Walking the Walk

Rev. Caroline K. Murphy
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 11, 2010
Text: Luke 10:25-37

July 11, 2010

A few weeks ago I was sitting in front of the computer at a friend's house in faraway Bavaria when I opened up an email from a member of the search committee. The committee was getting ready to send a press release out to local papers about the start of my new pastorate here in Bethany, and wondered if I would care to contribute a few words. I was really pleased – pleased that the church was interested in getting the word out, pleased that folks from the search committee were thinking ahead about such things, pleased that I had been invited to contribute something to the article. I must confess, though, that it took me a few moments to figure out exactly what to write. How to distill into a sentence or two everything that I might want to say about this church, about my sense of calling to it, and about church and Christianity in general – and that in some kind of coherent English, at a time when I was immersed in a different language and culture? It actually turned out to be a very good exercise, maybe in the same way that composing Twitter tweets is for some. It's easy enough to go on and on about a subject you care a lot about – especially if you're a preacher! – but it can be something of a challenge to try to condense the essentials into a limited number of words.
So I pondered the question for a bit, and then it became clear to me. Why did I accept the church's offer – your offer – to become your new pastor? Well, because I feel really drawn to this church and to the town of Bethany, and have for a long time. What do I feel is special about this church? There was a pretty clear answer to that one, too: the sense of mutual caring that I had seen, both in the few weeks that I spent here in the fall of 2008 and in my conversations with the search committee. I also remarked on the mix of different generations, different backgrounds, and different viewpoints in this congregation. I sensed that this is not a church where everyone is a clone of everyone else, but a place where different sorts of people can find a home. And how about Christianity in general? What is at the heart of Christian discipleship, of being the church together? Once again, utter clarity. When it comes down to it, it's all about love of God and love of neighbor. That is our core principle, the foundation on which everything else is built.
This thought is hardly original to me. It is what Jesus identifies as the essence of discipleship. As we just heard it phrased in Luke's gospel: "You shall 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 you shall love your neighbor as yourself." In Mark's and Matthew's gospels, Jesus speaks these words in response to a question about God's greatest commandment. Here in Luke, they come out of an exchange he has with a lawyer – an expert in the Torah – who asks him, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Interestingly enough, Jesus does not reply directly but throws the question back at him and tells him to answer it himself, based on his own knowledge of scripture.
The answer is really not all that difficult. The love of God and neighbor was hardly a new concept, either for Jesus or for anyone else familiar with the Torah. It was all there, in some of the most central portions of Hebrew scripture. Who wouldn't know the right answer? Love God wholeheartedly, and love your neighbor as yourself. From the beginning, that has been at the very core of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
The conversation between Jesus and the lawyer who was testing him could have ended with that exchange. My preaching – not simply for this Sunday but for all the Sundays I am here during the entire length of my pastorate – could have ended with what I wrote for the press release: "Love of God and love of neighbor: that's what it all comes down to." But of course those words are not the end of the story. They are only the beginning. It's one thing to know the right answer. It's another to live it out. So when the lawyer presses Jesus, saying, "OK, let's define the terms here: Just who is my neighbor anyway?" Jesus responds not with a set of abstract theological propositions but with a story, a parable that was destined to become of the most beloved in all of scripture.

It's a story that starts with a terrible misdeed. A man going about his business, walking along the road, is mugged by a gang of thugs who not only rob him but beat him up badly, and leave him by the side of the road to die. A horrible crime. Two different individuals – one a priest, the other a priest's assistant – happen along. As they are walking down the same road, they see the man lying there, bruised and bleeding, and . . . they cross over to the other side and continue on their way. It is only the third one who stops to help. Not just to express concern, not just to smile at the man in a friendly and sympathetic way – though that alone would have been light-years better than what the first two did. No, this third one really helped the man. He cleaned and dressed his wounds, bandaged him up, took him to an inn, cared for him, paid for his lodging, and arranged to cover any further expenses that might arise until he was healed. In all likelihood, he saved the man's life.

When Jesus has finished telling this story, he poses a simple question of the lawyer: "So what do you think?" he asks. "Which of these three, would you say, was a neighbor to the man?" Was there ever a question with a more obvious answer? "The third one, of course – the one who showed him mercy." One of the things I love about this story is the way Jesus reframes the question. The lawyer wants to know who counts as a neighbor. Is it the person next door? Is that my neighbor? What about the rest of the people who live on my street, or in my town? Is it the people who belong to my same ethnic group, or to my same political party, or to my same nationality, or to my same church? Are those my neighbors? Who's in, and who's out? The lawyer wants to get some definitions. "Just who is my neighbor?"

But Jesus shifts the emphasis. He is not particularly interested in the question of who has met the conditions, who has qualified to be considered a neighbor. Instead, he wants to explore what it means to act as a neighbor to others. What matters to Jesus is not how to define a neighbor. It is how to be a neighbor. And when it comes to being a neighbor, it is the third man in the story – the Samaritan – who so clearly gets it right. He is the one who shows compassion to the man lying by the side of the road.

And there's another thing to love about this story! It is the Samaritan, of all people, who becomes an exemplar for loving one's neighbor as oneself. Thanks to this story, the phrase "good Samaritan" has become a commonplace part of our language. But to most people who first heard this story, that would have been an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms – like plastic silverware, or reality television, or a working vacation. Through Samaritans and Jews were related, the chasm between them was bitter and deep. Ethnic and cultural differences were exacerbated by vehement theological disputes. They disagreed over everything from scripture to worship. Which version of Torah was the "right" one, and what was the "right" center of worship – the Temple in Jerusalem or Mt. Gerazim in Samaria? The mutual enmity over such questions was so great that to speak of a good Samaritan would have been utterly jarring to people in Jesus' day.

But in the story Jesus tells, the Samaritan is indeed the good one. If you or I were lying by the road, hurt and in pain, hanging onto life by a thread, it is the Samaritan we would hope to see approaching from a distance. And if we mean not just to speak the words of God's greatest commandment but to live by them, it is the Samaritan we need to emulate.

The Samaritan, of all people! Wow. That means that the person I disagree with bitterly – the person who looks different, has a different kind of background, has different political and cultural views from my own, maybe even has a different set of beliefs – that person may actually be doing a better job of being a neighbor to others than I am. Which means that the least I can do is to acknowledge that other person – that Samaritan! – as my own neighbor. Maybe Jesus is asking me to treat not only the person stranded by the side of the road as a neighbor but to treat that other person as a neighbor as well. That person I disagree with about all sorts of things, both large and small; that person I didn't really want to have anything to do with at all; that person I consider my enemy – maybe I need to love that person, too, as my neighbor.

Over the centuries, people have gotten caught up in all sorts of heated disputes about the "right" and "wrong" answers to basic questions of faith:
~ The early followers of Jesus argued about the importance of circumcision, and of observing traditional dietary laws.
~ At the time of the Protestant Reformation, churches splintered from one another over their differing understandings of the sacrament of communion.
~ Shortly thereafter, some people started debating the sacrament of baptism. Should infant baptism be allowed, or should only believers' baptism be practiced?

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