Sermon Title: What do I owe my neighbor, part II

Sermon Text: Luke 10:25-37

Sermon Date: July 16, 2006

It was a high crime area. “Going down” the road from Jerusalem to Jericho meant taking your life into your own hands. There is a descent of more than a half mile and the journey is 17 miles.

The priest would have been on a donkey. They didn’t walk. And when he came upon the beaten man, the question “How can I justify myself” would have come to his mind.

He could justify himself because he didn’t know if the man was a Gentile or a corpse. So adhering to the purity law would allow him to justify his passing by on the other side of the road.

The Levite, walking, not riding, had to ask himself the same question and draw the same conclusion. Walk on by.

The people listening to Jesus tell the story would expect that a Jewish layman would be the next person on the road, going to the temple. So it is a shock to learn that Jesus is taking them another direction. It is a Samaritan who comes along. If you remember the story about the Samaritan woman and Jesus at the well, you may remember that the Jews and the Samaritans were not very friendly. In fact they depised each other. So when Jesus finished the story he didn’t ask the listeners “who is my neighbor?”; he asked them “Who was a neighbor to the needy traveler?”

The lawyer couldn’t even say the “Samaritan” word. He had to say, “The one who had mercy on him.”

And Jesus instructed them to do the same. Do likewise. Jesus raised the bar very high that day.

But it isn’t easy to be a Good Samaritan, is it?

Boston University professor Peter S. Hawkins and a friend were walking uptown in New York City, having just seen a one-man play – “Gospel According to Mark.” For two hours they had been spellbound by the words alone. No music, no props, no fancy backdrops – just the words. They left the theater like those women who fled the empty tomb in terror and amazement. Rather than frightened, they were exhilarated. It was as if they had heard the story for the first time and were swept away by the rapid-fire world of word and action.

Then the door of a bar opened and a very drunk man stumbled out in front of us. They were stunned, as was a third passerby who had the presence of mind to grab the man before he hit the concrete. But he didn’t want to be helped and no one in the bar wanted anything to do with him. Should they leave this foul-mouthed drunk alone, as he had asked them to do, or lead him home?

With the words “What would Jesus do?” ringing in their ears they couldn’t just ignore the man. The challenge of the Parable of the Good Samaritan was palpable in the air that night.

They hadn’t counted on the obstacle that the man wasn’t interested in being helped. They took him back to his gorgeous Upper Eastside townhouse and all he wanted was to be left alone to drink, to smoke and he didn’t care if he burned down the whole building. He just wanted them out!

But they couldn’t leave him. They found his address book and called everyone in it but the answer was the same. He was a drunk, spoiled and abusive and no one wanted anything to do with him, validating everything they had come to believe about the man. There was nothing to do but drain the Scotch, flush the matches and allow him to pass out in exhaustion and keep watch until dawn. When they left the next morning, Peter left his name and telephone number with a note …”Please call if you would like to talk.” He never did.

As Good Samaritans they received no gratitude from the person they helped nor a Neighbor of the Year award from the Upper Eastside block association. They were even denied the chance to be smug; remember they had tried to get others to take over the job!

But Peter wonders if somehow he had stepped into eternal life without knowing it by doing, however grudgingly, what had to be done? (Peter S. Hawkins, “The Samaritan Spends the Night.” Religion online)

Have you been there? Wandering into eternal life without meaning to? Perhaps you too have felt that the person you tried to help was either unappreciative or unwilling to accept your help.

The thing to remember in this parable is that Jesus isn’t talking to the one needing the help. He is talking to the one who needs to offer the help. There is a difference.

The lawyer, the expert in the law, has asked Jesus, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus asked the man what the law says???? Sneaky, eh?

The answer – the same we talked about last week. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength AND love your neighbor as yourself.”

Okay, Jesus says, now go and live this out in the world. But the lawyer seems to want a loophole. “Just exactly who is my neighbor?”

Probably he is hoping for Jesus to give an answer from Leviticus 19 where it talks about neighborhood being the people of Israel. But Jesus doesn’t limit it to just the family. Jesus moves out of the neighborhood into the world. You know that had to hurt. (The Lectionary Commentary, p. 368-370)

Bible teacher Beth Moore of First Baptist, Houston, Texas, knows how he felt.

While waiting to board a plane at the Knoxville airport, she saw a strange sight. There was a man, humped over in a wheelchair, dressed in clothing that obviously fit when he was twenty pounds heavier. He was so skinny that his shoulders looked like a coat hanger was still in his shirt. His hands looked like tangled masses of veins and bones. The strangest part of him was his hair and nails. Stringy gray hair hung well over his shoulders and down part of his back. His fingernails were long. Clean but strangely out of place on an old man.

