Feb 27, 2022 Worship Service

Sermon: Love your neighbour as yourself

Theme: You Shall Love your Neighbour as Yourself
Worship Leader: Sarah Smith
Speaker: Alison Li
Musicians: Bob Loewen; Carmen Wiebe
Technical Team: Cedric and Donny
In-Person Usher: Doreen Martens and Jeff Taylor
Scriptures: Luke 10:25-37
Congregational Prayer: Email prayer requests to a pastor in advance.

February 27, 2022, Alison Li

Scripture: Luke 10: 25-37

An expert in the law comes to Jesus and asks “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds as a good teacher does, with a question. 

“What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” 

The legal expert not only knows the law in exhaustive detail, he truly understands the heart of its message. 

 “’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, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replies. “Do this and you will live.”

But the man asks further, “And who is my neighbour?”

And here, Jesus does something very interesting. He tells a story.

The story he tells, what has become known as the Parable of the Good Samaritan, is probably one of the first stories I learned at Sunday School, and perhaps it was for you as well. I don’t remember exactly how I learned the story, but it was probably accompanied by felt board cut-outs and colouring sheets. The way I understood the story was that I was being asked to think deeply about whether I would act like the priest or Levite (and I understood that would be the wrong answer) or whether I would act like the Samaritan (the right answer). This parable has always been deeply troubling because, however many times I might try to live up to the model of the Samaritan, I know only too well the many, many more times I literally and figuratively go about my business walking past people in need.

The ethical question that is being posed is clear, and there is no doubt that the storyteller, that is Jesus as recorded by Luke, intends the listener to understand that the correct choice is made by the person who stops to help. But that is only one layer of its meaning. If that were all that Jesus wanted to teach, he could have told the story this way: 

Three travellers were going down the road to Jericho. The first traveller sees a man by the side of the road, beaten and naked. He sees him and passes by on the other side of the road. A second traveller sees the man on the side of the road and he too passes by on the other side. A third traveller comes down the road. He sees the man at the side of the road and stops to help him. Which one of these is the neighbour to the man who had fallen to robbers?

But Jesus had a more challenging point to make. Look at the specific narrative choices he makes. He chooses to describe the three men as a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan, and in doing so, he is labelling them for his listeners in a way that is meant to be shocking. The priest and Levite are respected men of faith and learning. We expect them to do the right thing. The Samaritan is the hated outsider. What good can we expect from him? Samaritans and Jews had a deep antagonism. These two groups had a common ancestry and scriptural tradition, but over seven hundred years before Jesus, they had branched away from each other. Each group considered the other culturally foreign and religiously mistaken.

I think it is difficult for us to hear the word Samaritan in the sense it would have been heard by Jesus’s listeners. For us in the 21st century, the word Samaritan is probably too closely linked with the adjective “Good” as in the Good Samaritan laws or the names of countless churches. So, here is an exercise for you to do silently. Don’t shout out your answer. Think of a person or group of people whose values and actions you find deeply objectionable, who you think is horribly misguided, whose choices you find absolutely repugnant. Now, that person is your Samaritan. 

Now, again, if Jesus simply wanted to make the point that we must treat even our enemies as our neighbours, he could have told the story like this:

Three travellers were going down the road to Jericho. The first traveller sees a Samaritan by the side of the road who had been beaten and robbed….

But this is not what Jesus does. He makes the Samaritan the character who makes the correct ethical choice, and by doing so, Jesus is doing something that is meant to sound jarring and provocative to his listeners. He was undermining their assumptions about who was good and worthy of respect, asking them to consider how the ways in which they categorized the world might need to be re-evaluated.

——

Thinking back to my childhood lessons, I had assumed that this parable was asking me to consider whether I would be one of the men who walked past the dying victim or if I would be the one who stopped to help. But when I revisited this story in preparing for this sermon, I realized that it was not at all the way Jesus tells the story. Let’s look at it from a literary perspective. 

