Luke 10: 25-37
“Good Neighbors”
March 1, 2020
(Start with video of Mr. Rogers’ “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”) With that song and those familiar actions of switching into the zipped up sweater that was one of many that were knit for the first 20 years of the show by his mother and the comfy sneakers that he gives a little toss. We all were extended an invitation to be a part of Mr. Roger’s world – a neighborhood filled with a friendly mailman, a helpful local police officer, a chef, a handyman and a host of guests – some famous like Julia Child or Yo-Yo Ma and other people with skills or gifts or jobs that he wanted to be sure his young viewers could learn from.
Right after this video clip we saw, Fred Rogers would have uttered his familiar “Hello, Neighbor” looking straight into the camera and hopefully the eyes and minds of the millions who watched as he did in every episode. He would often take us on trips to factories or art galleries or laboratories or kitchens or a host of places where people were working and creating. Each and every person he interacted with, whether in the house we became so familiar with or out in the world was someone worth getting to know by learning what was important to them and sharing in the sense that who they were and what they did mattered.
The guest on his show out of 912 shows over 31 years that turned out to be Fred Rogers’ favorite was a 10 year old boy named Jeff Erlanger. They first met when Jeff was 5 years old and was facing yet another surgery for his rare spinal condition and when he was asked afterwards what he wanted he said he wanted to meet Mr. Rogers. His sister sent a letter telling of her brother’s wish and they met when Fred was traveling in Wisconsin and kept up their friendship. Five years later Jeff was invited to be on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood to talk about why he used a wheel chair, in what turned out to be a 10 minute unscripted conversation that included them singing “It’s You I Like,”
Jeff and Fred together were able to explain that neighbors may be different from us but that does not stop us from getting to know and care for each other. This was a vivid example of the philosophy of Fred Rogers’ life and belief system – everyone is a neighbor.
The big question in this passage from Luke’s Gospel as asked by the lawyer of Jesus as he presses him to know the secret to eternal life is “Who is my neighbor?” Maybe the lawyer was struggling with the word neighbor, which in Hebrew is rea.
In Genesis it means “fellow” or “the other guy” while in Exodus that same word is used to describe the close relationship between God and Moses.
In Deuteronomy a neighbor is a person that you share a common border with while in Jeremiah the implication is that it is others in the community.
Leviticus 19 is where we get neighbor narrowed down to the legal definition which is a person that you have an intimate or legal relationship with but it is also in Leviticus that the nature of the relationship has absolutely no power over the concept of who to love. It is there in Leviticus that there is an insistence on loving the stranger as well as the one you know.
And it isn’t entirely clear whether what the lawyer is really asking is for Jesus to narrow it down to “Who is not my neighbor?” The lawyer obviously had not been paying attention to Jesus’ earlier teachings like the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus explains that the Torah does not say to hate your enemy. And “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.” (Luke 6:32)
Who is our neighbor? Jesus in this parable takes this lawyer and all his listeners away from those close by who we know or who live in a way we can relate to and brings them into a larger and perhaps unfamiliar world. We already know and feel comfortable loving the one like us. How about the stranger or outsider, the one whose need is great?
On Friday, in a big conference room on Main Street in Bennington, the discussion among professionals whose job it is to care was also attended by a number of us coming from the call of our faith to love the strangers, the outsiders, the ones whose needs are great.
Together we were there to figure out how to go forward while the heaviness of the death two and a half weeks ago of a homeless man named Thierry Huega under a bridge in Bennington where he was known to have slept many nights since he was burned out of his previous home weighed on us.
The interfaith community throughout our county as well as multiple human service agencies are seeking a solution to care for the homeless apart from the already packed beyond capacity homeless shelter. A warming shelter is desperately needed but it won’t happen this winter so the planning is going forward to be sure that by the time the cold of November returns there will be a better plan in place. In the meantime, motel vouchers will continue to be issued.
We learned that the locations for a warming shelter are limited by Bennington town laws. There are smoke and fire alarms, exit systems and sprinklers to consider. It’s not yet clear how we will love the neighbors in need of shelter on a cold night but we must find a way.
At the beginning of this reading the lawyer is asking “Who is my neighbor?” so as to figure out who he needs to love in order to get into heaven. Jesus, by the end of this parable has turned it around to ask not who is my neighbor for whom one should care about but rather which of these three – the priest, the Levite or the Samaritan – was a neighbor to the beaten man, one who was different from the others. Jesus is making it simple. So often we try to shrink the world while Jesus is reminding us that it is bigger and more inclusive and more interconnected than we imagine. We are each other’s responsibility.
This week lots of attention has been paid to the Coronavirus and daily there are counts of the dead, the infected and the quarantined along with their location. Perhaps a larger message that is being made clearer in this time of concern and worry is how much we are woven together. Unlike in Jesus’ time, we can see and hear and get to know what it’s like to be a person living halfway around the world through our screens and we also have built our economies and our communication and energy systems and so much more on relationships with those in other lands. How will we be a neighbor to the ones who are different, far away or in need as all this unfolds?
Fred Rogers had a way of describing a neighbor this way: “We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say ‘It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.’ Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.” In this parable, the Samaritan was such a hero. Jesus is calling us to love that big and boldly and to show mercy to the one in need. Let us be the neighbors the world needs now more than ever.