March 9, 2025: Expanding the Neighborhood

Old Testament Reading  Deuteronomy 6: 4-9
The Gospel Luke 10: 25-37 

In the Deuteronomy reading, Moses is preparing the people to enter into the promised land by reminding them of their obligations to God in the form of commandments. Here, after getting their attention, Moses emphasizes the first commandment “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me” by informing them what that looks like, “You shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” if we were able to do that there would be no room for other gods be a Deities, money ambition, etc..

The book of Leviticus adds the advice from God to Moses about neighbors in 19: 18: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 

In the conversation between the lawyer and Jesus, these two verses are combined by the lawyer in answer to his own question of Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Yet in reciting the law from the scriptures, the lawyer still did not get it. We do not know if this is because he was truly testing Jesus or he just did not understand. He asks “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus responds with the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is an expansion of Leviticus, essentially giving the answer that whomever is in need is your neighbor regardless of relationship or proximity.

Yet there are so many layers to this story, aren’t there? First of all, the road from Jerusalem to Jericho is about 17 miles long and drops over 3,000 feet in elevation in a steep decline. The route was a common commute, especially for priests and Levites who could not afford to live in Jerusalem and would be returning home after a trip to the Temple. Though commonly used, the road was dangerous, often filled with bandits. The priest and Levite who walk by don’t go close enough to the injured man to determine the extent of his injuries. I imagine they are looking at his injuries from afar and looking around to see if his attackers are still nearby. They were likely concerned for their own safety and justified their actions by the fact that they did not know the man and they were protecting themselves. Maybe they reasoned that one of his friends would likely come by soon or maybe they even prayed for the man even though they did not help him. Could their prayers have brought the Good Samaritan?

What about the injured man? Consider how awful it would be to be beaten and robbed, left helpless, naked and bleeding in a ditch. Was he conscious enough to see the priest and Levite going by on the other side of the road trying hard not to catch his eye? Did he feel abandoned? Did he pray for the help that soon arrived in a surprising form?

Then the Samaritan comes along and the difference here is probably not that he wasn’t afraid but that he felt more sympathy for the man than fear for himself. He cleaned and bandaged his wounds, lifted him carefully and placed him on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and cared for him there throughout the night. Once the man was conscious and doing better in the morning, but not yet well enough to travel, the Samaritan paid the innkeeper a down payment for his lodging and care, promising to come back to check on him and settle the bill later.

Throughout Lent we will be looking at scriptures like this to show how Jesus approaches things differently from the way many of us would: how he disrupts the established norms and shows a new, more loving and expansive path. 

I grew up thinking that my neighbors had to live in my neighborhood. It extended from the Klines next door to the Carrs around the corner and the three other neighbors in between as well as about the same number of houses on the other side and across the street. These were the people we had block parties with, the children we played with, and the people Mom would send me to, to borrow a cup of sugar when she ran out in the middle of baking. 

When it came to strangers, we were warned of stranger danger but also sent money occasionally to help people in far away places who were hurt or hungry. It felt like enough at the time. 

That would likely just be the start according to Jesus. 

Haven’t we all been like the priest and the Levite at some time as we passed the homeless person or prayed that someone else will step in to stop the bully, thinking about what we needed to get done and why we could not help in the moment?

I think Jesus understands the fear of the priest and the Levite. He does not say bad things about them but he shows another way. He understands our fears as well, but hopes we will see another way to show love to our neighbors.

This scripture was one of the final ones that Martin Luther King, Jr preached on before he was murdered. Having visited the Jericho Road in 1959, he understood the fear the priest and Levite had. But then King “reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’” Then he urged his listeners to imagine themselves on contemporary Jericho Roads. Could they— would they—ask that same question when they saw others struggling?”

Could we do the same? Could we look at people suffering and wonder - what will happen if I do not help him, her, or them? And then act. 

It is reported that privately King said to a friend . “I of course like and respect the Good Samaritan, but I don’t want to be a Good Samaritan. I am tired of seeing people battered and bruised and bloody. . . . I want to pave the Jericho Road, add street lights to the Jericho Road, make the Jericho Road safe for passage by everybody.” (Author John Hope Bryant recounts this conversation between Rev. Dr. MLK, Jr. and ambassador Andrew Young in his article, "Fixing the Jericho Road," published on HuffPost, May 25, 2011. huffpost.com/entry/fixing-the-jericho-road_b_422612).

