July 11, 2010
 
Scripture:         Luke 10:25-37
 
Sermon:           “There Goes the Neighborhood”
 
            Turning our hearts and minds now to the word of God, let us read together the scripture lesson for the day.  Turn with me to the Gospel According to Luke, chapter 10, where we will read together verses 25 through 37.  You can find that easily on page 96 of the New Testament in the pew Bible.
            Now everybody knows this story, the Good Samaritan.  We all know this one.  As far as the stories and parables that Jesus told and used to teach, this story gets top billing in a lot of people’s books.  It’s certainly one of my favorites.  I love it.  It is just genius.  The way he draws us into the story and then uses his words to completely challenge us and call us to a new way of seeing the world is nothing short of brilliant.
            Maybe we’ve sanitized the story over the years, though.  Maybe we haven’t allowed its full impact to be known by fully understanding what Jesus was doing.  It’s a story meant to challenge us in the ways we look at one another, you know.  The fact that the hero of the story is a Samaritan helping a wounded Jewish man on the road to Jericho doesn’t really have touch the same nerves in us as it did in the first century when Jesus told it.
            Instead, we know the Good Samaritan as that chubby little angel-faced man on stickers on the back of RVs driving down the highway.  Right?  Have you seen this before?  When I was a young boy traveling with my family I once asked my dad what that was all about.  We were passing a big motor home with a Good Sam Club sticker on the back.  My dad, who probably did believe this, said that people who joined that club were bound by a promise to help stranded travelers in need.  But, as far as I can tell by looking into it, the closest the Good Sam Club comes to this is charging a membership fee for their roadside assistance program.
            Anyway, it’s lost on us mostly.  Jesus’ story is lost on us.  We don’t really know what words like priest, or Levite, or Samaritan mean at the time he said it.
            So, I’m going to do something a little different this morning.  Instead of reading the scripture from a recognized translation of the Bible, I’m going to read this story from the Cotton Patch Gospel and ask you to read along in the Bible.  You can use the pew Bible or see the words above us on the screen.
            You see, the Cotton Patch Gospel was an interpretation of various scriptures into Southern vernacular.  It was done by a Baptist preacher from Georgia named Clarence Jordan who wrote it in a previous generation when white folks and black folks did not live on equal terms—especially in the South, you know.  For me it draws out just how difficult and radical the story that Jesus told really is.  I think you’ll enjoy it.
            So, this is the word of the Lord…
 
            One day a teacher of an adult Bible class got up and tested him with this question:  “Doctor, what does one have to do to be saved?”
            Jesus replied, “What does the Bible say?  How do you interpret it?”
            The teacher answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your physical strength and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.”
            “That is correct,” answered Jesus.  “Make a habit of this and you’ll be saved.”
            But the Sunday school teacher, trying to save face, asked, “But…er…but…just who is my neighbor?”
            Then Jesus laid into him and said, “A man was going from Atlanta to Albany and some gangsters held him up.  When they had robbed him of his wallet and brand-new suit, they beat him up and drove off in his car, leaving him unconscious on the shoulder of the highway.
            “Now it just so happened that a white preacher was going down that same highway.  When he saw the fellow, he stepped on the gas and went scooting by.
            “Shortly afterwards a white Gospel song leader came down the road, and when he saw what had happened, he too stepped on the gas.
            “Then a black man traveling that way came upon the fellow, and what he saw moved him to tears.  He stopped and bound up his wounds as best he could, drew some water from his water-jug to wipe away the blood and then laid him on the back seat.  He drove on into Albany and took him to the hospital and said to the nurse, ‘You all take good care of this white man I found on the highway.  Here’s the only two dollars I got, but you all keep account of what he owes, and if he can’t pay it, I’ll settle up with you when I make a pay-day.’
            “Now if you had been the man held up by the gangsters, which of these three—the white preacher, the white song leader, or the black man—would you consider to have been your neighbor?”
            The teacher of the adult Bible class said, “Why, of course, the nig—I mean, er, well, er…the one who treated me kindly.”
            Jesus said, “Well, then, you get going and start living like that!”
 
