I’m not much of a sermon series kind of preacher, but today is part three of a series of sermons we began two weeks ago. We started by looking at the concept of covenant the way God sees it instead of just the way we see it. Last week we talked about listening for God the way God intends to be heard, not just the way we like to hear God speaking to us. And today, with the parable of the Good Samaritan, we examine the difference between looking at each other the way we think is appropriate and comfortable in light of the way God looks at us.

A lawyer asks Jesus, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus, in his usual way, turns the question around, “Well, what does the Law tell you?” The lawyer knows his stuff: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (some versions of the Bible say ‘all your strength’ instead of ‘all your mind’, but it’s the same emphasis), and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus says, “Kudos, my judicially prudent friend. You answered your own question.” But then the lawyer, wanting to justify himself, as the Scripture says, pushes the question, “And who is my neighbor?” Who is my neighbor? It’s a just question for us to ask, right? Who is our neighbor?

Jesus answers that question by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan, and we know the story pretty well. A man is traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho and some guys jump him, rob him, beat him and leave him for dead. A priest passes by the man and does nothing to help him. A Levite does the same, and then a Samaritan passes by and does everything he can to help this guy out: he bandages his wounds, puts him on his mule, takes him to an inn to be cared for, and he even leaves extra money with the innkeeper to assure that the wounded John Smith will continue to receive adequate care. So, based on this story, who is our neighbor? Who are we supposed to love as we love ourselves? The man who was beaten, robbed and left for dead, right? Isn’t he our neighbor? No.

This story is perfect for us today, because it follows our formula of turning the question around. It’s not about how we see things or how we hear things. It’s about how God sees things and about how God speaks to us. And that’s how Jesus responds to the lawyer’s question. By telling a parable, Jesus changes the question itself, and the point is that the good Samaritan is our neighbor. So, we’re supposed to love others who help us out when we’re in bad shape as we love ourselves? Sounds kind of self-absorbed. I’m comfortable with loving people who take selfless care of me as I love myself. I can do that all day. But that’s not Jesus’ point.

Jesus is telling the lawyer, and he’s telling us, that we have to be neighborly in order to be a neighbor. So, when we try to get to the bottom of the commandment that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves by asking the question ‘who is my neighbor’, Jesus says that we have to realize that we are a neighbor. If I’m going to love my neighbor as I love myself, I have to first embrace the fact that I am a neighbor. And that begins by being neighborly.

There might not be a better person to teach us how to be neighborly than Mr. Rogers. He started his children’s show every day by singing that question, “Won’t you be my neighbor?” Couldn’t get the show started without establishing that he wanted you to be his neighbor, and that he wanted to be your neighbor.

Fred Rogers was also a Presbyterian minister, and he had a seminary professor that helped him learn the building blocks of his neighborly theology. His name was Dr. Bill Orr, and he taught systematic theology. But, as Fred Rogers remembers, he didn’t just teach it, he lived it. Bill Orr took Jesus of Nazareth very seriously, and he taught with that same level of sincerity. And one day when it was freezing cold outside, Dr. Orr left with his heavy overcoat on, but he came back to teach his afternoon class without the coat. He’d given it to someone who was cold. One of his students had to ask, “What happened to the coat?” And Dr. Orr said, “Oh, I have another one at home,” and he never spoke of it again. Sounds like Bill Orr knows exactly who his neighbors are without giving it much thought, because he understands that he himself is a neighbor. We become a neighbor by being neighborly. And it starts with us.

It’s funny how loving others starts with how we love ourselves. Being neighborly starts with how I love myself. What Jesus is saying is that we can only love our neighbors to the extent that we love ourselves. Bill Orr was so comfortable in his own shoes that he could offer the coat off his back to a stranger on a winter day without giving it a second thought. How we look in the mirror determines how we will look at our neighbor.

Fred Rogers was midway through seminary and on summer vacation in a small New England town. He found this little chapel on a Sunday morning, so he went inside very excited about his discovery and anxious for the sermon. He says he heard the worst sermon he could have ever imagined that morning. And for Mr. Rogers to say it was a bad sermon means that it was probably pretty terrible. The sermon went against everything he’d learned in seminary about how to preach. He thought, “What a waste of time! What a waste of my time!” But then he looked over to the woman sitting next to him. She had tears in her eyes and she whispered, “He said exactly what I needed to hear.” That poorly crafted sermon ended up being one of Fred Rogers’ greatest life lessons. He had come in judgment that morning, cringing at the details and counting up the faults. But thanks to the preacher and the listener-in-need, Fred Rogers now knows that the space between a person doing his or her best to deliver a message of good news and the needy listener is holy ground. The life lesson for Fred Rogers: be a better neighbor. Be a better neighbor and the holy ground on which you stand can be used by God to bring all of God’s neighbors together in love and service toward each other.

