Transcript
And who is my neighbor? Please be seated.
So before I begin, I’m going to tell you. On Friday I wrote a sermon. I didn’t like it. On Saturday, I rewrote it. I still didn’t like it. So today, for the first time at Saint John’s, I am preaching without anything in front of me. Just the gospel reading. So bear with me.
When I was learning how to drive, I was not the best driver. In fact, between the age of 16 and 20, I had five car accidents. I would often argue it was luck, not skill, since two of those I was not the driver, but of the remaining three, two of them, I was the only driver.
One of those accidents happened on I-64. I’m sure you can remember 20 years ago before the construction and the cones and the barrels. I-64 was two lanes. Speed limit 65. Traffic going about 80. Bumper to bumper, full speed. Both directions.
So the two SUVs in front of me slammed on their brakes and swerved on to the shoulder. And I thought I should do that too. So I also swerved onto the shoulder as traffic came to a halt. The two SUVs then drove back onto the road and drove off. But my dinky little minivan stood no chance in that slippery, soft, grassy shoulder and skidded to a halt.
You know those, like, two inch thick cables that used to be on the side of 64? Well, my minivan was pushed up against one teetering over the edge of the ravine, down where the trees were growing. In fact, I couldn’t even get my car door open because it was holding it shut.
After I kind of calmed down a little bit, I sat there with no idea what to do until another car stopped and a man and a woman, husband and wife, about somewhere between the ages of my parents and my grandparents, got out of their car and helped me, and they stayed with me until the police and the tow truck showed up. And then they went on with their day. I never got their names, or if I did, I certainly don’t remember them now. And this was well before social media and well before texting. My cell phone was a Nokia brick.
But these two random strangers stopped. I’m sure they had a day full of things to do and places to be and people to see. And yet they paused all of that to stop on the side of the road to help a random stranger.
That life experience always makes me think of this parable, the parable of the Good Samaritan. One of the best known parables, so I’m not going to tell it word for word, but, you know, the priest literally crosses the street to avoid him, and the Levite crosses the street to avoid it. But the Samaritan is the one who stops. Again, probably had places to go and people to see and things to do. And yet the Samaritan is the one who stopped to help the poor man on the side of the road.
So I ask all of you. Would you stop? Granted, there are a lot of reasons for us not to stop. I can think of another a number of them being a single woman why I would not stop for a car on the side of the road. But I can also think of a lot of reasons why we should.
Maybe our work expects us to do a certain number of community service hours, or for school where required to for government class, or maybe we’re part of the, Rotary. And Rotary requires a certain amount of money and a certain number of meals served and given and hours spent in service. Maybe we align with a certain political party or certain other social group, or certain religious denomination that expects service to be core to who we are. But those are all still just surface reasons for why someone would stop.
Because the bottom line is the number one reason why we should stop is because it is the very foundational tenet of our identity. Because we are made in the image of God and stopping to help the less fortunate is loving them. And we already know this is where my sermon started digressing. Who is our neighbor? Well, the answer is everyone. We know that our neighbor is everyone, and we are called to love everyone. And it is because we are made in the image of God with God’s own breath, creating us that makes us stop for those less fortunate, for those who need our neighbor.
I saw an interesting commentary, literally like multiple pages, about the use of a comma versus a semicolon between the phrases you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. Because the argument is that’s not two separate statements. That is the same statement. Love God by loving your neighbor, by loving God, by loving your neighbor, etc., etc., etc. and of course, add in loving yourself because that’s that last little bit. You have to love yourself as well.
So we are called to love God and to love our neighbor, neighbor being everyone. We are called to do that because it is in the very fabric of our being, because God wants it for us and does it to us. We are loved, we are lovable, and we love.
So maybe the next time you see someone on the side of the road, you won’t stop. And that’s okay, I probably won’t. I’ll totally own that.
But maybe when you think of the neighbor, maybe you know them. Maybe you like them, maybe you don’t. That’s okay. At least love them. Just as God loves each of us.
Amen. Amen.