A farm boy accidentally overturned his wagonload of wheat on the road. A farmer who lived nearby came to investigate.

“Hey, Willis,” he called out, “forget your troubles for a while and come and have dinner with us. Then I’ll help you overturn the wagon.”

“That’s very nice of you,” Willis answered, “but I don’t think Dad would like me to.”

“Aw, come on, son!” the farmer insisted.

“Well, okay,” the boy finally agreed, “but Dad won’t like it.”

After a hearty dinner, Willis thanked the host. “I feel a lot better now, but I know Dad’s going to be real upset.”

“Don’t be silly!” said the neighbor. “By the way, where is your Dad?”

“Under the wagon,” replied Willis.

Willis and the Good Samaritan farmer lived in a different era than we do today. While we all want to be good neighbors, the meaning of “neighborliness” has changed, as the culture has changed, from community to cocooning, from country to city, from slow food to fast food, from the dining room to the game room.

Our text this morning is an attempt to re-expand our definition of neighbor. It’s the story of the “Good Samaritan.”

We all know the story (hey, I just read it to you!), but I wonder how many of us paid attention to the context.  As so often happened, Jesus told this story in response to a question.  A lawyer asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

What a great question!  According to modern day evangelists, this is THE QUESTION. 

I love the answer Jesus gives to those kind of questions.  According to the accounts given in Matthew and Luke, Jesus would have flunked the test for Evangelism 101.  In these gospels he never gives what some would term “the right answers.” 

In Matthew 25 for example, Jesus describes a scene about separating the sheep from the goats in the eternal kingdom. 

Any graduate of Evangelism 101 knows that they should be separated based on whether or not they have professed faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.  But Jesus makes no reference to that requirement. 

Rather he says they will be separated based on whether or not they fed the hungry, clothed the naked, took care of the sick, and visited those in prison. 

For Jesus says very clearly, “In as much as you have done these things (or not done these things) to one of those in need, you have done it (or not done it) to me.”

In our scripture this morning, Luke records similar directives. In answer to the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus, in the typical fashion of the rabbis then and now, answers the question with one of his own.

“What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”

The answer comes back, “‘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, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

We’d all admit, I think, that is a pretty good answer – if not you haven’t been listening to me very closely these last 4+ years!

But now the lawyer does something that all of us do from time to time - in good lawyer-ly fashion, he looks for a loophole.

He asks, “And who is my neighbor?” In other words, “OK, Jesus, I understand I am supposed to CARE, but what are the limits of my caring? When can I quit?” And here Jesus tells his famous story.

The first person we’re introduced to is the poor traveler. He had taken the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, a notoriously dangerous journey, and he’d been victimized by bandits - stripped, beaten, and left for dead.

A first century mugging. One more random victim in a randomly violent world. Jesus’ audience that day would know how easily it could happen. For that matter, with a quick glance at the newspaper or TV, his audience TODAY knows it just as well.

Yet, while hearers then and now would sympathize with the poor guy, we are not forced to identify with him because in a story that begins with a tragedy, helpers are sure to arrive. If we will identify with anyone, we will wait for our helper/hero.

And hallelujah! Who comes along but a priest. If anyone could be expected to stop and help it would be a priest. But wait. The priest is not only not coming over to help; he is passing by on the other side. No reason is given.

Some have suggested that, as a priest, he might fear ritual defilement if he came in contact with a corpse, but truth is if a priest on a journey found a corpse, he had a duty to bury it.

Okay then, perhaps it was fear. Those who beat the man in the ditch might be lying in wait to beat him as well.

Or maybe it was simple revulsion. Have you ever come upon someone after a bloody accident?  It is not a pretty sight -- certainly not for the squeamish.

Regardless of the reason, the priest turns out to be no hero and “passes by on the other side.”

No matter. Along comes a Levite...an “assistant” priest.  As disappointed as we might be with the priest’s behavior, we are confidant that THIS one will come through.

Right! As the text has it, “he came to the place and saw him, [and] passed by on the other side.” Another anti-hero!

Now what? By normal storytelling conventions, we can expect we are about to meet a third character who will break the pattern created by the first two.

In the context of our current parable, the expected sequence would be a priest, a Levite, and then...TA DAH!...our hero will be an ordinary Israelite who will come to the rescue even when the high muckety-mucks of the Temple fail to do so.

Enter character number three - a Samaritan. The GOOD Samaritan! HA! Nowhere in the Bible will we find the words “Good” and “Samaritan” next to each other.