Jesus begins, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers.” The protagonist in this work of fiction is the man who is robbed. That is, Jesus’s listeners–the legal expert and you and I–are invited into the point of view of this man. Imagine. You are travelling alone along a steep road that wends across rocky terrain. It is a stretch that is notoriously dangerous because there are many hiding spots where bandits might wait to ambush a vulnerable traveller. You are set upon by robbers, stripped of your clothes, beaten, and left half dead. 

Now, remember that what the lawyer had asked Jesus was, “who is my neighbour,” meaning, “to whom do I owe an obligation to love as I love myself?” Jesus turns the tables on him. He says, imagine you are the person in need. Now, from this perspective, naked, wretched, broken, on the side of this lonely road, can you see more clearly which of these is truly your neighbour? 

And that perhaps is another reason this parable really gets under our skin. Because we know it is all too easy for us not to be the person who is obliged to help, but the person in dire need of help. One slip on an icy patch, one stray heartbeat, one distracted moment at the wheel, one decision by a far-off despot, and we too might be the one desperately in need of help. Isn’t it easier to understand what mercy, compassion, and generosity feel like when you can picture yourself in need of it? And that person I asked you to picture in your mind just now? That’s the person reaching out his or her hand to you. How is that for jarring?

——-

In our sermon series over the past seven weeks, we’ve been exploring the theme: “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.” Our speakers have helped us to look deeply into what it means to love God with each of these facets of ourselves, to connect with God through prayer and dance, through courage, fortitude, and endurance, intellect and imagination. While it has been fruitful to tease these elements apart, the overarching theme that has emerged is a profound need for wholeness and integration, for joyful acceptance of ourselves as fully incarnated beings capable of reason and emotion. And that, as pastor Peter suggested, we are possessed of a soul that can be found wherever we are living abundantly and in connection with God’s desire for healing and redemption.

The sermon series concludes this week with the second part of the scripture: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” This is sometimes called the golden rule, and it has been part of the wisdom of many traditions in human history. Five hundred years before Jesus, Confucius said, “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” Three-hundred and fifty years before Jesus, Aristotle urged, “We should conduct ourselves towards others as we would have them act towards us.” 

The wisdom of the Hebrew tradition is to link the love of God to the love of neighbour. We can express our love of God through the love of neighbour. The genius of Jesus is to help us understand just who this neighbour is, destabilizing the artificial categorizations we erect to separate self from other, in-group from outsider. This love of God and neighbour is beautifully illustrated in this parable. “But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.  He went to him.”  He saw him, he took pity on him, he went to him. That is, he loved his neighbour with his mind, heart, and strength. He was stirred by mercy and in doing so, was connected to God’s plan for healing.

—–

I was at the dentist recently and found my stress level going up, not because of the prospect of dental work but because of the many big television screens in the waiting area and treatment room that displayed a continual scroll of stock prices, breaking news, and a crawl of text describing shootings, accidents, and political turmoil. The news this week has been brutal and our hearts are heavy and troubled. It seems to me our contemporary problem is not so much that we don’t know who our neighbour is, but that we know all too well. We see all too easily on our ubiquitous screens the countless faces of neighbours in dire need both near-by and around the world. How do we love our neighbour in the face of this overwhelm? In the face of problems of such magnitude? In the face of ills so tenacious and of such complexity?

I think here too, Jesus’s parable is instructive. As I looked at the text, I could imagine an eager editor saying, “well, we could begin with this”:

‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him…’

 “And then why don’t we jump right to this part: ‘Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?’” 

 “You see, this makes the point quite satisfactorily. All the other material is extraneous.”

[he] bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii[e]and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

“The point of the story is that the Samaritan is the one who stops to help. We don’t really need to know all the logistical details.”