            Now, you can’t tell me that the Cotton Patch Gospel speaks to me just because I’m from the South.  This is stuff that we’re all familiar with and stuff that we all deal with.  And that’s part of why Jesus’ story is still a powerful call to folks to start living in a different way when it comes to our differences.
            Clarence Jordan, by the way, the man who wrote this version, was a graduate of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary over in Louisville.  I’m sure that the school was a little bit different back in those days.  He graduated in 1938 with a PhD in the Greek New Testament.  You might say that he knew what he was studying and knew what he was translating a little bit better than a lot of people.
            This Baptist preacher was also a farmer.  Now, imagine the state of affairs in the Deep South with regards to race relations and such back in the 1940s and 1950s.  Some of you remember.  The rest of us have only heard stories.  Well, he started a farming community called Koinonia that was made up of black and white folks together working and living for a common Christian purpose.  Do you know that people tried to bomb that place?
            The legacy of that place, Koinonia Farm, is found today in an organization called Habitat for Humanity that builds affordable houses for people using volunteer labor It also works to change the lives of the people they help by holding them to account for paying back interest-free loans and working on other houses.  I’ve picked up a hammer or two before myself in working with these folks.  Some of you have, too.  Clarence Jordan helped get Habitat for Humanity started.
            This whole story about the Good Samaritan came about as the result of a question that somebody asked Jesus.  He said, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  And, really, that’s our question, too.  Isn’t it?  Why am I coming here?  What’s the deal?  What does God expect of me and what do I have to do in order for these wonderful promises to be what my life is all about?  Right?  He’s asking our question.  It’s not our only question.  But, it’s one of the big ones.  “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
            So, Jesus asked the man to tell him what he already knew.  “What does the law say?  What do you already know?”  It’s almost as if Jesus wanted to point out that this is no big mystery, really.  The answer is not hard to find.  It just might be right under your nose.  It just might be that you already know the answer you’re looking for.  Maybe you just don’t like the answer all that much.
            “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 your neighbor as yourself.”  It’s right there in Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18.  You didn’t have to be a scholar of the law to know this stuff, by the way.  You didn’t have to be able to quote the Bible by chapter and verse.  This was common stuff.  Folks would sum up what the entire law really boiled down in these two commandments.  Love God.  Love your neighbor.
            Some other folks once asked Jesus to give his impression of the law.  Do you know he gave the same answer as this man?  He did.  Jesus told these people that the greatest commandment in all of the law is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”  He said, “This is the greatest and the first commandment.  And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”  And in this other conversation Jesus said, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:34-40 and Mark 12:28-34)
            It’s kind of like trying to make a nice, easy summary of things.  Call it “How to Live Faithfully for Dummies”.  We’re not talking about profoundly difficult things that are reserved for highly educated academics here.  This is everyday stuff.
            If you were here last week, you’ll recall that Paul argued with the Galatians that Christ sets us free so that we are able to embody the law with our very lives.  Paul said, “the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Galatians 5:14)
            Everybody knew this.  Not everybody lived this.  But, everybody knew this.
            It turns out that this very simple wisdom that everybody knows is actually very difficult stuff.  You don’t get to choose who your neighbors are all the time.  So, if you’ve got to love them, that’s not always easy.  They might not be people you find it easy to love.  You have to get to know somebody in order to love them.
            And that’s why this guy followed up his question to Jesus with an attempt to weasel out of it.  Maybe my neighbor is just the person I find reasonable to live next to.  You know?  Wouldn’t that be nice?  Wouldn’t that be easier?  So, the Bible says that he tried to justify himself.  He tried to make excuses.  He tried to find an answer that already fit his comfortable life.  “Well, just who is my neighbor?  You’re talking about good, law-abiding, Jewish folks like me, right?”
            And that’s when Jesus told this incredibly difficult story.  You read the Cotton Patch Gospel if you need to get its full impact.  Your neighbor is anybody.  Your neighbor is everybody.  And, yes, your neighbor includes folks that you don’t choose to live with.
            Some folks are pretty picky about their neighbors.  Habitat for Humanity has discovered this throughout the years.  Not everyone is excited to have them build affordable houses next door, you know.  In Prince William County of Virginia a couple of years ago there was a big public outcry against plans to build in a certain neighborhood.  Folks there feared it would decrease their own property values and such.  And I get that.  I worry about the value of my property, too.
            At a hearing to rezone the property and prevent Habitat from building, one resident said, “We support what Habitat for Humanity does.  But this is like putting an apple in an orange grove.  It just doesn’t fit.”
            Now are we just talking about houses?  Or are we talking also about the people who might live in them?
            Where I grew up there was a saying when certain folks moved in to certain neighborhoods.  The residents would envision an end to all that they had known before and say, “There goes the neighborhood.”
            Jesus looked right into this man’s soul.  He asked that question about “who is my neighbor” and revealed that there were some attitudes there that didn’t fit with God’s idea for all of us.  It was a common attitude, too.  He wasn’t the only one to ever feel this way.  Maybe it strikes a chord with you, too.  I’ll own it.
            But, Jesus looked right into this man’s soul and told him a story to demonstrate just how the very people he probably despised were just as much capable of embodying God’s grace and love as anyone else.  And then he said, “Go and do likewise.”
            Now, I do have to say that despite all of its shortcomings over the years and all of its very human failings, the church has actually been this remarkably diverse thing with people from all over the world finding hope in its message and in its fellowship.  I mean, just look at it.  It speaks in every language and sings according to every tradition.  It has no one color to its skin.  It embodies the incredibly wealthy and the terribly impoverished.  You and I are brothers and sisters to people who have seemingly nothing in common outside of our common confession that Christ is Lord.  The church has been, is, and will be this different community where you cannot imagine the folks who gather.  It is amazing.
            But, it is not finished.  And as long as it is not finished, you and I are challenged to keep loving and serving folks without regards to who they are, what they believe, where they came, or how they ended up the way the are.  After all, it is the very way Christ attended to us in our times of need.  Go and do likewise.

Rev. David James Brown

Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)