Elite 8- May I be your neighbor? October 10 and 11, 2020 Carroll FUMC

 Elite 8- May I be your neighbor?

October 10 and 11, 2020 Carroll FUMC

Won’t you be my neighbor? Cries the teenager who is the one out of ten who has “seriously considered” suicide in the last month.

Won’t you be my neighbor? Yells the young black man peacefully protesting in the streets.

Won’t you be my neighbor? Sobs the very proper, but very frail woman as she sees her grandchildren through the window of the care center.

Won’t you be my neighbor? Wonders the 2nd grader as she silently slips through the halls on her way to the classroom with her stomach growling because the car in which she lives has no breakfast nook. 

Won’t you be my neighbor? Hopes the physically and emotionally disabled veteran as he depends on the kindness of strangers to drop change in his can.

Won’t you be my neighbor? Called out the man who had been beaten and robbed and left in the ditch for dead. Won’t you be my neighbor… as a traveler veers to the other side of the road so as not to get too close. Won’t you be my neighbor? He asks as the man stops to look at him before continuing on his journey without a word.

We hear the cry so often, and we ignore it so often, that we become numb to it. 

This is not going to be your fluffy “who is my neighbor “sermon. You know the answer to that question.

This is not your easy “how to be a neighbor” sermon. I’m not going to ask you to drop a donation for the food pantry, or rake someone’s leaves. 

I want to cut right to the chase and confess to you right now… I am often not a good neighbor. Oh, well I am kind to folks… or I aim to be. I’ll help someone… if they ask for help. But too often I am like the kindly old priest or scribe who walked on the other side of the road and maybe even whistled so he wouldn’t her that cries for help coming from the other ditch.

I know I am not alone. As good and kind as our church is, many of us are in the same boat. We want to be good neighbors, we aim to be good neighbors, but we don’t quite pull it off. 

What do I mean? 

Who can name all 4 of the families who live closest to you- your literal neighbors? First and last name, children’s names? If you can, God bless you. Most of us can’t. And we can’t be a neighbor to someone we don’t know,

Who can name 3 families who live at Fairview? How about at any low-income housing neighborhood? We can’t be a neighbor to someone we don’t know,

Who can name all the family members in any 2 families who look different than you do?

Who can name the members of even 1 family for whom English is not their first language?

But, you say, you’re an introvert; you aren’t good with names; you don’t have opportunity to meet these folks, and besides you are a good neighbor to your friends. … can I be frank? I started to give those very same reasons, but they sounded lame on my lips… and they wouldn’t sound any better coming from you. Your Mastercard or visa may be accepted almost anywhere, but your excuses aren’t 

You need to know that the Parable of the good Samaritan you chose as one of the 8 favorite bible stories for this series is not a fluffy, feel good, fairytale with a happy ending. This parable is one of the most difficult sayings of Jesus. 

First, let’s talk about these characters in the story. We really don’t have to talk about the Priest and Levite. We already established that we know them. We know the priest and Levite and they are us. 

So, let’s talk about the man who was robbed. He was presumably an average brown skinned Jewish man, just like Jesus and his disciples. There was nothing remarkable about him. He might be the person sitting beside you in worship, standing behind you at the grocery store or waiting in front of him when you get your driver’s license. 

When he was robbed, he thought he could count on the priest or the Levite for help. They were, after all from the church, but no such luck.

Then along comes a Samaritan. Samaritans were at one time Jews. They were segregated from the main body of Judaism somewhere between 200 and 500 Years before Jesus. The division might have been because they used only the Pentateuch (First 5 books of the Bible.) as their scripture. In addition, the Samaritan version of those 5 books has about 6000 places of disagreement with the Jewish Pentateuch. More specifically They may have split off because the Samaritan Pentateuch includes a command to build a temple on mount Gerizim. This was in direct conflict with the Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

Whatever the reasons, Samaritans were considered to be ritually unclean, social pariahs, and undeserving of any kindness by mainline Judaism.

Yet we all know; it was not the priest who stopped to help the man. It was not the Levite who bandaged his wounds… it was the OTHER ONE… It was the unclean, social pariah, who wouldn’t even worship on Mount Zion who turned out to be the neighbor.

That doesn’t mean that the priest or Levite could not have acted like a neighbor, in fact they definitely should have. But in a twist only Jesus and Stephen king could imagine, this stranger, from the wrong side of the tracks took a chance, perhaps even risking his life by stopping, putting the man on his own donkey, and paying for the man’s care with his own money. He took a chance with someone who was very different from himself. He took a chance with someone who might just hate him in return. He took a chance on the Jewish man because it was the right thing to do. 

When we think of neighbors, we think of people who sit safely in their driveway while we stand safely in ours and we chat. We think of neighbors as someone to wave at as we bring in the garbage. To most of us a neighbor is someone who lives life alongside us, and we are kind of like observers of each other’s lives. Jesus is redefining neighbor as someone who risks taking a chance on someone else. 

If the Samaritan had stood safely on the road and waved at the poor man in the ditch, things would undoubtedly turn out differently. If he had just looked at the man, and remained an observer, the man might have died right then and there. 

But, remember, Jesus is redefining “neighbor” as someone who takes a risk in order to give someone else a chance. The man may have died right then and there in the ditch if the Samaritan had not taken a chance on him in order to give him a chance to live.

 In Jesus’ story Samaritan gave the man a chance to live by bandaging, and soothing, and wrapping, and comforting, and reassuring the traveler. Then he picked him up in his own arms and placed the man his own donkey while he walked along side to the inn. And then to top it all off, he paid the man’s room and board and medical care for as long as it took to heal out of his own money.

To truly love our neighbor, we have to cross the line from observing to investing in life together. The Samaritan really invested himself in the man’s life. Investing is risky. Investing in someone doesn’t have guaranteed return and it isn’t cheap. But the Samaritan did it anyway. He was late for wherever he was going, he gave his time, he gave his supplies, he sacrificed his comfort, he showed his compassion, and he spent his money to give the man a chance to live. That is what a neighbor does. A neighbor takes a chance on someone by investing in their life. 

To invest in someone’s life is to risk living life with them. It is sharing the ups and downs of life. It is being there when we are needed. It is helping when help is needed. And being quiet when that is needed. And it can be very, very messy!

A neighbor by Jesus’ definition takes a chance on someone by investing in their life. In so doing the trajectory of both persons lives are changed forever. 

When the presbyterian pastor and public television personality Fred Rogers was given his lifetime achievement award by the Academy, he responded this way. Follow his instructions. (video)

These are people who have taken a chance on you, and invested in you to be your neighbor. They might be parents or family. They might be a youth leaders like Paul and Ila Johnson who cared enough to push the students at St. Mark’s UMC past our comfort point and taught us how to invest in others. They might be teachers like our lifelong friends Drs, Dwight and Linda Vogel whose heart and home were always open to students at Westmar. They taught religion, but more importantly they invested in us by the way they lived and loved. It might be a pastor, or a boss, or an actual physical neighbor. These are people who have taken a chance on you, and invested in you to be your neighbor. And we are forever grateful, and forever changed by their neighborly love.

Won’t you be a neighbor? Won’t you take a chance to cross whatever lines there might be; age, race, culture, socio-economic, politics, language you know the barriers humanity has created between one person and another. Won’t you take a chance by leaping those tall barriers in a single bound and investing your whole self for the good of another? Won’t you be a neighbor?