slain; Like that poor man I bleeding lay, And groaned for help, but groaned in vain. Men saw me in this helpless case, And passed without compassion by; Each neighbor turned away his face, Unmoved by my mournful cry. But he whose name had been my scorn, As Jews Samaritans despise Came, when he saw me thus forlorn, With love and pity in his eyes. Gently he raised me from the ground, Pressed me to lean upon his arm; And into every gaping wound He poured his own all-healing balm. Unto his church my steps he led, The house prepared for sinners lost; Gave charge I should be clothed and fed; And took upon him all the cost. Thus saved from death, from want secured, I wait till he again shall come, When I shall be completely cured And take me to his heav'nly home. There through eternal boundless days, When nature's wheel no longer rolls, How shall I love, adore, and praise,!7
This good Samaritan to souls! ~ John Newton, Olney Hymns 1779 We thank you, God, for coming to us as a neighbor, a stranger, an immigrant, binding our wounds and carrying us to safety, so that we might love you with all our heart, soul, and mind, and welcome the stranger, loving our neighbor as ourselves.!8