Proper 10 C

Human beings evolved as tribal animals, and we see that tribalism asserting itself in politics and extremism in many parts of the world.  When a lawyer asked, "Who is my neighbor?"  Jesus spoke clearly and profoundly against chauvinism with the story we call the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Proper 10 C

Transcribed from a sermon given

On July 11, 2010

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Arroyo Grande CA

By the Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Luke 10:25-37

If Jesus were living in the Middle East today he might have told that parable this way, “There was a Palestinian living on the West Bank who was driving up to Jerusalem. His car broke down going up the step hill, and when he got out to take care of his car some robbers grabbed him, jumped him, and left him lying by the side of the road. An Imam from one of the mosques nearby was driving by and ignored him and just went on his way. An American who worked for a non-governmental organization, doing good works over in that area, also was in a hurry and drove by. Then an orthodox Jew that was a settler saw the man at the side of the road, stopped his car, got out with his first aid kit, cleaned his wounds himself, helped the man into his car, took him to the hospital and because as a Palestinian he had no health insurance he paid the hospital whatever it was going to cost to take care of him.”

If you were going to tell that story in the United States you might say that there was a rancher who was driving on the road to Phoenix Arizona, and as he was driving along his truck collapsed and didn’t work. It was hot, 110 degrees, and he was thirsty. He was stuck out in the desert and no one would stop to give him water. A politician drove by in his air conditioned car and just ignored him. One of the people who was guarding the international boarder drove by, but didn’t even notice him. Then came a rickety old truck packed, filled with illegal immigrants, and they got out and they shared what water they had with him and took him to the nearest town.

The thing that is shocking about the story, the parable that Jesus told is not what the person did, not what the Samaritan did, but who he did it for. You see human beings are tribal animals. Cows and deer are herd animals. Wolves are pack animals. Human beings are tribal. In order for human beings to survive when they were evolving they needed to come together in groups. A tribe is a little larger than a family, but it has a lot of people who have the same or similar genetic code. A tribe survived by hunting together. An individual human being cannot survive. You need to have others around to help with the hunt, to protect from predators, to protect from other human beings. So human beings have tribes. It is right in our genetics because the human beings that survived were the ones who took care of their tribe and excluded others. The ones who are open to everybody, were less likely to survive.

It is true even for us who think that we are way past tribal mentality. Why do you think it is that Survivor has so many people watching it? If you have ever watched survivor, I did with my daughter once, you know it starts out with two tribes that are competing with each other. Or think about high school. I have never heard of any high school anywhere in the country in which there were no tribes. They might have been called gangs, they might have been called clicks,  but there are always the ins and the outs. There is my group and that group. And then of course we get to sports. Each town has a totem animal. This is part of tribal imagery where each tribe has an animal that represents it. We have eagles and sharks and tigers and all kinds of animals who represent our tribes, our teams. And when our sports teams compete we cheer for our tribe, from our city - and the people from that other city, who are talking about and supporting the other team, they are not as good as we are. We are the best. We’re number one. That’s tribal mentality. That’s the idea that somehow my tribe is better than other tribes. And of course the next step in this thinking is that my tribe is better than other tribes so my tribe has a right to survive and other tribes, eh, not so important. We take care of our own. It is in us. It is part of who we are.

It is very clear in the Old Testament there is a lot of tribal mentality. We read in the Old Testament that there are twelve tribes, each one descended from a supposed son of Abraham, that have become a confederation. And there is also a sense that the children of Abraham are somehow better than anybody else. They are considered to have a special relationship with God. God wants for them to own the land. Therefore, it is okay to go into the land and slaughter people and push them out because our tribe is special. Our tribe has a special relationship with God. During the settling of much of our country there was this sense that we have a special relationship with God and therefore it is okay for us to take the land. We are not immune to it in our history.

You read a lot of that in the Old Testament, but you also read in the Old Testament calls for justice, like the psalm we read today. The prophets said that it is important to take care of the weak, to take care of the widow, the orphan. So the Old Testament is not totally one sided.

