Good Neighbor Day

Luke 10: 25-37

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall 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.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”


I don’t consider myself to be a vagabond, but I have found myself on more than one occasion walking on the road due to some poor circumstance that has left me without the usual mode of transportation. Once when I was about 15, my dad and I were driving home from Athens to Madison on 441. If you don’t know, 441 South between Athens and Madison is dark at night—I mean, dark. There aren’t many street lights along the way, and there are very few homes and businesses to light up the side of the road other than the occasional gas station combined with a bait and tackle or Subway. Now, my dad and I are not known for our commitment to observing the gas gauge in the car; we are both known to be completely surprised when we run out of gas. So, here we are driving along when the car starts to shake and rattle a bit. “What is happening?” we both wondered. Only when the car started to sputter and slow down did we look at the gas gauge. It was empty. I mean, empty empty. There was nothing left. The car was stopped on the side of the road home, in the darkness, with no one else in sight. When deciding what to do, my dad faced quagmire: do I take my daughter with me along the dark road with no sidewalk where anything or anyone could encounter us and mean to do us both harm; or he could leave my alone in the car where anyone or anything could break in and mean to do me harm while he was walking a couple miles to the next gas station.

So, as we walked along together along the dark road with no sidewalk and all manner of things possibly hiding in the dark to either help us or do us harm, no one drove by on the road. It was like we were the only people who existed. Finally, a car came by and whizzed past. Then another one passed and a few more which and prompted me to say to my dad, “Why does no one stop to help us?”

“Well,” said my dad, “we could be anyone. For all they know, we could have a gun and mean to hurt anyone who will stop to find out if we need help. We could potentially be as dangerous to them as they could be to us.” A culture of fear has brought us to the place where we are afraid to help people we don’t already know. So we kept walking a little farther and another car passed. This one turned around in the road and came back toward us. I guess my dad was a little frightened; I was relieved. The driver rolled down his window and asked if we needed a ride. My dad said we were just heading to the BP a little farther down the road; I said, “Yes, thank you!” Perhaps a little over anxious, I headed for the car. My dad instructed me to get in the back seat and he’d get in the front. I struck up a conversation with the man in the car who told us he was an Episcopal priest who was on his way south from Athens. He knew the road and knew what a long walk it would be to the gas station, so he wanted to help. He had seen the car with its hazard lights blinking back behind where we had been walking and assumed we might be in search of fuel. When we got to the station, we got a gas can, filled it up, and headed back for the car.

It was still there when we returned. We put the gas in, thanked the priest for the ride, and headed home. We might have been ok if that man had not come along; but it was nice to know there are still people in the world who will help when you need help—stranger or not.

Just a few weeks ago, I was walking home from the Marta station near our house. It’s only about a mile’s walk, and normally I have no trouble walking it. This particular day, as soon as I stepped out of the station, I heard it in the distance: the storm siren. Figuring as I looked at the sky that it might be a tornado siren, I said a little prayer for safety and a swift walk home and started on my way. I was hoping all the way down the street across from the station that this was for a watch, not a warning. As I continued into the neighborhood, I saw people rushing toward their houses from their yards and a woman standing on her front porch. She called to me: “You know that’s a tornado siren, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I just live a couple of streets over; it’s not a long walk.”

She skipped one beat then said, “Would you like a ride? I don’t think you should be walking with the siren going like that.” Thoughts of that night on 441 South from Athens flashed through my mind and I wondered if she wondered if I were safe to ride in her car. Would I pull a gun on her? Would I try to steal her car? She stepped inside to get her keys and driver’s license and came right back out and said, “Get in.” So, she drove me the 2 minutes’ drive from her house to mine. I thanked her as I got out of the car, and she asked, “Do you have any place you can go in your house to get away from the storm?” I told her I had a basement, and so she seemed satisfied that I’d be safe and said her goodbyes. I thanked her again and walked into the house thinking about the risk she took on me and how grateful I was that she did.

The lawyer asked Jesus how to inherit eternal life. He had some kind of understanding that what we do in this life has an effect on the next and wanted to be sure that he was doing everything he could to secure his place of comfort and happiness there. Jesus, the crafty arguer that he was, turned the question on him: how do you think you should do it? How do you think this life is linked with the next one? And the man’s answer was to love God and love neighbors. That seemed to be the basic gist of how Jesus would have answered, so he says, “Yep, that’s it.”

But that wasn’t it for the lawyer. He wasn’t satisfied with Jesus’ answer so he asked, “Who is the neighbor that I’m supposed to love?” And, like any good preacher, Jesus told a story to make his point. He told of a man who fell into dark and dire circumstances along the road. And the point of his story was that this man’s neighbor was not anyone he had thought of as a neighbor but someone who he just plain didn’t think of at all. As you probably have heard by now, Samaritans and Jews were not neighbors but enemies. Instead of loving one another, they ignored and sometimes hated one another. And, although we often tend to focus on how the Jews felt about the Samaritans, the feeling was mutual. The Samaritan in the parable Jesus told took a risk helping the Jew and the Jew took a risk receiving help from the Samaritan—even in his greatest hour of need.

So, there they were: 2 people who naturally didn’t give a flying fig about one another treating each other as if they were the 2 most important people in the world to each other.

When you think about your neighbors today, don’t think of the people you already know and love. Think of the people whom you may be inclined to ignore or dislike or just look over. Is there a part of noticing their needs and responding in your journey to coming into communion with God? What if they noticed and responded to your needs; would you accept their attention and possibly help? When Jesus asks who your neighbor is, he doesn’t just hope you’ll name the people who live in the homes around yours. The Spirit of God hopes that you will recognize the Spirit of God in others, especially those in whom you may not expect to encounter it.

So, how can we be as gracious and merciful and open to our neighbors as the Samaritan was to the Jew in Jesus’ story? First we have to take notice of the people God has placed in our path. Are there people we tend to overlook? Perhaps we should notice the people in our neighborhood struggling to keep their home and keep them in functioning, working order. Are there people we are prone to dislike? Maybe we need to look into their eyes and their situations in life and recognize their places of need and offer a hand. Are there people who are showing up on our doorstep looking for reasons why God makes a difference in life? We probably ought to be out there living lives that show them what a difference the love and forgiveness of God makes to us and drawing them into that difference in their own lives and in the life of St. Paul. Are there people out there who are not finding love and grace anywhere they look? They should be able to find that in every part of life here. Are there neighbors who need a helping hand, a place to belong, a place where mercy and forgiveness are real and practiced as much as they are preached? Then we need to be good neighbors who live what we believe in such a way that we show the world what God has to offer here.

This past week in Bible school, our children, youth, and adults learned about serving God through serving family, friends, neighbors, community, and Jesus. Last Sunday Jim Cantrell asked us what kind of church we wanted to be. Don’t we want to be a church that people are proud to claim as a good neighbor in Grant Park, in the city of Atlanta, in this community where we have been given a life worth living together? Aren’t we made and called to be the church who serves family, friends, neighbors, community, and Jesus? Don’t we want our neighbors to live it with us, no matter who they are or how they come to us? Shall we be, as a community of faith, a good neighbor in the “Jesus” sense of the word?

It is simple: “And who is my neighbor—the one who showed mercy. Go and do likewise.”

Amen.