"Who Is My Neighbour?" Is the Wrong Question ----- PENT 8C-2016

It has been quite a week with racially motivated gun violence in Minnesota, Louisiana, Texas.

A week where the words of today’s Gospel pierce the fabric of our lives. Despite having heard this Gospel and knowing it well enough we could tell the story to someone else, it is heard differently today.  It is applicable!

Society’s systemic racism slapped our faces this week, and is addressed by the lawyers question this morning, “who is my neighbour?”  Although the shootings were in the United States, and we might try to justify “our society” or institutions, as not as bad --- systemic racism is very much alive in Canada as it is around the world.

When I hear news after news report where anything but neighbourliness is articulated, I get nervous, angry, depressed; shaking my head and wondering where is this leading us; when I see videos of 13 yr olds able to buy guns while refused lottery scratch cards – darkness settles; when prospective world leaders spout hate or advocate the breaking of relationships – darkness settles; when I consider the 65.3 million refugees needing to find a place to live – darkness settles in; when I hear my community at Resurrection church speak negatively of Muslims, those needing social assistance, referring to foreigners, denigrating First Nation’s people, street people, or Halifax’s African Canadian community – attributing the ills of current society on them- darkness settles in.

Darkness settling in brings to mind the fictitious city of Gotham. Perhaps you have seen this show on TV or read the comics years ago. Gotham is the place where a young Master Bruce is growing up; after experiencing the murder of his parents, he seeks justice. This is the story of Bruce Wayne’s evolution to becoming Batman.   Gotham is a city that is dark.  It is as if a black dust has covered the buildings, a grime is stuck to the streets. The sky looks grey, the river cold.  People are sad and isolate from each other; mental illness is on the rise, and the asylum (part prison, part treatment centre, part experimental lab) holds inmates and takes crazy to a monster level. Fear is everywhere, as mobs control the happenings within the city. The police are corrupt and politicians care only about themselves. The landscape, the city, the institutions, and the people have been smothered. There is no hope.  The thick fog of hopelessness is stifling. 

Helmut Thielicke, post-WWII pastor and preacher in Hamburg, Germany, spoke to a world that had been turned upside down and inside out. Post-war reality slapped him, and everyone, in the face weekly: the dance of peoples (of neighbours or not neighbours) --- those who found jobs, those who had lost their homes, the disenfranchised and needing social assistance, the displaced, varying politics, degrees of guilt, a wall built to separate. What could be seen as the ideal question in the chaos of post-war reality, “Who is my neighbour?” is not the question that Thielicke preached on.

Rather, to his society – Lutheran people gathering to find hope for survival – he chooses in one of his sermons on the parable of the Good Samaritan to spend time unpacking not the parable, but, on the lawyer who asked the question. Sure of himself the lawyer enters into an encounter with Jesus, coming to put Jesus to the test.  The lawyer, thinking, he had a question that would justify the way he was living life (we all like to justify our actions or inactions), soon finds out that he begins with the wrong question, “Who is my neighbour?”

 Jesus quickly halts the question, when in telling the parable, the story reverses the question, and asks, “to whom am I neighbour?”  Thielicke preached that the question, “who is my neighbour?” is the very question the devil wants people to ask because in asking it, “the neighbour” becomes an intellectual exercise and action doesn’t happen.  The parable ends --- after having tackled the prejudices of that day --- stressing action: “go and do!”

In the thick fog of hopelessness, in Gotham, there remains a remnant of possibility for a brighter future—there are a few with hearts focused on doing good. On seeking justice. On doing what is right.  At times their morals are tested; at times they act other than their ethics have dictated, to serve the greater good in the long run.  The characters – a cop, a boy, a butler- are actively working to clean up the city.  It means befriending the crazy, the ex-wife, the mob leaders, the dregs of society, the mayor, the girl who lives on the street.  The actions taken by the cop, the boy, the butler cross all lines.  If they stopped to ask “who is my neighbour?” “who can I trust?” the evil would win and nothing would be done.  Better to act and fail, than not to have acted at all.

There is a little bit of the lawyer in all of us.

We ask the question, “Who is my neighbour?” We ask, every time we talk about another group of people as “them” or “they” or “those” people.  We ask, every time we look away, turning our eyes as if we do not see the hurt in those around us.  We ask, every time we justify ourselves by saying we have done enough or given enough, or excuse ourselves from action for any reason.  We ask, with each derogatory comment, joke, racial slur or thought about someone else’s character.

There is a little bit of the lawyer in all of us.

When we hear the reversal, “to whom am I neighbour?” There is a sinking of heart as the realization is articulated that although we can talk about being neighbour, we fail at the application. 

Gotham, in years to come, when Bruce Wayne becomes Batman, the world seems to have a saviour.  A light is shone in the skies as a beacon of hope. To get to this point the TV series explores what was needed to grow a super hero.: Batman didn’t just happen.  There was a small group of individuals who formed community, at times working together and supporting each other.  They were a group who chose not looked away from the problems of society and chose to neighbour one person at a time.

In the movie, Martian, the main character played by Matt Daimon, is left on Mars as the rest of the space team left the planet thinking him dead. A deadly storm had come along and the danger made the team leave, Matt had been hurt in the process.  He wakes up, alone.  It could have been hopeless- running out of water, food, air – on a planet that had none of these things; he could freeze to death; there was no chance of a returning space craft for years; no way to communicate immediately.  In his reflection of the event, what kept him alive, what produced hope – was, although knowing the big picture and the desperation of the situation, was to focus on solving one problem at a time; an immediate problem, then the next, the next, and so on.

This is what it is to live the reversal of the lawyer’s question, to live out “to whom am I neighbour?”  It is about, “go and do likewise,” be a neighbour to the first person you meet, the second, the third, and so on.  One at a time.  This is hope.

C.S. Lewis provides a great illustration: “It is the difference between paint, which is merely laid on the surface and dye or stain which seeps right through.”  Paint is what the lawyer wanted to use.  He applied the law in ways he saw fit, ways that required the least effort, and in a way to make his life neat and tidy. He looked put together and shiny.  He fulfilled the law and was able to live with the amenities and status he desired.  Jesus asks that the law be applied like stain, seeping right through. This means change and getting messy.  It means the law is a love and hope that comes from the inside out; a neighbourliness that is conditioned by constant eye-control --- looking for eye-contact in places where darkness has seeped in.

Lewis also wrote: “It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present.  And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”

There is a little bit of the lawyer in us all.

The law sounds easy.  The story of the parable of the Good Samaritan sounds easy ---

until it slaps us on the face ---- “TO WHOM” --- are you a neighbour? Not who is your neighbour 

or who treats you as a neighbour, or sees you as a neighbour? ---TO WHOM are you are neighbour?

This isn’t an in your head question, it is an action, “Go and do likewise, “ Jesus commands.

Being nice, being good – is being an egg. If we remain but nice and good, we will go bad.  We are to “go and do,” this is hatching --- so that flight is possible.  It is taking on darkness, entering the dark corners and facing one person at a time, until the big problems of the world have the black soot washed off enough for the hope, held by a remnant -us- to be passed on.

My prayer is that in this place your hearts are stained with grace, that you are changed so that you never ask again, “who is my neighbour?” My hope is that you hatch so that flight is possible – no longer being nice and good – rather, “going and doing” because that is who you are, with bold words displayed in your sight “TO WHOM.” This is the purpose of your life.

…God may this come true….to Whom be given glory and honour forever and ever. Amen.