One of the great things about the Christian life is that God has made it so that we are always learning from each other about what it means to follow Jesus. It has often been noted that God loved the world so much that he didn’t send a committee, he only sent one person, but we also have to note that the first thing that one person did was to form a committee, a community really, of people who would learn from him and would learn from and encourage each other. A few days ago, as I met with one of our Bible study groups, and as we talked about last week’s sermon, I learned something again in a fresh way. We were talking last week about how Jesus demonstrated God’s love for us by including anyone and everyone in his circle of friendship. In the discussion that resulted in this particular study, one of the men there started talking about the barriers that we all encounter between people of different economic and ethnic and racial situations, and he told a story about that. I’m going to tell you that story, because it actually is a perfect illustration of last week’s message and also this week’s message, which is pretty good for one story, don’t you think?

The story occurred while this church member was living and working in New York City. Late one evening as he was driving out of the city through a very rough neighborhood, he started to have tire trouble, and so all he could do was pull off the freeway onto a side street. For reasons we all understand, as an obviously affluent Caucasian driving a European sports car, he was very nervous when two individuals immediately approached him. They were clearly from that neighborhood and from a very different slice of society. They offered to help him, as he was clearly in need of some assistance. But, again understandably, he was very skeptical about the “help” they offered. They insisted, though, that they change his tire, since obviously he was not dressed for the job. He had to agree to let them help, and sure enough, they simply changed his tire. He handed them each a ten dollar bill and drove home, not a little relieved to escape what could have been a very tenuous situation. When he got home and opened the trunk of his car, there were the two ten dollar bills.

On the one hand, that story is a great true-to-life example of how it is that societal barriers do not have to stand in the way of helpful and positive relationships across the lines those barriers represent. And on the other hand, that story is also a great example of what Jesus was speaking of when he responded to the question of a skeptical lawyer. The story Jesus tells is one very familiar to Christian folks, and one that should become familiar to any of us who are beginning to learn about this business of following Jesus. The story that we call the story of the Good Samaritan is very deeply ingrained in our western culture, so much so that we have Good Samaritan laws written into our legal codes, and we use the name in association with all sorts of nice things like senior citizen homes and clubs for people who drive motor homes. Pretty much everyone thinks they know the story, and at one level we all do, but like most elements of popular culture, there is much more to learn about this crucially important story from Jesus.

Let’s walk through the story again and note a few details. First off, we immediately recognize that within the telling of this story is one of the occurrences of the simple creedal statement that we are studying this year: the “Hear O Israel” statement about loving God and loving neighbors. As Luke tells it, a lawyer was asking Jesus about inheriting eternal life, in other words, about what it takes to have a positive and ultimately successful relationship with God. Jesus answers the lawyer with a question about what the lawyer thinks is involved, and the lawyer, being a good Jew, responds with this creedal statement. But the lawyer wants to press further. He asks a very, very good question: “Who is my neighbor?” And to respond to that question, Jesus tells the story that we all know.

There was a road from Jerusalem to Jericho that stretched some 20 miles, and over that distance dropped some 3,600 feet in elevation. It was a winding, narrow, treacherous road, known to be a favorite hunting ground for thieves and robbers. So it would come as no surprise to those listening to Jesus tell the story that the traveling man in his story fell victim to a beating and robbery. A priest happens by some time later, but he does not stop to help the man. Jesus does not tell us why, but perhaps it was because the priest was afraid of touching the man, who was very likely dead, and by touching him becoming ritually unclean and unable to fulfill his ceremonial duties in the temple. A Levite passes by next, and again we are not told why, but he does nothing to help the man. Barclay theorizes that perhaps the Levite suspected that the man was a decoy, only pretending to be hurt, so that when a well-meaning person stopped to help, other thieves would pounce on him. And so the Levite may simply have been too afraid to help. For whatever reasons, these two upstanding members of society do nothing to help the man. And so along comes a Samaritan, The Samaritans were a group of Jewish people who were not racially pure and did not worship in Jerusalem. In Jesus’ day, they were considered by the Jerusalem-based religious elite to be outcasts and enemies of the Jewish people. The Samaritan name was a derogatory thing in Jesus’ day, but because of Jesus’ story, it now has exactly the opposite association. The Samaritan stops to help the man, taking him to an inn, giving him medical help, and paying for whatever other care will be necessary.

When Jesus finishes the story, he asks the lawyer, “Which of these three…was a neighbor to the man…?” And of course the lawyer is forced to answer, “The one who showed him mercy.” Notice, if you will, that Jesus does not answer the lawyer’s original question. He does not define for the lawyer who our neighbors are. What does he do? Instead, Jesus tells the lawyer about a person who acts in a neighborly way toward others. The question, you see, is not about deciding if some other person is your neighbor and therefore worthy of your concern. The question is not about the other person, it is about us! Are we good neighbors? To put that in a bit larger context, are we filled with the love of God and therefore willing to reach out in love to other people? If we are, then we do not even need to ask who our neighbors are. We already know.

The other day something got me to thinking about why it was that, over 30 years ago, I decided that God was calling me into ordained ministry. Sometimes, when you’ve done something long enough, you forget why you are doing it. There are lots of reasons, I suppose, why I do what I do, but the big reason is that I believe in the heart of my hearts that the way to make a true difference in this world is to learn how to follow Jesus and then to help other people do that too. You and I are taking Jesus very seriously this year, in a fresh new way, and learning from him about what it means to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. I believe that the only chance for this world of ours is if we will learn to do that very well. Today’s lesson from Jesus is not so much about learning who our neighbors are but about learning how to become people that are filled with neighborly love. The lawyer wanted to know how to define a neighbor but Jesus told him how to become a neighbor. And he does the same for us.

