Making Neighbors
Homily delivered Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 10; Year C RCL)
13 July 2025; 9:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Immanuel Episcopal Church, Coos Bay OR
The
Rev. Anthony Hutchinson, Ph.D., SCP
Readings: Amos 7:7-17 and Psalm 82 or Deuteronomy 30:9-14 and Psalm 25:1-9;
Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37
God,
take away our hearts of stone
and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
Finding a dead body lying out in the open is a very disturbing
experience. When my wife and I lived in West Africa several years ago,
one Sunday morning we were running of the beach. She got ahead of me, as
she usually does when we’re running. I heard her start screaming in
terror and hurried to catch up with her. There beside us, in sand at the
high tide mark, was what used to be a human being, now bloated in the heat and
already a meal for the crabs. We ran to get the port authorities,
who recovered the body, identified it as a fisherman who had fallen from his
boat a week earlier, and returned it to his grieving family. It was not
the only corpse I saw in Africa. Once, on a trip into Lagos Nigeria, I
spotted a body lying alongside the road. My driver refused to stop to try
to get help, since the area was notoriously known as the haunt of criminal
gangs who often would rob anyone who stopped their car.
Today’s Gospel reading is a parable that describes such a disturbing
scene.
A lawyer asks Jesus a question of Jewish Law: “Master, of all the 615
commandments in the Torah, 365 'Thou shalt not's' and 248 'Thou shalt's,” what
is the essential that I need to do to please God? “
Luke says the lawyer is asking Jesus the question trying to test him
(10:25). Jesus is cautious, and asks the lawyer what he thinks the Law
establishes as its core (10:26).
The Lawyer replies in these words: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart”
(Deut. 6:4) and then “Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18).
This two-part epitome of the Law is probably the historical Jesus’ own.
Matthew and Mark place it on his lips. It shows up in other rabbi’s mouths only
well after Jesus’ death. The first part is from the Shema, the creed of
Judaism recited in daily prayers (Deut. 6:4); the second, which Jesus says is
“just as important as the first,” is a commandment from the Levitical Holiness
Code (Lev 19:18).
“Love God; love your neighbor.” Jesus says if you do that, you won’t have
any problem pleasing God.
Then the lawyer follows up with another question, seeking, as lawyers are wont
to do, clear definitions of terms and scope of the law. “And who, rabbi,
exactly is my neighbor?”
Luke tells us that the lawyer asked this in order to justify himself. He wants
to know who this “neighbor” he must love is, so that he can have also know who non-neighbors
are, those he is not obligated to love.
Jesus replies not with a legal definition, but with a story.
A man goes down the dangerous road
from Jerusalem to Jericho. Remember Jerusalem is 2700 feet above sea
level while Jericho is 800 feet below it. With only 17 miles between, it
means there is a 200 foot drop every mile. There are lots of switchbacks
in the steep road where many nooks and crannies can easily hide bad guys.
He meets up with robbers, is beaten unconscious, stripped of all his clothing,
and left for dead.
Then by chance someone comes by. It is a Priest, commuting between his
home in Jericho and his intermittent work in the Temple in Jerusalem.
Surely a priest—a religious person and an example of doing the right thing—will
help a fellow countryman who is almost dead, right? But when he
sees the man, he hurries to the other side of the road, and walks on.
Then another religious leader, a temple assistant called a Levite, also comes
along. He too avoids what appears to be a naked corpse on the side
of the road.
Now we mustn’t think too ill of the Priest or the Levite. The Torah stipulated
that Priests and Levites had to be ritually pure for their service in the
Temple, and also clearly stated that any contact with a corpse contaminated and
brought with it ritual impurity.
Just about at this point in the story, Jesus’ listeners would realize that the
fact that the man looked dead might in reality cause his actual death through
lack of care, and all because of religious people scrupulously trying to follow
the commandments of God.
The Law taught that saving someone’s life or even helping someone save their ox
from the mire took precedence over purity requirements. But such acts of compassion
still did not get prevent you from incurring ta corpse’s ritual pollution.
Like any good storyteller, Jesus here follows the rule of three. You
know, like once there was an Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scot, or other perhaps,
a Rabbi, a Catholic Priest, and a Baptist Preacher. Here is it a Priest,
a Levite, and a…
Jesus’ audience knows it will be a normal resident of that part of the country,
a Judean. He won’t be constrained by the heavier purity concerns and
he’ll save our poor victim, right?
No. The third traveler on his way is not a Judean. It is a
Samaritan.