For those folks who first heard this story, the phrase “Good Samaritan” would have been an oxymoron anyway – like … Civil War, pretty ugly, deafening silence, airline food, and my personal favorite – government efficiency.

In the eyes of the Jews – the Samaritan would be anything but good and definitely anything but a hero. During the time of Jesus, the animosity toward Samaritans was so great that some Jews would go miles out of their way to avoid even walking on Samaritan soil.

Well, just as the priest and the Levite, the Samaritan sees the man, but instead of distancing himself, he comes closer. He takes pity on the man, bandages him up and takes him to an inn to recuperate. He even pays the innkeeper the equivalent of 2 days wages for his trouble and promises to pay any additional expenses if needed when he returned.

The story is over. Jesus has responded to the lawyer’s question about the limits of neighborliness with his story and now turns the question back to the lawyer: “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

And the answer, “The one who had mercy on him.” Amazing, isn’t it? The concept of a GOOD Samaritan is so distasteful that the lawyer cannot bring himself to even speak the name.

And then to add insult to injury – Jesus instructs the man to go and do likewise.

It’s such a simple little story, but it is one filled with meanings.  I want to suggest four meanings for us today.

1)  We are to love our neighbor even if it is their own fault that they are in bad straights.

The road between Jerusalem and Jericho was a notorious hiding place for bandits.  The road ran through a lonely stretch of territory and offered many ravines and boulders which served as perfect hiding places from which robbers could quickly pounce on innocent travelers. 

 It was common knowledge that this was not a road to be traveled alone or at night.

Anyone walking that road alone should have known that they were taking a chance.  What was this “certain man” doing there?  Didn’t he know better?

Even today there are sections of almost any city about which everybody says, “Just don’t go there.”  Upon hearing where this robbery occurred there must have been those in the crowd who said to themselves, “It’s his own fault.  Happens all the time.”

We do the same thing today.  We learn of someone on welfare, and we conclude, “It’s her own fault.”  Another’s funds are depleted because of an emergency situation, and we say, “They should have planned ahead.”  And then we excuse our meager response because “it’s their own fault.”

Jesus’ hero in our story helped the man in need without any reference to the how’s or the why’s of the situation.  A man was in need.  The good Samaritan met the need.

2)  Loving our neighbor is active, not passive. 

A minister riding the subway noticed that an old woman shuffled into the subway wearing only ragged clothes to protect her from the bitter Chicago winter wind.  Her white, cracked, bony hands clutched a worn shawl tightly around her. The minister watched with wonder and pity.

At the next stop, an energetic young man strode confidently onto the train. His warm, high-fashion clothes offered a stark contrast to the rider from the last stop. As he made his way to his seat, his eyes lingered just a moment on the old woman.

Three stops later, as the train slowed, he glided by her to the other door and disappeared into the tunnel.

On the woman’s lap lay his brown leather gloves.

The minister observed, “I don’t know if he was a believer in Christ or not. But I do know this: He saw her need and responded with compassion - while I just sat there. It never occurred to me to give her my gloves. 

“That young man showed compassion in a way I’ll never forget.”

It is easy to talk a good game.  And we all do.  We want the hungry to be fed and the naked to be clothed.  But what do we do about it? Words are cheap, aren’t they?  And I am as guilty as the next person. 

The story of the Good Samaritan is a call to us to do something.  To not just observe, but also to act.

3) We are to love our neighbor even if it means abandoning our personal plans.

The priest and the Levite had responsibilities at the Temple.  Maybe they were in a hurry. It would be irresponsible to be late.  People were expecting them.  And because of their plans, they passed on by.

I sometimes think this is the most common excuse we have for not helping.  We’ve got plans.  We’ve got a schedule.  We’ve got an agenda.  Thoughts of the needy have no place in our day planner.  Jesus makes it clear that loving our neighbor may mean interrupting our precious plans.

Shalom Alekum tells a delightful story about an old man standing on a crowded bus. The young man standing next to him asked, “What time is it?”

The old man refused to reply. The young man moved on.

The old man’s friends, sensing something was wrong, asked, “Why were you so discourteous to that young man who was asking for the time?”

The old man answered, “If I’d given him the time of day, next he’d want to know where I’m going; then we might talk about our interests.

“If we did that he might invite himself to my house for dinner. If he did, he’d meet my lovely daughter. If he met her they would both fall in love.

