Who Is My Neighbor?

Who Is My Neighbor?

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

July 10, 2016

Scripture: Luke 10:25-37

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

As you know, the weekend before last I was in Detroit to attend the 2016 Annual Meeting of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches, the denomination to which this church belongs. Yes, the National Association denies that it is a denomination, but never mind. It is a denomination, and we belong to it. Sometimes there are coincidences in what appears in the lectionary that we use for particular Sundays. This is my first Sunday back with you since I went to that meeting in Detroit, and the Gospel reading for today is the Parable of Good Samaritan from Luke. That’s a coincidence that, frankly, feels like providence because the theme of the NA’s Annual Meeting this year was “Who Is My Neighbor?” That question of course comes from the Parable of the Good Samaritan, so that parable popping up in the lectionary for today gives me a chance to talk with you both about that parable and about the NA’s recent Annual Meeting. Nice. I couldn’t have planned it better myself.

At the Annual Meeting in Detroit the theme design for the meeting with the words “Who Is My Neighbor” were all over the place. That question was mentioned many times. One preacher I heard on Sunday morning at the NA church in suburban Royal Oak, Michigan, preached on it. The preacher at the big afternoon worship service at First Congregational Church of Detroit preached on it, even though it was easily 100 degrees in that sanctuary; and I think I have to say this about what I heard. I heard a lot of well-intentioned people ask the question “Who is my neighbor?” I also heard a well-intentioned answer many times: Everyone is our neighbor. People said it over and over again. They’re right of course. That is one of the major lessons we can take from the Parable of the Good Samaritan. If the hated Samaritan acts like a neighbor, then everyone is our neighbor. I heard that truth proclaimed many times in Detroit.

Here’s what I didn’t hear: I didn’t hear any specifics, or at least not many. No one really talked much about what the word “everyone” in that answer means. Now, I don’t know why no one addressed that question with the specificity I think it calls for, although I’m willing to guess. See, we church people are so afraid of offending anyone. There was a wide range of theological and political opinion among the people attending that meeting. There were very liberal progressives like me and Norm Erlendson, and there were some people who are essentially theological Fundamentalists and staunch social conservatives. I know because I talked to some of them. And we church people don’t want to offend anyone. So we mouth general principles and avoid specifics that might offend someone who doesn’t really think that everyone is her or his neighbor. Well, I’m old enough and independent enough that I don’t worry as much about the truth offending someone as I used to. Yes, I am called, like all preachers are called, to speak the truth in love and to have a pastoral concern for all of the people of my church. And I hope what I’m going to say doesn’t offend any of you. This morning I’m going to give you some specifics that I didn’t hear in Detroit. I think our answer to the question Who is my neighbor doesn’t mean much if we get specific in our answer. So here goes.

What does it mean when we say everyone is our neighbor? On its face that’s an easy question to answer. Everyone means everyone. Linguistically speaking “every” means all without exception. The word “every” functions to mean none excluded. I heard people in Detroit say everyone is my neighbor, but I wondered how carefully they had thought that statement through. Sure, it’s easy to say that some people are my neighbor. My family. My friends. Maybe people who live in my neighborhood. People who agree with me. People I like. Sure. They’re my neighbor, and I can treat them the way the Samaritan in Jesus’ parable treats the beaten man left for dead on the side of the road. “Everyone” certainly includes them.

It includes them, but here’s the thing. It includes a lot of other people too. It includes people we may find it really hard to love or even to like. For me, for example, it includes the Missouri Synod Lutheran church across the way here with whom I have profound and really important theological disagreements. For all of us it includes the undocumented people from Mexico, Central, and South America who are all around us. It includes the world’s Muslims. Yes, there are things about Islam that I don’t like along with a lot of things about it that I do like, but just because I don’t agree with them about everything doesn’t mean they’re not my neighbor. They are. Here’s a harder one: What about the Islamist terrorist who kills innocent people and would kill us if he could? Is he our neighbor? Well, if everyone is our neighbor then he is too. What about Micah Johnson, the deranged man who shot all those police officers in Dallas the other night? If everyone is my neighbor, then he is too. See, Jesus never said treating everyone as your neighbor was easy. He never said loving your enemy was easy. He just said do it, that’s all.

One of the lessons of the Parable of the Good Samaritan truly is that the person we hate may be more of a neighbor to people in need than we are. I know you’ve heard this before, but Jesus making a Samaritan the hero of his parable really is remarkable. Jesus making the priest and the Levite the villains of his parable is too. They were leaders of the Jewish faith in the temple in Jerusalem. They’re supposed to be the good guys. In making the Jewish religious leaders the bad guys and the Samaritan the good guy Jesus turned his audience’s world upside down. Jesus’ audience was made up of Jews. Jews in Jesus’ time despised the Samaritans. The Samaritans were the descendants of the tribes of Israel that the Assyrians wiped out in 722 BC. They traced their lineage back to the Hebrew patriarch Jacob just like the Jews did, but their faith tradition was not purely Jewish. That’s why the Jews hated them. The intense dislike between the Jews and the Samaritans in Jesus’ time echoes through the Gospels. For the Jews the Samaritans were just plain bad, and here Jesus goes and turns one into the hero of his story while the good Jewish temple officials are the bad guys. If he were to retell that parable today he might well make an Islamist the hero of the story. Or an inner city gang member covered in gang tattoos and having a criminal record. He’d surely use somebody he’d know we wouldn’t like. That’s what he did for his Jewish audience with the Good Samaritan. He’d do it for, or to, us too.

So: Who is my neighbor? Everyone is. The people we find it easy to love and much more importantly the people we find it a lot easier to hate. Hate is not a Christian value. It is never a Christian value. Love is the Christian value, and only love can get us out of the vicious cycle of fear, anger, and hatred that our country is stuck in right now. Who is my neighbor? The Black man with whom I have so little in common. The Asian woman whose ways are not my ways. The Pakistani Muslim whose faith and culture I can’t even really understand. The transgender man who used to be a woman who I can’t understand but can love. The Christian who says woman can’t be priests or pastors and all gay people are damned. As hard as it may be for me to accept some of them, they’re all my neighbor. They’re all your neighbor too.

So let’s not be satisfied with generalities. If we say all are welcome, let’s understand what that really means. Actually, I don’t think all are or should be welcome here. People who hate others. People who disrupt the services and meetings of our church with their own personal agendas or uncontrollable behaviors. But all are welcome does still means something, just like everyone is my neighbor means something. It means people we don’t know are welcome. It means people we can’t understand are welcome. It means people not at all like us are welcome. It means people we don’t like are welcome. It’s so easy to welcome, to be a neighbor to, people just like us. That’s not what Jesus tells us to do. He makes a hated Samaritan the hero of his parable. Who’s our Samaritan? Who’s the person we don’t want as a neighbor, the person we don’t want to love? Jesus says that person is our neighbor. Jesus says love that person. He didn’t say it was easy, he just said do it. With his help, with lots of prayer, and relying on God’s grace, I think we can. Amen.