Now to Jesus’ Jewish audience, having a Priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan being
the three is like someone today telling story and having the three be the Pope,
the Dalai Lama, and Usama bin Laden.
Samaritans were seen as contemptible half-breeds, heretics and blasphemers,
allies with the foreign occupiers, and immoral. They themselves were
considered by Jews to be ritually unclean and contaminating. The
poor Jewish man who is about to die himself will be ritually polluted by
accepting anything from the Samaritan. But at this point, he isn’t
particular about who he can accept help from. Better unclean and alive
than unclean because you’re dead.
When this Samaritan sees the wounded man, he stops, is moved to compassion,
takes good care of him, and even provides for him as if he were a family
member.
Note that the Samaritans also had their own version of the Torah, and the same
basic rules about corpses were found there. But the Samaritan disregards
the contamination and helps out anyway.
Jesus closes the story by asking, “Who do you think acted like a neighbor to
that unfortunate man?”
The lawyer can’t even bring himself to say, “The Samaritan.” He replies
abashedly, “the one who showed him compassion.”
“Go and do likewise. Be like that Samaritan,” is Jesus’ reply.
This answer by Jesus places him squarely on one side of a major division within
the Biblical tradition.
Walther Bruggemann, in his magisterial Theology of the Old Testament,
points out that there are two great thematic threads throughout the Hebrew Bible.
On one side, there is the striving for purity and ritual holiness, for being
special and set aside for God’s service. “You shall be holy for I am
holy,” we read in Leviticus, and there follows hundreds of detailed rules
setting boundaries and defining categories to help achieve holiness. On
the other side there is striving for justice, for treating people, especially
the marginalized, decently and fairly.
The two themes often seem in opposition. The priests and the Law tend to
talk a lot about purity and holiness. The prophets tend to talk about
dealing with others justly. For them, God says things like: “I
expect obedience, not sacrifice.” “I hate your sacrifices because you mistreat
the widow and the orphan.” “All I really ask of you is to
treat the poor fairly, and to walk humbly with me.” For the priests and
teachers of halachic law, however, God say things like, “You will be Holy for I
am Holy, says the Lord.” “You shall not pollute the land with impurity,
or I will destroy you.” “You shall drive out pollution from among your
midst and separate yourself from uncleanness.”
The two traditions are both important and mutually corrective. The boundaries
established by the Law are what define and preserve the People of God, and
allow ethical monotheism to flourish. But if holiness is not tempered
with the call for social justice, it becomes empty ritual, a mode of
oppression. On the other hand, calls for social justice in the absence of
an authentic call to holiness rapidly degenerate into the most obvious
self-serving form of interest-group politics.
It is very important to note that in the Gospels, whenever social justice is
placed in conflict with ritual purity and Jesus is asked to decide between
them, in every single case he opts for social justice. For him, justice
trumps purity and holiness in this sense every time.
This is because he sees God as Parent of everyone, not just of the Jewish
nation, or righteous people. “God makes the sun shine and the rain fall
on both the righteous and the wicked,” he says (Matt. 5:45). Be un-discriminating
in blessing people, just like God.
The Lawyer has framed the wrong question. The commandments to love God
and to love neighbor are, above all else, commandments to love. When the
lawyer asks “and who exactly is it that I don’t have to love,” Jesus
throws this surprising story at him to shake his world view. Like a Zen
koan, the parable is meant to shock the lawyer into a new way of feeling and
perceiving.
All of us have our ways, like the
lawyer, of seeking to justify ourselves and say to the God who calls us to
love, “Enough, already!” We all too often use boundaries as a means to do
this, whether national, ethnic, political, gender, or even what we consider to
be moral boundaries.
Granted, we need definitions and limits, or our lives are chaotic and
unordered. Boundaries are a good thing, something we all need, whether we
are talking moral boundaries, legal boundaries, or personal space and autonomy
boundaries. We need them because without them we are hot messes.
But we must never let boundaries become a strait-jacket that makes us unable to
reach out in love to others.
Good fences may indeed help make good neighbors, but not if we do not chat
across them and as needed reach over them.
I challenge each of us this week to look at ourselves. Take 10 or 15
minutes during your prayer time or meditation time, or even exercise time, and
ask these questions: 1) Where am I transgressing boundaries with
resulting harm to myself or others? 2) Where am I using boundaries as an excuse
to not do the right thing?
Once you have some answers, then look again at this story.
Remember that lawyer and his self-justifying question. And then really
think about the story of that loathsome stranger doing kindness to a fellow
human being, no matter how different, no matter how alien.
And go and do likewise.
In the name of God, Amen.
