I hate the phrase “Good Samaritan.” My apologies to all the organizations and hospitals doing great work under this moniker. No offense is intended. But I hate the phrase “Good Samaritan”.
In Jesus’ time, Samaritan was a term that identified a whole culture of people – people who were connected to – but distinct from – Jesus’ own people, Israelites. The relationship between Israelites and Samaritans had a lot of baggage. They were not on good terms. In the story we now call “the parable of the Good Samaritan”, Jesus tells the story of an Israelite who is robbed, beaten, and left for dead on the roadside. Other Israelites – including devoutly religious folks – pass right by him. Then a Samaritan sees the injured Israelite, stops what he is doing, tends to him, puts him on his mule, gets him to a nearby inn, and pays for whatever care he needs until he recovers.
Jesus tells this story in response to a fellow Israelite asking him, “Who is my neighbor?” The question-asker is a lawyer. He and Jesus are in agreement: The two greatest commandments of all are that we are to love God and love our neighbor. But the lawyer wants to make sure he’s on the right side of the ledger, so he basically asks, “But if I’m supposed to love my neighbor, who is my neighbor in the first place?” Jesus tells the story of the endangered Israelite and the Samaritan who saves his life, then he asks, “So, who in the story was a neighbor?” The lawyer has no choice but to respond, “The Samaritan.” To which Jesus simply responds, “Go and do likewise.”
And we call that story the “Good Samaritan”. And no matter how you cut it, it sounds to me like we are saying that guy was pretty good for a Samaritan, or good even though he was a Samaritan. Which of course was not Jesus’ point at all. At. All. Jesus was reminding us that the designation of neighbor is not about shared bloodline, beliefs, politics, religion, culture, or country of origin: Your neighbor is whoever God has placed right in front of you, and your highest calling is to act lovingly toward them in real and practical ways. The end.
In the Episcopal Church we do not pick the Biblical passages that are read during Sunday worship. They are part of a reading schedule that is shared across multiple Christian traditions. We just look up what the readings are going to be on a coming Sunday, and prepare our sermons based on what has already been selected. So I was so grateful that the question “Who is my neighbor?” and Jesus’ parable of the Israelite and Samaritan showed up a couple weeks ago. And I was even more grateful to hear my colleague Herschel’s excellent and thoughtful sermon reflecting on that text.
Herschel reminded us that we might not like God’s answer to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” He reminded us that we might even here and now all these years later hesitate to acknowledge the people God has placed in our lives to love and serve. And, by the way, Jesus doesn’t talk about who is good – whatever that means: He talks about who shows mercy. To love our neighbor, according to Jesus’ story, is to show mercy to whoever needs it. And Herschel’s words here are still ringing in my ears. He said, “Mercy is supposed to disrupt us. It’s not a convenient add-on, but it is central to our calling. The mercy of God often asks us to break rules for the sake of love.”
At the time of this sermon, our country was still reeling from the devastating and deadly flooding in central Texas. An enormous search and rescue operation was already underway. What you may not have heard was that a unit of 40 Mexican firefighters showed up to risk their lives and aid in search and rescue efforts. “Once we learned Kerr County was affected,” one of them said, “we knew we had to come down here. We knew this was a mission to come and help our brothers.”
It is impossible not to think of the brown-skinned people, many of whom are of Mexican origin, who are being racially profiled, snatched off the streets and detained without due process all across our country so that we might be made great. It is also impossible to forget that this disaster occurred just a month after our own government announced plans to defund FEMA – our country’s federal emergency response program. While our own country seems to be unclear about who our neighbor is, firefighters from northern Mexico had no such confusion.
In Butler County Jail here in Ohio, sits a man named Ayman Soliman. He is an Egyptian refugee who has been in our country for over a decade. He fled Egypt under threat of death, and after surviving incarceration and torture because he spoke and acted in support of democracy during what has become known as the Arab Spring. He is a Muslim, and since living in the Cincinnati area, he has served as an imam in the local Muslim community, as well as a chaplain at Children’s Hospital, pastoring to people across religious and cultural affiliations. He has been charged with no crimes. He has devoted his life to the care of others. No reason has been given for the revocation of his asylum status. He has been imprisoned for nearly a month.
The same week Imam Soliman was arrested, it was announced that the American government would be incinerating 500 tons of emergency food that was meant to be distributed to those in need in the Middle East and Africa. We literally would rather burn food than give it to those in need.
Who is my neighbor? The one to whom I show mercy. The one who shows mercy to me. My neighbor does not need to look like me, think like me, act like me, believe like me, speak like me, or even live near me. Mercy is the defining feature. And my neighbor is not only my neighbor when it is convenient to my life, when it suits my plans and purposes. Herschel said mercy is supposed to disrupt us. Will we allow mercy to disrupt the plans we have for greatness? Will we even recognize our neighbor when they stand right before us? God knows who our neighbors are. Do we?