“And I don’t want my daughter marrying somebody who can’t afford a watch!”

Now that may be the extreme … but let me tell you of another occasion that is a lot closer to home.

Back in February, I was taking Austin to the doctor and we were running late.  Austin noticed an elderly man lying down on the sidewalk.  I was briefly tempted to drive on by, after all we were late – and surely someone else would stop, but Austin spoke up and said we needed to stop and help the man – so we turned the car around, attended to the man and took the man home. 

Austin was the Good Samaritan that day.  He put his compassion before anything else.  The man told us that he had been lying there for almost an hour and no one had stopped.  Imagine that!  Yes, we were late, but it certainly was worth it.

4) Love means being willing to accept help from OUR Samaritan.

The point of Jesus’ story may not be “Who is my neighbor?” but “Who is my Samaritan?”  After all, the only surprising thing about the story was the character of the hero. 

Everyone expected Jesus to say that the person following the priest and the Levite was a common Israelite.  But Jesus surprised and shocked them all by giving the staring role to a representative of a group of people that every good Jew in the crowd hated. 

It was not possible for any of them to say the word “Samaritan” without forming their lips into a sneer.  “Samaritan.”

Maybe Jesus did not want his hearers to identify with this generous care-giver. As attractive and appealing as is the behavior of this man, as much of a helper/hero as he obviously was, that WOULD be the temptation.

But no good Jew could do that. And he wouldn’t want to be like the Priest or Levite either. So … the only character left with which to identify would be the man in the ditch. Hmm.

When Jesus concludes, “Go and do likewise” could he possibly be asking us to be that guy in the ditch?

Perhaps that is not so far-fetched as we might think. We never hear if this poor victim recovers, but my assumption is that he does. That being the case, what effect would having been rescued by a Samaritan have on him?

One would presume that it would forever color his view of Samaritans. For that matter, one would presume that it would forever color his view of the world’s victims. There would be less callousness, less inclination to lay blame for getting into such a fix in the first place, less temptation to “pass by on the other side.”

If Jesus’ story had gone on any longer, I would bet that this poor fellow, from that day forward, became a better neighbor to the rest of his world than he would have ever dreamed possible.

Judith Brain of Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Lexington, Massachusetts tells the following story about her surprising neighbor.  She says:

My son is a jazz musician.  My husband and I went to hear his band one night, at a club in Roxbury.  It was a warm, inter-racial, friendly spot.

At the table next to ours a big friendly African-American man tended to a tiny, twisted, human being on a wheeled cart. 

A paralyzed man with a puppet’s body and large misshapen head lay on the cart sipping his beer through a straw and watching the musicians attentively. 

He seemed alert but only his eyes moved so it was hard to tell how much he really took in. 

His friend captured our attention.  He seemed alive to every nuance of this poor, deformed man.  He leaned close to hear him speak in that noisy club and his manner proclaimed love. 

 I thought about how wonderful this scene was.  The club that embraced this broken person.  I felt part of that embrace.  I too was reaching out in some way with a friendly smile.  “I accept you,” I was saying.

The room was smoky and my contact lenses gave me trouble.  I popped them out, sloshed them in my water glass, and put them back.  In a few minutes, the tall man came over to our table and gave me a bottle of eye drops. ”Here, you need this.”

“Oh, thanks,” I gushed.  “You noticed.”

“No, my friend did,” he said, pointing to the man on the cart.  On that crooked face was a big grin.

He took pity on me.  I came out of my arrogant Pharisee like fog.  “I accept you.”  

What presumption!   I thought I was whole and he was not.  I thought I was the giver and he was alien, the last person in the world who could help me. 

But the tables were turned.  That twisted man in the jazz club became an unexpected source of kindness. 

Jesus has a word for every one of us.  We are to expand our definition of neighbor – of who we are to love.  In a nutshell – it’s EVERYBODY. 

We are to realize that love means doing more than saying “I love you.”  It means backing up our words with action.

I think of how many times I have stepped over a homeless person …

… how many times I was too busy to lend a listening ear to a friend or stranger who needed someone just to listen to them …

… how many times I have not given of the plenty that I have to those who have nothing …

… how many times I have paid my pledge and thought I had done my duty …

… how many times I have been willing to give help, BUT found it so hard to accept help…

Jesus’ telling of the story of the Good Samaritan convicts me of each and every one of these.  How about you? 

Now the question is:  What difference will it make?

AMEN.