But Jesus came and totally split apart that whole idea of a tribal mentality. In fact, it didn’t start Jesus, John the Baptist set the stage. When people came to him, he looked at them and he said, “You think that just because you are a descendant of Abraham you have a right relationship with God. God can make the stones into descendants of Abraham.” Just because you are part of a tribe doesn’t necessarily make you special in God’s eyes.

So the scene is set for this lawyer to come to Jesus and say, “What do I need to do to have eternal life?” What is important? What does God want?

And Jesus looks at him and says, “You’re a lawyer. You know the Law. What does it say?” And this guys says the basic premise, the basic prayer of Judaism, “We are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and all your strength and to love your neighbors as yourself.” Jesus responds, that’s right, you got it, good. And then the lawyer asks another question. And the question is “Who is my neighbor?” Now that may not have been an irrelevant question. That’s the sort of thing that the lawyers of that time would have discussed. What is our responsibility? Where is the edge of our responsibility? For example, if I told you a story that a man was walking down the street and he saw his son bleeding on the side of the road and stopped and helped him, you’d go, “Why of course.” And if you said a man was walking down the street and his brother was on the side of the road bleeding you’d say, “Well of course he would help.” If he was walking down the street and his cousin was bleeding, well he would probably stop for that. If you said that he saw a car of somebody from his church was in trouble and he stopped to help you’d think, “Well that was nice.” It’s not the stopping to help, it’s the reaching beyond the borders. Who do I care about? Who matters?

You will notice if you read the local paper if there has been an automobile accident and a local person has died, a big banner headline reads, “One person died!” If somebody died within California you’d probably have to have five or six people die to have a banner headline. “Five people die in major accident.” Somewhere else in the United States you might need to have twenty people die, “Twenty people die in flooding!” One person dying in flooding wouldn’t make a headline. If it happens in another part of the world, you have to have a couple of hundred people die to even notice, and it still might be in the back of the newspaper. Where is the boundary of our compassion? And that is what the lawyer was asking. It is a legitimate thing to ask. I can’t take care of everybody, who do I have a responsibility to take care of? It is the sort of thing lawyers back then talked about.

And then Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. Eugene Peterson describes parables as “time bombs.” Parables are things that may make sense and appear to be simple on the first hearing, but if you sit with them and you think about it over time, all of a sudden at some point it explodes and you realize a new insight that changes your understanding of who you are. Parables work like that.

Who is my neighbor? In Greek the word neighbor comes from the same word as close. Something that is physically close. A neighbor is a person who is close. The Samaritan was close to the person who was hurt. The neighbor is the person right there who needs help. No tribal issue at all. It doesn’t matter. Everybody is a child of God.

We are told that the law says that we are to love, but love can’t be demanded. Love is something that emerges as a response. A response that comes when we know that we are loved by God and we also know that we are no better than anyone else, that we have sinned, that we have made mistakes, that we have hurt other people, that we have fumbled along. That just because we come to church or we were baptized, or that we happen to be of whatever ethnic background or family background or tribal background that that does not make us special. When we realize that in God’s eyes we don’t deserve anything and everything we have is a gift of God’s grace. When we understand that we are loved for who we are, not what we are a part of, but that we are loved as is every other human being - passionately loved by God. When we know that Christ was willing to die for us and we feel that love how can we do anything but respond with love. And when we realize that we are loved in that way and we are all children of God then all the barriers come down because the tribe is every human being that is loved by God. And when we see from God’s eyes we see that the person on the other side of the world, we see that the person who is our enemy, we see the person who is different from us, is loved by God the same way we are. And then there are no strangers. We are all members, and we can’t help but respond with compassion and mercy.

And as you sit with this parable, and you think about who is your neighbor, perhaps consider another way to look at this parable. Perhaps, just perhaps we are the person who has been beaten up and are lying on the side of the road, and Jesus is the Samaritan.