FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST, July 10, 2022

“Who Is My Neighbour?” (Luke 10:25-37)

I was thirteen and in the confirmation class at St.John’s United in Oakville. As our final step, each of us had an interview with the minister in his study. I was nervous, but still felt the need to tell Rev. Terry that I thought God was calling me into ministry. This was the mid-1960’s. There were very few women in ministry and still many who wondered whether females could carry out that role. I was fortunate: Rev. Terry was nothing but encouraging. He made me aware of the steps to follow: first, meet with the Session; second, get my undergraduate degree with the elders advising about courses, and tracking my progress; third, attend Emmanuel College. The path forward was clear, but I drew back. Who was I to meet with individuals who were grieving or struggling to find meaning in their lives? I wouldn’t know what to say. I had no answers for big questions like: why did this happen to me or to my loved one; where is God when tragedy strikes; how can God allow the innocent to suffer? Surely, I thought, any minister worth her salt should be able to handle these easily.

I never ceased to feel that sense of call. I just became proficient at avoiding it, until the day arrived I could run no further. At age thirty, I had more life experience, but still far more questions than answers. I relied on Emmanuel to fix this. I signed up for a course in Theological Anthropology which addressed the difficult issue of pain and suffering in the midst of God’s good creation. My tutorial group tackled the question: why do bad things happen to good people? When one Jesuit in training suggested: “it is a mystery before which we human beings should humbly bow”, I almost launched myself across the table at him. “That is no answer. I must know why!” It was only as the course unfolded, only as I listened to our professor, a wise, compassionate woman with lots of pastoral experience that I realized: there are no right answers that fit every situation and satisfy us all. As people of faith, we are invited to live with these questions, and try, if at all possible, to reach our own conclusions. As a minister, my job is not to provide pat answers – rarely helpful – but to support and encourage ongoing wrestling with the questions.

We see Jesus doing just that in today’s story. The lawyer approaches with a question: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” A good one. God created us in God’s own image to be in relationship with God and with one another. How do we maintain and foster these relationships so that we remain in community with God and all creation? The lawyer probably expects an answer from Jesus, one he could then challenge and debate. Instead, Jesus turns the question back to him: “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” Both Jesus and the lawyer have studied the Torah – the Hebrew scriptures – and the commentaries. The lawyer has all the material he needs. The ball is back in his court. This reminds me of times when as a young adult, I would ask my parents: “what should I do?”, and they would respond with: “what do you think? What do you want?” At the time, I found this annoying: why couldn’t they just give me their opinion? Now, I recognize their wisdom in pushing back, and allowing me to struggle to make my own decisions. Unlike me, this lawyer doesn’t appear to struggle. He has a ready answer, a combination of Deuteronomy 6:5 which follows directly after the Shema, the Jewish daily prayer: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might”, and Leviticus 19:18: “you shall love your neighbour as yourself.”

All in all, this is a great answer. But the lawyer isn’t prepared to let the matter rest. Now he needs to know: “who is my neighbour?” If we are inclined to be cynical, we might conclude the lawyer is just wanting Jesus to supply him with a nice, neat definition which will set strict limits of geography or ethnicity or social group on those whom he is obliged to love as himself. If we are more charitable, we might surmise that he is looking for more information to help keep him in right relationship with God and others. Whatever the lawyer’s motivation, Jesus doesn’t provide an answer to open the way for the usual sort of scholarly debate. Instead he tells a story, probably one of the best known in all of the Bible.

As a child, I memorized it, and recited it before a Sunday School assembly. As an adult, I lived it. I was travelling from Jericho up the winding, desert road to Jerusalem in my little Peugeot station wagon with my parents, and the parents of a friend. We were in hurry: there was a flight to catch and no time to waste. I had just passed a packed bus when steam started to billow out from under my hood. I pulled over to the side of the road. My radiator had run dry and we had no water with us. The bus swept by, the passengers waving and jeering at us who had sped by them and were now brought low. I couldn’t help but think of the priest who passed by on the other side. A car with diplomatic plates approached. Surely, they would stop to assist a fellow diplomat in obvious distress. But like the levite, they too passed by. Maybe, they had an urgent appointment in Jerusalem. Maybe, they just didn’t want to get involved or were afraid it was some sort of trap. I was starting to lose hope when from the other direction there came an Israeli army jeep. Now, my encounters with the Israeli army had been none too pleasant. There had been road stops where a soldier would lean his uzi submachine gun on the driver’s side windowsill while inquiring in Hebrew about how we were doing or why we were up on the Golan Heights in the middle of a fog bank. Then there had been the time in the Sinai when we had wandered off the usual highway and a tank had lowered its gun turret at us. This jeep pulled to a stop. A soldier hopped out with a large jerry can of water. While humming the theme song from “The Lone Ranger”, he galloped across the road, reining in his imaginary horse just in front of me: “Israeli army to the rescue!” At that moment, I got an inkling of how the wounded man might feel as his unlikely rescuer looks down at him.

 It’s a powerful story that invites us to place ourselves in the shoes of each of the characters and listen for what God would say to us in our time and place. At the end of the story, Jesus asks the lawyer: “which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” Given this choice between two people who passed by on the other side, leaving this man bleeding in a ditch, and one who stopped and took care of him, the lawyer really has no option. Jews and Samaritans may not be on good terms; they may have profound religious differences, but in this situation, the Samaritan is definitely the one who acted as a neighbour.

By answering the lawyer with a story and this question, Jesus leaves us to ponder: how does a neighbour act in our time, in our place? Like the five men last week who stopped their cars and ran to the aid of another. This driver, who had suffered what has been described as a medical incident, had lost control of his car and spun out. Unresponsive and trapped in a vehicle that was starting to burn, he could easily have died. But these five braved the flames and persevered until they managed to break a window and get him out. One headline even referred to them as “Good Samaritans”. Or like the social worker in Emerge at Mackenzie Health. My centenarian Mom was not doing well. I was standing by her gurney in a hallway as staff and paramedics with yet more patients rushed by. This social worker was not assigned to our case, but she noticed us. She asked us how we were doing. She listened with compassion before bustling off to get me a chair so I could at least be more comfortable while we waited for medical attention. Or like some Richmond Hill town workers who went far beyond the call of duty. My foster rescue pup, Oreo, had decided to bolt, leaving me, frantically searching for him as I waded through snow drifts. These workers made a point of capturing the little terror and returning him to my care. Or like… Who has acted as a neighbour to you?

When others act as neighbour to us, it can have a profound positive impact. It may save our very lives. It may lift our spirits. It may give us fresh energy to cope with difficult situations. Even when these neighbourly acts are rather mundane like someone offering to allow us with our one item to go ahead at the checkout counter or bringing us soup when we are under the weather. As we remember those who have acted as neighbour to us, we are brought face to face with another question: how are we in turn acting as neighbour to others? Like the first – “who is my neighbour?” – it is not a question that can be answered once and for all. Rather, it is one with which we are invited to live. In this time, in this place, how are we, how might we love our neighbour as ourselves?

Thanks be to God who does not expect us to come up with pat answers. Thanks be to God who accompanies us as we wrestle with these questions. Amen