WHO is my neighbor?

I had my second Moderna vaccination on Thursday, in a very organized, well-run mass vaccination site two counties away. I was grateful to the volunteers staffing the desks, grateful to the recently-retired pharmacist who cheerfully jabbed my arm, grateful to the medical researchers and production managers and every person along the way from idea to inception to injection. 

This week, while looking forward to that moment on my calendar, I was also listening to news about a COVID outbreak in India. On NPR I heard stories of overwhelmed emergency rooms, listened to a reporter describe the constant sound of sirens in the streets of Mombia. Early in the week there were desperate please for US intervention, then of President Biden's conversation with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the promise to provide oxygen and vaccination production supplies on the same day the US agreed to share up to 60 million doses of AstraZeneca doses with undersupplied countries. 

For me, one of the emotional challenges of this pandemic has been the pressing awareness of great need and of my own inability to help.

There are small things I can do, for family and friends who are struggling, or for groups in need beyond my easy reach. 

But the need has been huge and my reach has been in many ways smaller than usual: I can't have friends bring their kids to spend the weekend. I can't come hang out for the day to give. young mom a break. Of course there are things I can do, ways I engage, yet in the face of huge need, it all seems too small.  

I attend the Church of the Good Samaritan, a congregation that takes seriously the call to be a compassionate neighbor. Our logo is a graphic rendering of a statue that lived for years in the church entry. I walked by it almost daily during the eleven years I worked as youth pastor. That call to be a good samaritan is visceral to me: if you are in pain, I am in pain. I believe with all my heart: we all thrive when we all thrive, and only then. We all rest when we all can rest. Not until then. 

Those values were baked into me long before we landed at the Church of the Good Samaritan. My childhood family was the family in need, four kids and a grandmother who worked for minimum wage, always needing rides, resources, help of any kind. The churches we attended were under-resourced themselves but never failed to pick us up, get us where we needed to go. They provided shelter when we would have been homeless. They made sure we went to camp every summer so our grandmother could work.

Part of the emotional exhaustion of this past year has been the challenge in every direction: neighbors in need everywhere I look.

Who hasn't struggled with anxiety, isolation, fear of illness, grief at the divided political discourse?

Add the complicated challenges around racial justice, unjust policing, inequitable health care, COVID lockdowns colliding with mass incarceration. 

I have always found it a challenge to stay open to the pain of the world without becoming incapacitated by complexity. I'm good at compartmentalizing: putting hard emotions into cupboards in my heart and mind, to consider when the time is right, to hold until there's space to resolve. But what if every cupboard is full? What if every complex emotion is stashed away because there's no way, ever, to resolve them?

In 2016, I wrote about a fractured time and a sermon on the Good Samaritan. Rereading that post this morning, I find it speaks to me. It reminds me of what I've learned since then, and what I still need to learn.

Rather than pull pieces that fit today's context, I'm sharing it here. A sermon to myself. 

In a time like this, tell me: who is my neighbor?

Philando Castile? Worked in the same school cafeteria for thirteen years. Wore his hair in dreadlocks. Pulled over for driving with a broken headlight. Shot four times in the side when he reached for his ID.

Who is my neighbor?

His girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, pleading: “Please don’t let him bleed out. Please.”

Who is my neighbor?

The officer, standing beside the car, watching the bleeding man die. Is he my neighbor too?

I am helpless to help them. Helpless to change the system that they live in. A system that incarcerates one in ten young black men, funds our small cities on petty fines charged to black men driving broken down cars, insists we can all have guns then shoots black men for having them, sends their grieving, angry children to broken, underfunded schools. 

Our rector, Richard Morgan, began the sermon this morning noting that we read Jesus’ parable as instruction: love your neighbor as yourself. Go and do likewise.

But then he gently pried us loose from our normal interpretation: look at the context.

A teacher of the lawyer asks “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus answers with a question: “What does the law say?” 

“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.’” “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

 When my kids were small we had a book called “Who Is My Neighbor?”

The Good Samaritan, Ernst Barlach, Berlin 1919

It wound its way through distant countries, depicting children of every shade, leaning toward a simple conclusion: “A neighbor is someone who needs my help.”

That simple.

That hard.

As Richard humorously suggested, it would really help if we could narrow it down: seven houses to the left, seven to the right.

If my neighbor is a woman in Minnesota slowly losing control as she sees her loved one dying AND my neighbor is a slow moving man in Baton Rouge afraid of going back to prison because he can’t keep up with child support payments AND the grieving communities in Dallas and Orlando AND every man, woman, child oppressed and afflicted by systems so broken and corrupt we’ve lost any hope of change, I quit.

It’s not possible.

Which is, apparently, the point.

I can’t love my neighbor as myself.

Can’t put a dent in it.

Can’t even come close.

As our good rector so gently made clear, WE are not the good Samaritan.

That role belongs to Jesus.

When he told the story, Jesus was on the road to Jerusalem to give his life for every battered, broken, smashed-up sorry soul.

He is the good Samaritan. First, last, only.

If we’re going to find ourselves in the story, it’s as the dying traveler beset by robbers, ignored by the pious leaders hurrying past.

Even so, the parable’s ending doesn’t change: 

Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Go and do likewise.

I’ve been praying back through the tragedies of the week from a different point of view.

I have no solace to offer, no wisdom, no aid.

I am not the good Samaritan. I can’t even picture what that would be. Don’t see a way to help. Don’t even see a way to pray.

But I find myself thinking about the way Jesus became like us.

Took on our form, our sorrow, our humanity.

Chose to identify himself with us.

Chose to love us as himself.

In our prayer of confession, I find myself lingering on the word “we.” 

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent, for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.

We.

Our failure is both singular and corporate. I have not loved.

WE have not loved.

How often we misuse that word we: we want our country back. We want to keep our guns. We want our streets safe. We deserve better.

Sometimes our “we” is national, regional. 

Sometimes it’s tinged with race, class, gender.

Too often it carries a sense of privilege, offense, self-justification, exclusion.

Maybe our first step toward healing is to see that we – all of us, weak, powerful, faithless, full of faith, white, black, citizen, stranger, male, female, other – we are all broken travelers on the side of the road. All helpless, hopeless, in need of care.

We judge too quickly.

We hurry by.

We look for quick fixes, easy answers.

We begrudge what it would cost to set our neighbors on a path toward wholeness.

The Samaritan risked his life, his time, his comfort to take the wounded stranger to shelter.

Leveraged his physical and financial resources to provide care for someone who had no claim on him.

Insisted he would pay whatever needed. The debt would be on him.

We fall so far short. 

Every day. 

In our policies, our practices, our prejudices, our superficial moments of silent prayer.

We have not loved our neighbors as our selves.

We don’t know how.

As I rest again in the words of our confession, I’m reminded that we start with acknowledgement of failure. We start with full repentance, honest sorrow, but we don’t end there. 

As we are healed by God’s mercy, by the kindness of our Good Samaritan, we gain courage and strength to walk in his ways, loving our neighbors as ourselves.

Which of these three do you think was a neighbor?

The one who had mercy.

Go and do likewise.