Like a Good Neighbor, Jesus is there! - Luke 10:25-37

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text is the Gospel lesson read earlier, Luke 10:25-37.

An insurance company has a jingle that goes something like this – I’m tweaking it to not name names - “Like a good neighbor, [we will be there].” It’s a great slogan. It’s simple and catchy – I bet every one of you knows exactly what company that is. It implies a special bond, a special relationship. This company wants to be your neighbor, not just an insurance company. Your neighbors are people you know, people you like, people who know you. Neighbors, usually, are people very much like yourself. Neighbor brings to mind the good old days when you went next door to borrow a lawnmower or a cup of sugar, you would watch each other’s kids and hang out together. Neighbors are willing to help each other out. Why? Because you’re like your neighbors and they are like you.

But that’s also where the commercial gets in trouble. This insurance company wants you to be their neighbor, and they’re willing to be your neighbor, if you meet their standards. You walk into an agent’s office and fill out some paperwork. They run a background check on you, getting to know you – not as a person, but as data: any criminal history? Speeding tickets? How many miles do you drive? Two door or four door? What’s the construction date on your house? Does it meet all current building codes? What neighborhood do you live in? After all, we want to make sure you have good neighbors before we go too far in this relationship.

But what does it mean to be a good neighbor? That’s the question the lawyer was fixated on in this morning’s Gospel reading. What does it look like to be a good neighbor? To explain, Jesus tells a parable that very well could have been off the front page of today’s newspaper: Good Samaritan Saves Troubled Traveler. You know the story and you heard it again. A traveler gets mugged, beaten and left for dead. Two temple servants, a priest and Levite, pass by on the other side of the road so they can pretend they don’t notice his bleeding body – the very antithesis of a rubbernecker if there was one. The third passerby stops to render aid. The kicker is that this third traveler is a Samaritan. Jews hated Samaritans, and vice versa, so the fact that he stops to help a man – who, presumably, is a Jew (given the travel between Jewish towns of Jerusalem and Jericho) and, therefore his sworn enemy, is what makes the story memorable. He doesn’t stop and ask for references; he doesn’t ask for a background check; he doesn’t even consider his own personal safety – the bad guys could still be out there in the rocks and hills. He stops because he has compassion for the man who needs help.

Compassion is a powerful word. In the Greek New Testament, the word literally means to move one’s innards. We get an inkling of this when we speak of our physiological response to an accident or a terrible piece of news. We might say our heart dropped, or our stomach hurt. It’s because we are moved to compassion. In English, if we break the word down, the prefix “com-“ means “with” – that part’s easy. But the root, “passion,” probably isn’t what you think it is. You probably think passion has to do with love – for example, he gave his wife a passionate kiss. But, passion actually comes from a Latin root that means “to suffer.” Therefore, compassion means “with suffering.” The Good Samaritan suffers with the traveler. He gets down off his donkey, drops to his hands and knees and washes the wounds with wine and applies oil as a salve. He binds up  the wounds to stop the bleeding. He takes the wounded man to a nearby inn and pays two days wages for the man to continue to receive care with a pledge to pay any balance owed the next time he comes by.

In telling the story about a good neighbor, Jesus is actually telling the story of what love looks like. If compassion is a gut, visceral reaction, then love is compassion put into action. Love doesn’t sit idly by. Love responds without regard for the other’s status or ability to return love. You notice the Samaritan doesn’t expect repayment. There is no quid pro quo here, no tit for tat. No strings attached, no conditions, no expectations made on the part of the Samaritan for the wounded man. There is only compassion – love put into action. It is a gift given freely and without a limit. Love is open-ended and it is generous.

Now, Jesus asks the question, “Who was the good neighbor?” The lawyer answers correctly, identifying the Samaritan. Now, flip the question – who could not be a neighbor? Who couldn’t bring anything to the table? Who couldn’t negotiate, who couldn’t argue his case, who couldn’t even beg for mercy let alone demand attention? The traveler. Broken, beaten, bleeding, he was as helpless as a man could be. He couldn’t argue his case with his own countrymen, explaining why he needed their help. He was helpless. Not much of a neighbor.

Take that and go back to the original question: what must I do to be saved?

The Lawyer had answered the question with the summary of the law, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus even commends the answer as being correct: do this and you shall live. “Do this and you shall live.” Consider the weight of those six words. Jesus isn’t lying – if you are able to keep the Law perfectly, without any spot or blemish on your record, you will live. But if you think the Law is something you can do for yourself and fulfill yourself by what you do and don’t do, you’re missing the picture. In reality, each of us is as broken down and beaten up as that traveler on the Jerusalem highway, dying in our sins and our sinfulness. Just like a dying man or woman cannot save himself or herself, no more can a sinner, who is dying in their sins, save themselves.

See this parable as a story, not of what you must do to be saved, but as a story of what was done to save you. Jesus descends, not from Jerusalem, but from heaven. He takes on human flesh and, even though He does nothing wrong, is hated and despised by his fellow countrymen, even being called a Samaritan. With no regard for His own life, Jesus’ great compassion moves Him to render perfect assistance. He cleanses our sin-scarred body with His blood and applies the soothing oil of His righteousness. He picks us up and carries us, not to an inn, but to the church where the body of Christ stands ready to carry on the work and ministry of compassion for the wounded traveler. The Church, Luther says, is a hospital for sinners where the soul is able to be restored to health in Christ.

The cost was great – and so is Jesus’ compassion. He pays the full price for our redemption, not with denarii and coins, but with His own blood. In the parable, the good Samaritan was the third passer-by. When the third day passes by, Jesus’ resurrection demonstrates that the payment was made in full and the Father – the innkeeper – marks the debt of sin paid in full. There is no more debt to pay. You do not earn eternal life. It is a gift of God, paid for fully and completely by the blood of Jesus.

Jesus is the perfect neighbor, filled with perfect compassion, enacting perfect love toward those who are loveless and unlovable. And when we realize that this parable is a narrative of what Jesus has done for each of us, something remarkable happens. The questions change.

Instead of the selfish questions “what must I do to be saved,” and “who is my neighbor?” the questions are no longer about me. Instead, the question and the focus change. “Because Jesus has saved me, how can I be a good neighbor and show compassion to those around me?”  

Perhaps you will have an opportunity one day to be a Good Samaritan and stop and render aid at the scene of an accident, putting into use the First Aid and Stop the Bleed training we did a few months ago. That will move you to compassion, trust me, and you will suffer right along with the accident victim, albeit in a different way. But compassion doesn’t have to be reserved for “big” moments and love doesn’t have to be held in reserve for special days. You can demonstrate compassion by calling a grieving widower, eating lunch next to an unpopular kid in class, or by talking with a stranger at Christ’s Kitchen who has missed more than one shower and who the rest of the world overlooks. In those moments, you are putting compassion – what moves your guts – into action and showing that person the love of Christ that rescued you.  

It’s easy to do this with people whom you love. In a sense, it’s easy to do with a complete stranger. But it’s harder to do with people who have hurt you, or you have hurt. That person who hurt you so badly in the past, and whose spouse is now critically ill? Have compassion – suffer with them. But it’s not comfortable to do that, you say. I agree. That’s what compassion is about, remember – suffering with. Reach out, in love, with a kind word, a cup of coffee, a shared meal, and a word of prayer.

And, when you see someone through the lens of the cross of Christ, and you are moved with the compassion of the one who died for you, when you act out of the love that Jesus has showered over you, what you might find out is that they’re not such bad neighbors after all.