Luke 10:25-37 "The Gospel Thing" Scott Hoezee

For the past thirty-four years the Rev. Fred Rogers has stared out into the eyes of millions of people he doesn't know, whom he cannot actually see, and whom he will likely never meet, but has still said with conviction, "Hi, neighbor!" Rev. Rogers is, of course, far better known as Mister Rogers and he has devoted his life to inviting children into his friendly neighborhood. The Presbyterian Church ordained Rogers as "an evangelist to work with children and families through the mass media." So, donning his signature cardigan sweater and canvas tennis shoes, Mister Rogers has spent over three decades telling his every viewer, "I like you just the way you are" even as he croons, "It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood . . . would you be mine, could you be mine, won't you be my neighbor."

What many people do not know is that Rogers is intentionally sowing gospel seeds through his show. He firmly believes in God's calling to "broadcast grace throughout the land," and you'd be hard-pressed to deny the grace and gentle compassion that radiates from every thirty-minute episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Before this sermon is finished this morning, we may also come to realize that the universal way that Mister Rogers slings around the term "neighbor" is very consistent with the point Jesus makes in Luke 10.

Today we come to the end of our brief series on themes related to justice. We've thought about justice in the Old Testament sense of providing for the poor and the vulnerable. We've thought about justice in the sense of letting the grace of God steer us away from vengeance. This morning I hope we can in some sense pick up the various threads of those other four sermons and braid them together into a single cord of gospel compassion. We are, as we said three weeks ago, "agape people" who need to treat others the way God has already treated us. Now let's listen to the evangelist Luke as he relays to us a defining moment in the teaching ministry of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ.

We begin with a lawyer. True, this man was not a lawyer in the contemporary sense of that term. Rather, this was a religious man trained not at law school but in a seminary. He became a lawyer not by taking the bar exam but by taking a Bible exam in which he had to demonstrate his nimbleness in stringing together long and complex verses about God's rules for life. It was a perfectly legitimate area of scholarship but it did have one drawback: when you spend your life parsing rules, commands, statutes, and laws, you sooner or later conclude that the life of faith is all about doing certain things and not doing other things.

Maybe it's rather like someone who devotes himself to learning every last rule of baseball: there is finally only one reason to pursue such a goal and that is gaining the ability to make judgments on what is fair and what is foul in an actual game. Understanding the infield fly rule or what constitutes a major league balk is totally boring if it is just a theory. You need to see a game before you can use what you know. That's why people who know the rules the best tend to be the same people who watch the most baseball!

So also with people like this lawyer: he had spent his whole career pondering laws and regulations. There had to be some payoff for knowing all this, and so life became a giant game in which lawyers were the divine umpires who made all the religious calls.

Given all of that, it is no surprise to hear this lawyer say to Jesus, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" If there is one thing the gospel makes clear, it is that in the long run, the answer to that question is "You don't have to do anything." On this occasion, however, Jesus lets that go because he knows that if he plays into this lawyer's hand a bit, he can make a strong point. The lawyer asks what to do, and so Jesus goes straight for what he knew this man already regarded as the biggest "To Do" list in the world: the Law of God.

"Well," Jesus says, "what is written in the Law? What's your scholarly assessment of it?" Without missing a beat, the lawyer reels off Deuteronomy 6:5 as the summary of the whole Law of God. And he's right. On another occasion when someone asked Jesus for the greatest commandment of them all, that same verse was also Jesus' own answer. So in this situation, what else can Jesus say to this lawyer except, "You are absolutely correct. Do this and you will live." Of course, Jesus meant do this perfectly, which was his none-too-subtle way to force everyone back to grace again. No one who is honest would claim he has always led a life of perfect love. So if perfection is the requirement for admission into the kingdom, then each one of us is in very dire straits (unless there is such a thing as grace, that is).

This man unwittingly goes on to prove that very point. As a sharp lawyer, he paid attention to and defined every word. It is said that someone once came up to a laywer and said, "If I give you $100, will you answer two questions for me?" The lawyer immediately replied, "Sure, now what's your second question?" Similarly here, the lawyer is watching every word and so seeks a definition for the term "neighbor." Preferably it will be a definition that will get him off the hook. You see, he is aware that there are people in this world whom he has not loved as a neighbor. But he could justify himself provided that the people he had unlovingly ignored hadn't counted as his neighbors to begin with.