Can you blame him? Rather than solving the problem of just one victim, wouldn’t it be better to make sure there were no victims or at least fewer? I am pretty sure that Jesus would see this as a way to be neighborly as well. 

Russian Novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote a short folk tale called “The Three Questions” that reminds me of the story of the Good Samaritan. In it, an emperor seeks the answer to the following questions: When is the right time? Who are the right people? What is the most important thing to do? It occurred to him that if he always knew just when to undertake everything he did, and which were the right and which were the wrong people to deal with, and, above all, if he always knew what was the most important thing to do, he would never fail in anything. 

After offering a reward for the correct answers to his questions, he got lots of answers, but none that seemed to work for him so he decided to climb a mountain to consult a hermit who was famous for his wisdom. He disguised himself as a regular person, left his knights at the base of the mountain and found the hermit digging in his garden. He asked his three questions but the Hermit kept digging. 

Eventually, he saw that the old hermit was tired and he offered to take over the digging for a while. An hour later, he asked the questions again but the hermit did not answer, he just offered to take over the digging again but the emperor said he would continue. Several hours later the emperor reminded the Hermit that he came to get his questions answered but just then a man came running up to them clutching his stomach, which was bleeding profusely. The emperor and the hermit cleaned the wound with the emperor’s handkerchief and tried to stop the bleeding but it took quite a long time to do so. At this point, the man was passed out so they took him to the Hermit’s hut and laid him on the bed. The emperor was so tired, he sat down and fell asleep at the entrance to the hut. 

The next morning the man awoke and asked the emperor for forgiveness. The emperor exclaimed, “I do not know you and have nothing to forgive you.”

“You do not know me, but I know you. I am your enemy, and I swore to take vengeance on you for killing my brother and seizing my property. I knew you had come alone to see the hermit, and I resolved to kill you on your way back. But when the whole day passed and you did not return, I left my ambush to seek you out, and came upon your knights instead. They recognized me, fell upon me, and wounded me. I escaped from them, but I should have bled to death if you had not cared for my wound. I intended to kill you, and you have saved my life. Now, if I live, and if you wish it, I will serve you.. and bid my sons to do the same. Forgive me!” The emperor was happy to be so easily reconciled with his enemy, and he not only forgave him but promised to return his property and send his own physician and servants to attend him. 

Finally, as he got ready to leave, the emperor turned to the Hermit and again asked his three questions but the Hermit exclaimed that they had already been answered. 

 “Had you not taken pity on my weakness yesterday and dug these beds for me, instead of turning back alone, that fellow would have assaulted you, and you would have regretted not staying with me. Therefore, the most important time was when you were digging the beds; I was the most important man; and the most important pursuit was to do good to me. And later, when that man came running to us, the most important time was when you were taking care of him, for if you had not bound up his wounds, he would have died without having made peace with you; therefore he was the most important man, and what you did for him was the most important deed. Remember then: there is only one important time – Now. And it is important because it is the only time we have dominion over ourselves; and the most important man is he with whom you are, for no one can know whether or not he will ever have dealings with any other man; and the most important pursuit is to do good to him, since it is for that purpose alone that man was sent into this life.”

I shared this story in my Short Stories class last week and the students correctly identified one of the themes as both living and helping in the moment. 

It is said that Tolstoy’s story was politically motivated.  It was written for a publication intended to raise funds for the victims of an anti-Jewish pogrom in Kishinev. Tolstoy had written an open letter to the tsar accusing his government of being directly responsible for the massacre.  Even though he was angry, Tolstoy did not write a tale of vengeance. Instead, his story, like the one of the Good Samaritan, showed the natural human instinct to help someone in need. The emperor and the hermit did not think about who the man was, they just helped and the by-product of that help was turning an enemy into a friend. The story provided the hope of peace and caring beyond the definition of neighbor. It was also a story of breaking down barriers to reach forgiveness.

I think that is the message that Jesus was sharing in his parable as he sought to expand the lawyer’s thinking or who his neighbors were. 

Is it possible to look at the world as a neighborhood and everyone in it as our neighbors? Could we at least try to love them all, even when we disagree? 

Think about all the conflicts in our country and in our world. What if we humans could just learn to see each other as fellow travellers on this journey called life regardless of labels and differences? Then might we reach a hand out to lift our neighbor out of a ditch? Let’s pray that we will and try to make it so. Amen. 

Pastor Michelle Fountain

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