Who is my neighbour? - A darned nuisance is sometimes the honest answer!

That might have been my immediate response if you’d asked me that question a few years ago when I lived in a flat in Kuwait, next-door to an Egyptian family whose son played football indoors and loved nothing better than to run up the walls at all hours!

“Who is my neighbour?” is a question raised for us today by our gospel reading. And anyone doing what I’m doing now is faced with another tough question, that is: what new and fresh word can one possibly say about the parable of the Good Samaritan, as it is popularly known?

What makes preaching on it so difficult is the fact that the ‘Good Samaritan’ has become a secularised saint. Hospitals, helping groups, and civic awards are named after him, without too much attention to who he is or who introduced him into the literary world in the first place.

To be a Good Samaritan has become shorthand for helping once a week at the local soup kitchen, going out of one’s way at the Christmas season to see that the food baskets get delivered to the neediest people, or sacrificing time to work on a charitable project.

And before you jump out of your seats, no, I am not saying there is anything wrong with lending a helping hand: please don’t misunderstand me. It is just that our secularised saint has little resemblance to the character in Jesus' story.

Yanking him out of his context and making him a symbol of do-goodism (which is, usually the favoured fortunate doing good to the unattractive, less fortunate); doing that misses the sharp point of this parable and helps us to avoid its shocking and threatening challenge.

Let’s see if we can’t hear this disturbing story afresh.

First, we need first to decipher the lawyer’s initial interchange with Jesus, when he asks, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He is testing Jesus, of course, but Jesus plays into his hands by directing him to the Torah – the Jewish Law – and asks him what that says, which elicits the lawyer’s correct answer: “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 neighbour as yourself.”

But ‘wanting to justify himself’, the lawyer then asks the question, “And who is my neighbour”. Does this mean that he is a bit embarrassed by his previous question about eternal life, which Jesus made him answer for himself? Does he want to “justify himself” by raising another, more complex issue? Or is his counter-question a way of avoiding the personal directness of Jesus' response (“Do this, and you will live?”) It is hard to tell.

Whatever the case, the lawyer’s second question – “Who is my neighbour?” is a legitimate one, debated often by Jewish lawyers, especially since the original command to love the neighbour (in the Old Testament, in the book of Leviticus 19.17-18) specifies the neighbour as any of “your kin” and “any of your people”.

Instead of a direct answer from Jesus, though, the lawyer gets a parable – and maybe more than he bargained for.

There are four things in this story that are worth teasing out:

First, we ought not to be too quick to think of the priest and the Levite as the “baddies” – either hardhearted or too prissy to get their hands dirty. Their decision to pass by on the other side wouldn’t have been a surprise to, nor would it necessarily have been condemned by those others present when Jesus told this story. The victim in the ditch is described as “half dead”, and at that time, priests were forbidden from going where there was a dead body, even when the dead body was a parent. The priest and the Levite, then, could simply represent the traditional way that religious leaders would deal with a situation like this.

Secondly, the Samaritan really was a despised person. Adding the adjective “good” (which, note, is not in the parable) – adding ‘good’ to Samaritan has had the effect of reducing the racial tension that underlies this story, which is what gives it its force.

To the lawyer, to the Jews in Jesus' audience, and to Luke’s readers, there was no misunderstanding about Samaritans. If we go back a chapter in Luke’s gospel (9.52-54) we find a Samaritan village had just denied welcome to Jesus and his disciples, and James and John wanted to call down fire to consume it. Samaritans were half-breeds, who had refused to participate in the restoration of Jerusalem and had helped the Syrian leaders in their wars against the Jews. Their temple had been destroyed by a Jewish high priest. Jesus could have chosen anyone else to be the third character coming along the road to Jericho, but Jesus' choice of the Samaritan – the ultimate outsider – to help the victim, was (and still is) shocking!

Thirdly, the question “Who is my neighbour” gets asked again, this time by Jesus, and the lawyer answers again (10.36-37). “Which of the three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” asks Jesus, and the lawyer replies, “The one who showed him mercy”, and Jesus tells him to “Go and do likewise”. He, the lawyer, a Jew, has to acknowledge that the despised Samaritan – the outsider – plays the role of neighbour by all he does for the victim.

The result is to destroy any limited, localised understanding of God that presumes God’s interest is confined to “me and my family”. In this story, Jesus exposes deep-seated hatreds between individuals, races, and nations that were an accepted way of life.

Finally, a parable is meant to stir our imaginations in ways that can’t always be anticipated. One way our imaginations are stirred is by the invitation that the parable presents to us: we are invited to identify with the victim in the ditch. Instead of being the favoured fortunate who helps the less fortunate, we can begin to sense ourselves as the needy one, at the mercy of the outsider, who is otherwise thought of as the enemy. One thing is for sure: it is certainly not the way the lawyer expected things to turn out.

In my limited experience, it does us no harm to experience what it is like to be an outsider. OK, I wasn’t downtrodden or destitute or beaten up and left for dead when I lived in Kuwait but I was certainly in a minority, being white, western and a working woman! It was, at times, a lonely life and I missed my family especially. I recommend the maxim, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”: to begin to understand a culture is to begin to understand its people – which we tried to do. Yes, even the noisy neighbours! I don’t say I condoned their habits but I came to appreciate when you live without green grass and the temperature outside is 120 degrees Fahrenheit; the places to play football are limited!

Another way our imaginations may be stirred by this parable is to recognise the Samaritan as Jesus himself: the ultimate helper, who sees, has compassion for, and restores the beaten, naked person whom others – we perhaps, at times – have ignored, every time we “pass by on the other side” of a person in need. Rather than being a secularised saint, then, the Samaritan symbolises Jesus Christ, who calls us to show mercy to those in need in our society today.

So we return to the question, “Who is my neighbour?” Who are the outsiders in our communities? I think of the gentleman who has occupied the bench at the front of this church every day this week. I think of the Big Issue seller in Epping High Street. I think of the asylum seekers in Dover, where I was born. I think of the countless numbers of homeless people on the streets of our cities. And I think of the documentary I saw some time ago, which showed a boy who was lost in New York, trying to gain attention from passers-by, seeking help, asking again and again, “Can you help me, please?” “Please can you help me? “Can you help me, please?” No-one stopped. Everyone was too busy.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan both of those who passed the injured man by were clergy and I have suggested we be lenient towards them because they feared defilement. But perhaps they were both too busy to respond and this challenges me. This reminds me that no matter how full my diary is, I must be prepared to postpone my plans, to alter them, or to jettison them altogether, if what awaits me around the next corner – that is, another’s need - is more pressing.

When the lawyer asks “Who is my neighbour?” he wants to know the limits of his liability. He supposes there are categories of people who have no claim on him. Jesus' parable radically enforces what being a neighbour means. There are no “us and them” categories in God’s kingdom.

The challenge which Jesus presented to the lawyer is still as relevant to us today. Because, yes, sometimes our neighbour is ‘a darned nuisance’! Sometimes our neighbour is a darned nuisance because he or she demands our time and attention, takes us out of our comfort zone, and makes us question our priorities.

Jesus says: “show mercy”, “go and do likewise”, be neighbourly. The disciples’ task is ever thus: to be as Christ to those in need. To be prepared to risk being Christ’s hands and feet in this beautiful but messy world: to show his love to others. This is our task. Amen.