Theological Truth: Our neighbors are not those who look like us, live by us, or are close to us. Our neighbors are those in need of mercy.
Come Holy Spirit and kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your spirit and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth. Amen.
The legendary children’s television host and iconic good neighbor, Mr. Rogers, learned a way of coping with fear and confusion. He said that as a child, when he saw scary things on television, his mom told him to “look for the helpers.” She said, “You will always find people helping.” By intentionally noticing them, we remind ourselves that not only is help available, but because of the constant presence of helpers, there is also hope.
The heartbreaking flash floods in the Texas hill country have sent me looking for the helpers.
- In the fearsome power of that flash flooding…
- In the confusing tragedy of the staggering death toll…
- In the unfathomable loss of so many children…
- In the daunting and dawning realization that these types of weather events are becoming more and more common….
Look for the helpers. That remains good advice for us in scary and confusing times. Or better yet, be the helpers. Mr. Rogers was on to something. He knew that being a good neighbor meant being a willing helper, or as Jesus might say, a minister of mercy.
What will we, as people of faith and followers of Jesus, do? Will we turn our backs, or turn on one other? Will we look away, or look for someone to blame? There will eventually come a time to examine what could have been done to mitigate the disaster. But for now, look for the helpers. They’re out there. The rookie Coast Guard rescue-swimmer who gave up his seat in the helicopter so that people could be evacuated more quickly. The brothers who relentlessly searched for their elderly parents. The owner of Camp Mystic who lost his own life trying to save his campers. The helpers are out there. They’re the ones thinking of others rather than themselves. They’re the ones showing mercy.
Showing mercy is what neighbor love is all about. Jesus teaches the lawyer in today’s Gospel about this essential connection between loving our neighbors and showing mercy, but only after the lawyer asks Jesus two questions (neither of which Jesus answers!). To his first question of “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds with questions of his own, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?”
The lawyer knows his stuff. He passes the bar and makes Law Review with an amazing answer. He combines the most famous Hebrew Scripture, known as the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:4: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind (and adds “all your strength”) to a lesser-known command from Leviticus 19:18: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” He knows all about the law, but that’s not enough…in the same way that knowing about God is nowhere near as important as knowing God. He knows the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the law. To paraphrase our opening collect, he knows what he ought to do, but he lacks the grace to do it.
And so, he asks a follow up question…he needs some assurance that he’s “done enough” to inherit eternal life. And so, “wanting to justify himself,” he asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” Again, Jesus doesn’t answer directly. Instead of a definition, he (and we) get this beloved story telling us what neighbors are like, not where they are located. The lawyer wanted some clarity about who his neighbor was, Jesus tells him (and us) what a neighbor does: a neighbor shows mercy.
This way of fulfilling the command to love our neighbors simultaneously simplifies things for us while also making them infinitely more challenging. We no longer get to choose who our neighbor is by setting a carefully prescribed radius around ourselves. We can’t check their worthiness, or validate their proximity, or determine their status and then…maybe…assuming they meet our criteria…dole out a little bit of obligatory assistance. That’s not the way the story goes. Who was a neighbor to the person in need? The one who showed mercy. The one least likely to show mercy—a Samaritan. The one who didn’t ask what might happen to him if he stopped, but asked what might happen to that vulnerable, abandoned person on the side of the road if he didn’t stop? (Credit to The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.)
Our job isn’t to ask, “Who is my neighbor?” Our work is to seek out those in need of mercy. It’s not a question of who are “they,” but who and how are we to be in this world. We are not merely religious performance artists looking to collect the required “I-helped-my-neighbor” badge. We are people saved by Grace and astonished by the mercy of God shown to us in Christ Jesus. We are that person left in the ditch to die. We have been picked up, tended to, cared for, placed on someone else’s animal, and brought to a hospital (without id or health insurance!). God has stayed by our side, never given up on us, paid our bill, and promised to come back and finish the job. What is asked of us in return? Go and do likewise. Having received mercy, we are called to be ministers of mercy.
Which leads me to a slightly uncomfortable, yet impossible to ignore, situation confronting our country. Our neighbors from Honduras, Venezuela, Guatemala, Haiti, to name only a few, are being taken from the side of the road, stripped of their rights, abandoned into purposefully inhumane captivity and deported to random countries. They are isolated and alone, cut off from their families and communities. Their lives are in danger.
In these scary times, look for the helpers:
- The people handing out water and clothing at the border.
- The voters calling their representatives and saying this is out of hand.
- The lawyers and judges making sure that the rule of law is followed.
They are more than helpers. They are ministers of mercy.
I know, I know. There are limits on how many people can live here. Consequences are required when laws are broken. Our system for dealing with immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers is complicated and nuanced…and broken. I get that. Let’s fix it while showing mercy. The question isn’t, “Are they our neighbors?” The question is, “Are we being neighbors to them?” Are we showing them mercy? Jesus’ words to us are clear: Go and do likewise.