Look at the parable of the Good Samaritan again, and think of the road from Jerusalem to Jericho as holy ground. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho is paved with God’s hopes for humanity, and on that road a crime is committed: thieves beat a man, rob him and leave him for dead. A priest sees this man suffering and does nothing. A Levite sees this man suffering and does nothing. Why? The priest esteems himself as a priest. He loves himself by that vocational standard. He defines himself by his job and his title. And if he loves himself exclusively on the grounds of being a priest, then why should he help this Jew left for dead on some random road between this place and that? The Levite esteems himself as a Levite. When you love yourself based on your religious background or your ethnicity alone, then you can justify leaving someone different from you for dead on the side of the road.

But the Samaritan didn’t think of himself as a Samaritan man or someone belonging to a particular class or someone holding some specific vocation. The Samaritan man thought of himself as a human being. He esteemed himself—he loved himself—on the basis of being a human being. So, the Samaritan didn’t see a Jew on the side of the road who’d been left for dead; he saw a human being in need of help. What choice could this neighbor have traveling on holy ground between Jerusalem and Jericho but to help this neighbor in need?

When I took the course on Kierkegaard this past January at the seminary, there was another course being offered that same week on the African-American Experience in Social Ethics. I would pass by that classroom each morning and peak inside to see a group of students who were male, female, Black, white, young and old, and I wished I could’ve been a fly on the wall in that class. I got my wish one afternoon during our lunch break. I was in the student lounge catching up on reading that I have yet to finish, and two women from that class walked in. One was Black and one was white. They were having a conversation about something that had obviously come up in the class discussion, but their conversation was getting so engaged that they stopped literally two yards from my table and started to really get into it.

The African-American woman said, “I’m having a hard time accepting that white people can come to understand the freedom that is in Christ based on my experience when you can’t even empathize with my perspective.” And the Caucasian woman said, “Well, I’m sorry, but I just don’t know what it’s like to be you, and I’ll never be able to feel what it’s like to be in your shoes.” But the African-American woman said, “I think you can if you try.” “I just don’t think so,” she said, “I’ll never be able to understand you because I’m white and I don’t know what it feels like to be black, to go through all the oppression and social injustice that you deal with on a daily basis.” And then they started for the door of the student lounge, but the African-American woman got in the last word that I would hear before they fell out of earshot. She said, “You may not know what it’s like to be Black, but you know what it’s like to be a human being. Imagine your child being taken from you and there being nothing you could do about it. Imagine a group of people chasing after you with baseball bats with the intent to harm you for no apparent reason. Imagine working harder than a majority of the people all around you but still earning only a fraction of the wages they make. You’ve got to really, really imagine that and understand that for yourself, and then you can see through other people’s eyes, and you can taste the freedom of Christ being so much sweeter and abundant than just something set aside for you alone.”

We may look at ourselves distinctively as Christians, but if we believe what we preach, then we should understand that God does not distinguish us the way we do one from another. If Jesus were to come tell us the parable of the Good Samaritan this morning, I wouldn’t be surprised if instead of using the examples of a priest and a Levite, he might say that the ones who passed by the neighbor in need on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho were a politician and a Christian.

When we love ourselves based on the specifics of who we are: our class, our ethnicity, our religion, our nationality—then we can justify loving or hating pretty much anyone. And when we love ourselves based on something like our nationality for example, then other nationalities will look at themselves based on how we look exclusively inward, and suddenly our neighbors aren’t our neighbors anymore. But if we look at each other as neighbors, then the ground is revealed as the holy ground that it is. When we see one another as neighbors, then the seeds of God’s love start to produce a crop that’s too beautiful for us to harvest for ourselves and to vast to count. When we see one another as neighbors, then that road from Jerusalem to Jericho becomes holy ground, barriers fall down and we meet each other on that road, people of all races, nationalities, creeds, colors, and orientations, and we can finally embrace one another and thank God that we are free; free to live in the love of God and not die in the slavery of indifference.

So, sisters and brothers, do two things, and don’t wait to do them: 1) look at yourself in the mirror and don’t fixate on the mirror. Fixate on you and who you are and love yourself. Love yourself for the unique, gifted, limited, beautiful person and neighbor that you are, and then bask in the freedom you have to love your neighbor as you love yourself. And 2), look at the world as God’s neighborhood and notice the holy ground that is all around you. Holy ground is meant to enhance community and to nurture tolerance and understanding. It’s meant to be a place where God’s will can be done, just like a Samaritan man stopping to help a robbed and wounded Jew. Think of these places as holy ground: College Station, Bryan, Texas A&M University, America, the Borderlands, Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, China, Friends Congregational Church.

As we take up our offering for One Great Hour of Sharing this morning and the general offering for our church here in Brazos County, let’s listen for Jesus’ reminder that we are to love our God with all our heart, soul and mind, and that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. But let’s not forget that we are like that lawyer who had to ask Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” It’s not a sin to ask that question: “Who is my neighbor?” It’s a sin for us to stop trying to find the answer. Amen.