She looked down at her open Bible, trying to ignore what she had seen, wondering ….

She tried to concentrate on the Word in order to keep from being concerned about a thin slice of humanity served on a wheelchair only a few seats from her. All the while her heart was growing more and more overwhelmed with a feeling for him. Sure curiosity was huge but suddenly she was filled with an aching emotion for this Howard Hughes look-alike.

She says, “I had walked with God long enough to see the handwriting on the wall. I’ve learned that when I begin to feel what God feels, something so contrary to my natural feelings, something dramatic is bound to happen.” Immediately she began to resist because she could feel God working on her spirit so she started to argue.

“Oh no, God, please no. Please don’t make me witness to this man. Put me on the same plane, but don’t make me get up here and witness to this man in front of this gawking audience. Please, Lord! I’ll do it on the plane, but no now. Please.”

Then she heard it….”I don’t want you to witness to him. I want you to brush his hair.”

She was stunned. Her heart leapt into her throat and she began to bargain with God. “Okay, God, sure, I’ll witness. Right now. I’m your woman.”

For a moment there was silence. “No, Beth. I don’t want you to witness to him. I want you to brush his hair.”

“But, God, I don’t have a brush with me!” Then the words from 2 Timothy 3:17 popped into her head – “I will thoroughly furnish you unto all good works.”

So she stumbled over to where the man sat in his wheelchair and trembling she knelt before him and asked, “Sir, may I have the pleasure of brushing your hair?”

“What did you say?” the man asked.

“May I have the pleasure of brushing your hair?” To which he answered loudly, “little lady, if you expect me to hear you, you’re going to have to talk louder than that.”

So she took a deep breath and blurted out, “SIR, MAY I HAVE THE PLEASURE OF BRUSHING YOUR HAIR?”

At this point everyone around is staring at her as he said, “If you really want to.”

Of course she didn’t want to but God didn’t seem all that interested in her personal preference and pressed on. “Yes, sir, I would be pleased but I have one problem. I don’t have a brush.”

“I have one in my bag,” he responded. She went around, picked out the hairbrush from his carry-on bag and began to brush the old man’s hair. It was perfectly clean but tangled and matted. Having many years of experience untangling knotted hair of her two little girls, she took her time, remembering not to pull.

A miraculous thing happened as she brushed. Everyone else in the room disappeared. There was no one else alive for the moments except the man and her. She brushed until every tangle was out of his hair.

She says what I suspect the Good Samaritan might have said: “I know it sounds strange but I’ve never felt that kind of love for another soul in my entire life. I believe with all my heart, I – for that few minutes – felt a portion of the very love of God. That God had overtaken my heart for a little while. The emotions were so strong and pure she knew they had to come from God.

When at last his hair was soft and smooth as an infant’s she slipped the brush back in the bag and knelt in front of him. “Sir, do you know my Jesus?”

“Yes, I do. I’ve known him since I married my bride. She wouldn’t marry me until I got to know Jesus as my Savior. My problem is that I haven’t seen my bride in months. I’ve had open heart surgery and she’s been too ill to come see me. I was just sitting here thinking to myself, what a mess I must be for my bride.”

When the time came to board, they were not on the same plane. But a few moments later a flight attendant came to her with tears streaming down her cheeks. “That old man’s sitting on the plane, sobbing. What made you do that?”

“Do you know Jesus? He can be the bossiest thing!” Then they began to share their stories about how Jesus works in their lives. She learned that God knows when you hungry, if you are hurting or feeling rejected. God even knows when you need your hair brushed because God sees you as an individual.

Beth Moore got on the place, sobs choking her throat, wondering how many other opportunities just like that one she had missed along the way…all because she didn’t want people to think she was strange. God didn’t send her to that old man. God sent the old man to her.

Jesus was telling the expert in the law that he needed to help the stranger beaten on the road to Jericho more than the stranger needed him. He was telling him that he owes his neighbor more than respect, but love, lots of love too.

Friends, allow God to work in your lives like he has worked in the lives of those who have shared these stories. It takes guts to allow God to use you, but it takes more guts to allow God to teach you.

Let’s not waste a precious moment of the lives we have wondering who our neighbors are but live according to these words from an author unknown -- “Life shouldn’t be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather, to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly shouting…’Wow! What a ride! Thank you, Lord!”