"Who is my neighbor?" the man asks. And his hope is that Jesus will say something to the effect, "Very well: henceforth a neighbor (hereafter referred to as the party of the first part) shall be defined as meaning a person of Jewish descent whose legal residence is within a radius of no more than three statute miles from one's own legal residence, unless there is another person of Jewish descent (hereafter referred to as the party of the second part) living closer to the party of the first part than one is oneself, in which case the party of the second part is to be construed as the neighbor to the party of the first part and one is then oneself relieved of all responsibility of any kind to the matters hereunto appertaining."

Well, if you are looking for a loophole to maintain the fiction of your perfect love for God and neighbor, then that type of reply would help a great deal indeed. The people who would then count as your neighbors would be restricted to a handful of folks whom you already know and probably also already love. But to state the incredibly obvious, that is not the answer Jesus gave. Jesus does not give a legal definition but instead tells a story.

"A man was going down from Jerusalem . . . ." That's how he begins. The Greek text says anthropos tis, which could be translated literally as "a certain man" or could more colloquially be translated as "some guy." Some guy, some anonymous fellow of indeterminate age, of unspecified ethnicity, and of unknown origins was taking a trip. He could be anybody, and just that is Jesus' point: he is anybody. The lawyer probably wanted to interrupt Jesus right here. "Hold it, Jesus. What man are we talking about? Can you describe him? Is it anyone I might know? Is he Jewish? A Gentile? Gay, straight? Roman or Greek? Slave or free? What man?"

Even had the lawyer asked this, Jesus would not have answered. "A certain man, some nameless, faceless fellow was taking a trip and got mugged. They beat him half-senseless, took his wallet and then left the guy in his underwear, crumpled in the mud of a ditch." The man is left like roadkill, and two religious figures treat him like roadkill, too, actually walking on the other side of the street to avoid seeing him, much less helping him. Jesus says the third passerby is a Samaritan, and at this point I picture the lawyer clenching his teeth. A Samaritan. Today it would be like hearing the word "Nazi" or "Taliban." Samaritans, of course, were not like Nazis, but they were regarded almost that darkly.

Nevertheless, Jesus uses a Samaritan as the parable's hero. He approaches the man in the ditch, does first aid in the field, and then takes the man to a hotel, where he puts him up, pays for everything, and promises to return in a day or two to see how he's doing and again settle the account. We don't even know in this story if the mugging victim ever regained consciousness to see who was helping him. But it doesn't matter: the Samaritan is not thinking of himself. His focus is on the other person (and in this way he stands in stark contrast to the lawyer whose focus seems to be mostly on how good ole' #1 is doing. Remember, Luke already told us that the lawyer was seeking to justify himself).

Now at this point you assume that Jesus will say, "You asked who your neighbor is, and now I'm telling you: your neighbor is that anonymous man in the ditch." That would make sense for Jesus to say that, right? The man had asked, "Who is my neighbor" and so Jesus shows a faceless and nameless crime victim as his parabolic answer to that question. But take very careful note: that is not what Jesus says.

Instead, Jesus turns things around and asks, "Now, which of the three passersby acted as a neighbor to the mugging victim?" This is a subtle shift in emphasis, but it packs a wallop! You see, we tend to think like this lawyer: we think that what we need to do is scan the society around us to see who out there counts as my neighbor. But here Jesus says that figuring that out is less important than making sure that you yourself act as a neighbor to everyone you meet. Who those other folks out in society are, how they treat you, what they look like, whether or not they seem like folks with whom you have some stuff in common is not nearly so important as making sure that whoever they are, you are their neighbor.

"Who is my neighbor?" the lawyer asked. In the end Jesus says, "Nevermind that: are you a neighbor?" Of course, the two questions are related: the implication of the parable is that indeed, everyone is my neighbor and that is why I must be a good neighbor to them. But the shift in emphasis in verse 36 reveals again Jesus' desire that we become bearers of love everywhere we go. If our hearts are full of grace, mercy, compassion, and love (for both God and everyone else), then we won't ask, "Who is my neighbor" because it won't matter: the question becomes irrelevant if you are yourself already being a neighbor.

We've been thinking about justice in a biblical context these past five weeks. But in case you did not already notice, I'll point out that in just about every one of these five sermons, we have in the end found the Bible turning us toward others. The just society is where everyone takes care of everyone else. The just church community and society are where we forego claims to revenge so that we can apply the balm of forgiving grace to precisely the people who deserve it the least but who, like we ourselves, need it the most. And as we said last week, the right way to think of God is as being loving first and forever, which then sets the tone for our own treatment of others.

