SP071507

Please Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
7th Sunday after Pentecost – July 15, 2008
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D
{texts: Colossians 1:1-14/Luke 10:25-37}

So, let's make the most of this beautiful day.
Since we're together we might as well say:
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Won't you be my neighbor?
Won't you please,
Won't you please?
Please won't you be my neighbor?

Countless people grew to know, and love, those questions and that tune in the 35 years that Mr. Rogers invited us into his neighborhood. I was privileged, as I think I’ve told you before, to get to know Mr. Rogers because of his connection to the religious community of which I was a part. He was a long-time friend of several people who were close to me. As I have said before, never was there a more genuine and gentle man, nor a more authentic Christian than Frederick McFeely Rogers. So, forgive me if I take a bit of a different tack as I approach the scripture this morning and ask, along with Jesus, won’t you be my neighbor?

I had a conversation on Friday with a colleague that sent me off to the children’s library here in Wauwatosa. The colleague, Don Bliss, is minister in East Freetown, MA. and came to ministry from theatre work. He put me on to the book Harriet and William and the Terrible Creature. Harriet and William are twins – twin squirrels to be exact. Harriet likes to travel and is rather flamboyant. William is quite content and happiest to never leave his garden. When Harriet builds a rocket ship William politely declines the chance to go for a ride.

Harriet takes off on her adventure and bumps into a planet where she meets this big dragon-like creature that is tearfully eating rocks, because – as we find out – he’s eaten all of the flowers and trees. He promises to help Harriet get home and, in return, she promises to help him replant the planet – which, of course, involves William. So, with the creature’s help she takes off, convinces William to come with her in the rocket ship and they turn the barren planet back into a garden. The dialogue at one point goes like this: “Harriet and William flew past the moon and all the planets. Harriet steered the ship straight to the terrible creature’s home. ‘I was afraid you would not come,’ it said. ‘A promise is a promise,’ said Harriet. The three worked hard to make a garden. William knew just what to do. They carried away rocks. They dug a well for water. They shoveled and raked the ground to make a flower bed. At last the garden was planted.” [From the book by Valerie Scho Carey, illustrated by Lynne Cherry]

The creature cries because Harriet and William are going to leave, but William says that they will come again. When Harriet, proud of her brother, asks if he sees now traveling isn’t so bad William remains silent. The last scene in the book shows Harriet building a boat to sail around the world, asking William if he wants to come. His answer: “No, thank you.” And he goes on weeding his garden. Now, with whom do you identify in the story – Harriet, William or the Terrible Creature?

Sometimes it’s good to do that. To think about whom in the story reaches and touches where we are and how our experiences might be similar to theirs. When Jesus told his story in answer to the lawyer’s question, he was doing much the same thing that Valerie Scho Carey did with her book. Jesus wants us to think ourselves into that story. So, are you the lawyer? Are you the priest or the Levite? Are you the Samaritan? Are you, perhaps, feeling a bit like the beaten man? Where do you fit in the story? I’m going to take a cue from Fred Rogers and give you a minute to think – starting now. Ok – time’s up. I won’t ask for a show of hands or anything, but I want you to think further on this, because haven’t there been times when, if we’re honest, we’ve really played all of these roles; when we could really, honestly identify with all of them?

Jesus told this story because the lawyer asked him how he was to get eternal life. As Biblical scholar Charles Talbert points out, he was asking for a definition, for boundaries. “The lawyer asks Jesus, ‘What shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ (vs. 26). Since it is two Jews talking and since it was assumed by Jews that the people of God would inherit the New Age, the import of the question is clear. The lawyer is asking what he as an individual should do to guarantee his place in the people of God who would inherit eternal life. ‘What do I do to belong to God’s people?’ Moreover, when the lawyer asks, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ he is wanting to know how he can spot others who belong to God’s covenant people. The Jews interpreted ‘neighbor’ in terms of members of the same people or religious community, that is, fellow Jews (cf. Matt 5:43). Even within the Jewish people there was a tendency to exclude certain others from the sphere of neighbor. For example, the Pharisees sometimes excluded the ordinary people of the land and the Qumran Covenanters excluded the ‘sons of darkness’ (I QS 1:10; 9:21f.). Jews generally excluded Samaritans and foreigners from the category of neighbor. Hence the lawyer’s question was basically, ‘Who belongs to the category of God’s people?’” [From Reading Luke: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the Third Gospel, p. 121]

How many times have we wanted to know THE answer, to know that we’ve got IT (whatever IT is) and that we’re part of the elect, the saved, the IN group? I think we can all identify with that and with the lawyer’s question. Jesus, however, says that the boundaries are broken down, the questions of identification are different now, and the categories of membership in God’s people are changing. It’s no longer about how you fit or how you’re defined that matters. What matters now is how you live.