Or do we? It seems to me that Jesus has a reason for telling us about the donkey, the two denarii, the inn, the inn-keeper, and the promise to return to pay additional expenses. Let us imagine what the Samaritan goes through as he travels this dangerous road and suddenly sees a man, beaten half to death. Does he feel fear, repulsion? Does he struggle with the knowledge that this man, a Jew, is a member of a group that for generations has been at odds with his own people? Does his calculus include all the other responsibilities he has, the people who might be waiting for him at the end of his journey and depending on him, perhaps urgently? Does he worry that this is a trap and that he too will be ambushed by robbers? Or does he summon up his courage and physical strength, does he draw deeply from his well of compassion, and chose to see instead a human being in need of help? To evaluate what needs to be done, and to do it quickly and effectively? He is not paralyzed by worries that he is not a healer by training, that he doesn’t have the resources to organize caravans to ensure the safety of travellers nor to build places of refuge and healing, that he doesn’t possess the military or political might to stamp out banditry along the Jericho Road. The Samaritan loves his neighbour by meeting his immediate needs at great trouble and cost to himself, but he does so as part of a broader network of people, resources, and relationships of trust. He meets his neighbour’s needs but he doesn’t do it alone. Loving our neighbour in our challenging day will take all we can muster of our intellect, fortitude, courage, and resources. But we won’t do it alone. 

——

One of the strands of fiction I find particularly intriguing are those that delve into the stories of minor characters in well-known works. In the 1966 novel The Wide Sargasso Sea, author Jean Rhys fleshed out the life of the first wife of Mr. Rochester from Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre. In Brontë’s hands, this first wife was the quintessential “madwoman in the attic.” To the innocent heroine, Jane Eyre, she is opaque, a frightening, incomprehensible and dangerous “Other.” Jean Rhys instead gives us a story from the first wife’s perspective, one that reveals a complex landscape shaped by greed, colonialism, mental illness, and the aftermath of slavery, and gives us a more nuanced understanding of who this Other is.

Just before the service, I had the privilege of speaking with the youth Sunday School class and sharing with them some of the ideas in today’s sermon. I invited the youth to imagine their way into this story, to choose one of the characters and imagine the story from their perspective, to be the priest, the Levite, the Samaritan, the robbed man, the inn-keeper, or even the robbers. What does the story look like through their eyes? Why do they make the choices they do? And what is the impact of this episode on them? The youth offered many perspectives and insights.

[comments from youth]

Just as the Samaritan does not act alone, so too I think the effects of his actions ripple out beyond him. Let us imagine.

The robbers huddle nearby, dividing their spoils and witness a Samaritan helping a Jew who is a stranger to him, bandaging his wounds and carrying him on his own donkey. How does this affect them?

The inn-keeper sees a Samaritan bringing in a Jew who is a stranger to him, caring for him, and tending his wounds. The Samaritan asks the inn-keeper to care for the man, leaves two denarii and promises to return and reimburse him for any additional expenses. How does this change the inn-keeper’s view of people?

The priest and the Levite are staying overnight at the inn when a Samaritan brings in a man they recognize was the same person they themselves had passed by on the road. How do they feel? How does this re-shape their convictions?

A man is robbed and beaten, and a stranger whom he would have previously regarded as a contemptible outsider, reaches out his hand and saves his life. How will his understanding of the meaning of neighbour be affected? How does change him and how does he, in turn, change his world?

I offer one final thought, thanks to another question from a youth. We say “Love your neighbour as you love yourself,” right? So what happens if someone doesn’t love themselves? 

The correlative of the instruction to love God and love your neighbour is that you need to love yourself, to accept and cherish all your perfectly imperfect dimensions, whole and integrated. Always remember that you are a beloved child of God, intricately and perfectly made in mind, heart, soul, and strength. 

So love God, love your neighbour. Learn from the example of the Samaritan. Now, go and do likewise.

———-

Scripture: Luke 10: 25-37

²⁵ On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

²⁶ “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

²⁷ He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’^[c]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’^[d]”

²⁸ “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

²⁹ But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

³⁰ In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.³¹ A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. ³² So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. ³³ But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. ³⁴ He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. ³⁵ The next day he took out two denarii^[e]and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

³⁶ “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

³⁷ The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”