I suppose there are an infinite number of ways to describe what a neighborly person is and how a neighborly person acts. Neighbors are the people who loan you a cup of sugar. They’re the people who pick up your mail when you’re out of town. They’re the people who keep a spare set of keys to your house. But in the Kingdom of God, neighbors are so much more than that. Briefly, let’s look at the qualities that the proverbial Good Samaritan had. First off, we have to say he was a person who recognized need when he saw it. He had his eyes and his heart open to understand and to feel the need of a fellow traveler. He also was a person who responded with appropriate help to the need that he saw. The traveler needed help, not just a prayer and certainly not a study of roadside violence. He was a person who transcended all the artificial barriers between one human being and another in order to give the help that was needed. He did not let trivial rituals of ceremonial religion stand in his way, nor did he give any thought to any other potential reason not to help. He spent from his own hard-earned resources in order to give what was needed, without expecting anything back in return. He acted boldly with courage and faith, knowing the risks and potentially negative results of his actions. And he persevered in his purpose, not offering just a quick band-aid solution, but engaging the situation until the traveler would be well again.

Think about all of that for a minute. A good neighbor—someone who loves others as much as he loves God and himself—takes the time and energy to think about other people and recognize their need. A good neighbor does something about the need he sees and doesn’t just sit there waiting for someone else to deal with the problem. A good neighbor doesn’t let anything get in his way if it means helping another human being, especially his own prejudice or schedule or someone else’s rules about what is proper. A good neighbor sacrifices his own money or time or energy for someone else and doesn’t try to hoard it all for himself. A good neighbor steps up to the plate and goes for it, with holy boldness. A good neighbor has an attention span that lasts more than a sound-bite minute.

A person like that is going to start thinking about other people in a different way. And that is when you begin to realize just how many neighbors you have! The simple definition of a neighbor is someone who lives close by you. But when you begin to become a neighborly person, according to the standards of the Kingdom of God in which you and I are learning to live, physical proximity is only part of the equation. Holy Neighborliness can apply anywhere! Do you recognize the need of the person to whom you are married? Do you respond to the need of the children who are in your care? Do you transcend the artificial barriers between you and your co-workers? Do you sacrifice your own resources for the larger good of the community in which you live? Do you boldly go into other places of the world where other human beings may need what you have to offer? Do you have the maturity to stick with the tasks of loving other people that may take more than ten minutes to solve?

Becoming a person with a neighborly heart takes time, and practice, and the encouragement and example of others. Late one night my college roommate and I were driving back to school from a visit with my parents in my hometown. We passed a hitchhiker out on the highway, and we decided to stop. He was probably about our age, maybe a little older, and had a huge backpack. He needed a ride and a place to stay for the night, so we let him sleep on the floor of our dorm room. He was hungry too, of course. Scott, my roommate, and I, both ate in the cafeteria, and the cafeteria would let you take two little boxes of cereal at every meal. We usually didn’t eat the cereal, but we collected it. We probably had at least 200 boxes of cereal sitting around our room, and so we gave our guest 50 boxes or so, all he could carry, and off he went. We were very proud! I guess we helped him. Later on, Scott and I both confessed that neither of us slept very well with this stranger in our room. Our courage had limits. But we learned that we could do something to help a fellow human being.

Little boxes of cereal only go so far, though. Let me tell you about another, somewhat larger and more complex, effort at extending neighborly love. About a year ago, a study conducted for the city of Atlanta on the topic of child sexual exploitation showed that one of the three locations in the city known for the heaviest concentration of child prostitution was at the corner of Peachtree and North Avenue. It so happens that the North Avenue Presbyterian Church sits at that intersection. I was there last year for a conference. The pastor and several members of that church have now begun a city-wide effort to address that issue, involving many of the city’s churches and synagogues and other faith groups, as well as the mayor. And now, as a recent article about these efforts reported, “This year when a young woman trafficked from Egypt and forced to serve as a domestic in a home in Atlanta…chose to flee in order to save her life, she went to the one place she knew she would be safe: a church.”

Jesus says that we can learn from him how to love God and to love others. He says that when we can do that, we have learned the most important lesson you can learn in this life. And he says that loving God and loving others are tied together: you cannot do one without the other. In order to become the people we truly want to become, the people God means us to be, we have to learn how to become neighbors, to people in our own homes, and to people from around the world. To do that, we need to learn, like the Samaritan, to see the travelers by the side of the road. Last week someone from this church sent me this little prayer:

“Heavenly Father, help us remember that the jerk who cut us off in traffic last night is a single mother who worked nine hours that day and is rushing home to cook dinner, help with homework, do the laundry and spend a few precious moments with her children.

Help us to remember that the pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man who can't make change correctly is a worried 19-year-old college student, balancing his apprehension over final exams with his fear of not getting his student loans for next semester.

Remind us, Lord, that the scary looking bum, begging for money in the same spot every day (who really ought to get a job!) is a slave to addictions that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares.

Help us to remember that the old couple walking annoyingly slow through the store aisles and blocking our shopping progress are savoring this moment, knowing that, based on the biopsy report she got back last week, this will be the last year that they go shopping together.

Heavenly Father, remind us each day that, of all the gifts you give us, the greatest gift is love. It is not enough to share that love with those we hold dear. Open our hearts not to just those who are close to us, but to all humanity.”

Once we’ve learned that prayer, then we need to pray these words/ that our fellow Christians at the North Avenue Presbyterian Church have been praying: “God, let our hearts break with what breaks your heart, and give us eyes to see you at work in the world and courage to join you in that work.” The question is not, “Who is my neighbor?” The question is, “To whom is God calling me to be a neighbor?”

Amen.