There is far more to say about justice than we've covered these past weeks. There are situations, even in the church but certainly on the international stage, that are fraught with grave complexities--situations where the application of the gospel is by no means a snap. And there are both people and situations that now and then force us to make tragically difficult choices. I don't want to brush past anyone's inner anguish over not being able yet to forgive someone. I don't wish to deny that sometimes justice itself means that certain actions will have consequences. Even so, the last few sermons should stand once again as a demonstration that when we enter the strange new world of the gospel, one of the first things that happens is that the focus of our lives is turned toward others--what's more, we are turned toward them in the same holy compassion with which God looks at us.

Mister Rogers seems to think that everyone is his neighbor, and he believes that because he apparently already regards himself as your neighbor and my neighbor. "Hi, neighbor" he has said countless times. Saying it just that way reveals a lot. God has placed us here, full of his own divine image and now brimming with also the grace of Christ Jesus, to be a neighbor to everyone. When we see neighbors caring for each other, we find it to be a source of great joy. It can also be deeply moving.

For instance, it was almost exactly 9:00 am on the morning of September the 11^th when Melanie Belkin emerged from the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel onto a street in Lower Manhattan. Her two children were in the backseat. Ava was 22 months old and Noah just over four years of age. Noah was only four but he had already endured thirteen surgeries to repair a welter of birth defects. To help him breathe, doctors had done a tracheotomy in Noah's throat such that he now took in air through a small tube in his neck. It sometimes would get clogged so Melanie always kept a portable vacuum pump in her purse in case the trach needed suctioning. They were on their way to Noah's school that day, a trip they'd made countless times before. But this day was horribly different. Suddenly they were surrounded by emergency vehicles and it all upset Noah so much he threw up in the back seat of the car.

Traffic came to a standstill and so Melanie was forced to abandon the car. She put baby Ava into the bright yellow stroller they had bought a few weeks earlier--Noah had picked it out for his baby sister because he liked how bright it was. As they raced through the streets looking for shelter, Melanie knew Noah's tracheotomy tube would soon be clogged. The air was already filthy with smoke and debris. Seeing their plight, a stranger took off his shirt and ripped it into three pieces so that Melanie and her children could use the fabric as a makeshift breathing mask. She stopped at a phone booth to call her husband but the phone was dead, and then the earth shook as 2 World Trade Center collapsed.

Now a billowing cloud of hell was coming their way. Another stranger picked up the stroller, Ava and all, and herded Melanie and the kids into the cab of a delivery truck. As the dust cloud swept over the truck, Melanie cleaned out Noah's tube while another woman in the cab held Ava. A business man tore off his Ralph Lauren shirt and also tore it up into pieces to help shield noses and mouths from the foul air. Then the second tower went down and it began all over again. Someone quoted Psalm 23. The truck driver saw a restaurant that had just been opened for shelter. Fighting through the dust storm he led them all there.

But now the vacuum pump was left behind, so the truck driver went back out into the chaos to retrieve it while the restaurant's pastry chef tended to Melanie's children. Eventually, a park ranger arrived and the strangers around Melanie made sure the ranger put her and the children on the first ferry back across the water to Brooklyn. Once there, Melanie realized her purse and the stroller had been left behind. She had no money, so yet another stranger handed her five $20 bills and then disappeared.

Weeks later, Melanie Belkin was still reeling from the waves of strangers who saved her children's lives. She didn't know the name of a single one. Then one day a UPS man arrived at Melanie's door. He had the bright yellow stroller and Melanie's purse, the stroller scrubbed clean by the restaurant's staff and sent back to the address found inside Melanie's wallet. The restaurant people told her the truck driver wanted to be sure she got this back. Noah was delighted since he had picked out that stroller in the first place. That morning Melanie had kept such a tight grip on the stroller, she actually bent her wedding ring, as she discovered after getting back home that awful day. But it was the sea of Good Samaritans, not her own fierce grip, that saved them all.⁽¹⁾

"Who is my neighbor?" the man asked. "Everyone," Jesus replied, "provided you are their neighbor first." Oh, and Jesus added one other thing: "Go and do likewise." It's the gospel thing to do. Amen.

1. The source of this closing story was from: "Another New York Example of the Kindness of Strangers" by Jim Dwyer from the New York Times in their Pulitzer Prize winning section, "A Nation Challenged." December 28, 2001, pp. B1, B7)