The lawyer, the priest, and the Levite all end up in a similar role. First, they have a strict definition of boundaries – who is part of God’s people and who isn’t – and they can’t seem to get their knowledge of their faith to come across in a way that is practical. I so appreciated what theologian and story-teller John Shea had to say about this. He wrote: “I know this lawyer only too well. He embodies a mindset that afflicts many religious types. We have a great deal of conceptual knowledge of theology and spirituality, but our ability to integrate it into our daily lives is minimal. Therefore, in the absence of real-life connection, we prefer theological jousting. . . Kenneth Pargament, a psychologist, thinks that connecting religious faith to real life is not easily done. He names the problem as the inability to take the generalities of faith and relate them to the dust of our human trials.”

Shea then cites two incidents Pargament recalled. One of them involved a woman and her husband who were having trouble with their marriage. The husband confronted her, asking her what they should do about their marriage. “She reached for her Bible and turned to Ephesians, ‘I know what Paul says and I know what Jesus says about marriage,’ he told her. ‘What do you say about marriage?’ Dumbfounded, she could not say anything. Like so many of us, she could recite the scriptures, but she could not apply them to everyday living.” The other involves a clergyman who is paralyzed in an accident. “When I raised the question of where his religion fit into his struggle,” Pargament writes, “he drew a blank. In spite of the fact that he often worked as a religious counselor to people in dire straits not unlike his own, he himself was unable to move from the generalities of his faith to the specifics of his situation.” [All quotes from The Relentless Widow, p. 198-9] It’s not about how much we know of our faith, but how we put that knowledge into action. One can have an intimate knowledge of the Scripture, understand the intricacies of Christian doctrine, can even have developed a spirituality, but if that knowledge doesn’t translate into something that works with where we live, with the “dust of our human trials,” then it’s inauthentic and lacking in integrity.

Dr. Shea, like me, is a former priest of the Roman Church; he however has stayed within the system. I wonder what he thinks about the recent pronouncements of the chief teacher of that church. I wonder if he thinks that just maybe Benedict XVI’s recent comments on the boundaries of the “true church” just might fit what I’ve just referenced. To know the truth and in all of its fullness and then to not to be able to apply it, to not use it to do love of neighbor, to not extend one’s self in imitation of Jesus, to not embrace, but to exclude, what a sad, sad state of affairs.

So . . . where are we? What role do we fill? Perhaps we’ve studied and known our faith, but not applied it? Perhaps we’ve stood by and watched because we’re just, well, pressed for time. Malcolm Gladwell reports something in The Tipping Point that certainly hit home with me. “An experiment was done at Princeton Seminary involving the ‘Good Samaritan’ parable. Seminary students were asked to speak about their calling to ministry and were asked to speak about the parable. They were then told to go to another building for further instructions. But on the way, an actor played the role of a victim crying out for mercy to see how many would stop by to help. In the end, what really determined whether they stopped or not was how much time they had. If they were told they were already late, then only 10 percent helped. If they were told that they had few minutes to spare, 63 percent helped. Compassion was curtailed by the need to be on time. What other things in life take priority over compassion? What would increase it?” [Reported in The Tipping Point, pp. 163-166] We say in our covenant that we’ll “reach out with compassion to those in need,” but is it only when it’s convenient or when we have time? When do we extend ourselves? When do we act with compassion?

Jesus’ stories made people squirm and think and tune-out and react. Ultimately, they tried to kill him – and succeeded. (Jesus did triumph even over death through the Resurrection.) All because he simply told them stories that made them identify where they were and how they were living. We continue to tell the same stories again and again because the boundaries and still down and the neighborhood is far larger than we ever imagined it to be. The lawyer started by asking Jesus a question and Jesus finishes by asking him one – “which one of these three, do you think, was neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The answer: “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus opened up the neighborhood wide when he told the lawyer, “Go and do likewise.” That’s what Paul was essentially telling the Colossians when he admonishes them to grow in spiritual wisdom so that they “may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.”

There are going to be times when we identify with the beaten man. When we feel used up, unappreciated, ignored. Even in that situation we can’t forget that we’re neighbor. Sometimes we have to allow ourselves to be cared for, open ourselves to others and in the process offer service by our receiving. Sometimes, as Paul says, it is simply by patiently enduring, relying on God’s strength and not our own, that we’ll be enabled to be good neighbors.

The roles we will experience may differ from day-to-day, but God’s love and the call of the Lord to us don’t: “Go and do likewise.” The same Jesus who bids us “go and do likewise,” is also the one who invites us into a much larger neighborhood. In fact, it’s Jesus who asks “won’t you be my neighbor” for, as he said when we act with compassion and mercy toward the least of his sisters and brothers – all of humanity, in other words – we have done it to him.