SERMON, PROPER 10C, LUKE 25-37

Jesus is complicated. His parables are complicated. Being a disciple is complicated. Professing the Christian faith is complicated.

At times it seems so easy, doesn't it? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind; and love your neighbor as yourself. That's pretty straightforward stuff. But then, as my favorite New Testament professor was fond of saying, "It's more complicated than that."

Like the lawyer, we want to know how to inherit eternal life. Like the lawyer, we instinctively know what to do. Like the lawyer, we try to do the best we can. And like the lawyer, we try to justify ourselves. We try to gain confirmation that we are doing the right thing. So we ask the question, more rhetorical in our mind than anything else, "Who is my neighbor?" knowing full well what the answer is. Or at least we think we know.

In response, Jesus gives us a parable. A traveler was overtaken, robbed, beaten and left for dead. A priest passed him by. So did a Levite. A hated Samaritan finally stopped, cared for him, and took him to a place to recover, incurring all expenses with no eye to repayment. Who was the neighbor?

To us, with our history of hearing this parable so many times in our lives, and even to the lawyer, it's obvious that the correct answer is the Samaritan. The priest was too concerned with his own purity and didn't want to defile himself. Neither could the Levite be bothered -- in the immortal words of Veggie Tales, he was probably "busy, busy, terribly busy . . . " But that, my friends, is overly simplistic.

Imagine, for a minute, a priest. Not just any priest, but your priest. Imagine me in the office working on hymns, the bulletin or the sermon. Imagine me as I make home visitations or my monthly bar rounds.

Besides being your priest, I am a variety of other things. I'm a husband and father. I serve on the city council. I'm on the board for the local food pantry and the college ministry program in Bozeman. I'm a referee and volunteer firefighter.

Now imagine it's 7:45 on a Sunday morning. I don't know what you all are doing, but I'm getting ready to walk out the door and start my work day. Emily needs to be hooked up, I may have to set the altar, put out books and definitely review my sermon.

And then, just as I'm putting on my shoes, imagine my fire department pager goes off asking the fire department to respond to a structure fire somewhere in town. Your priest, on the way to preside at Holy Eucharist, is confronted with a situation in which peoples lives may be in danger. I have a duty to serve this congregation. I have a duty to serve the public safety. If I respond to the fire, I am neglecting my congregation. If I attend service as usual, I will, in effect, be passing by on the other side of the road. Which duty takes precedence?

Or imagine yourself. Imagine you are driving to Butte and you see a car off to the side of the road, its hood up, and a solitary man leaning against the car. Do you stop? Maybe there are some things to consider. Do you have a cell phone? Is it getting a signal? Do you know anything about cars? Are you alone? We've all heard the stories and seen the commercials for movies of the good hearted person who unwittingly stops for the evil motorist.

In that light, neither the priest nor the Levite seems so bad. In fact, the priest and Levite are just like us.

"Who is my neighbor," becomes, "Who am I in the story?" The lawyer asked the question wanting to know who he could claim as a neighbor. We do the same thing. Is our neighbor the person we share a fence with? Or our church community? Or the people of the town? How far are we expected to extend that?

The problem with that thinking is that we see neighbors as objects. People become our neighbor when we choose to give them that title. This is MY neighbor; they belong to ME. And if we don't like them, we don't have to acknowledge them as neighbors.

Jesus complicates things, though. He moves "neighbor" from something we possess to an act we either perform or receive. Being a neighbor means extending and accepting hospitality. If I never invite people to dinner, I'm not very neighborly. If I never accept an invitation, I'm not very neighborly. And on top of all that, we are asked to offer hospitality without any thought to what it will cost us (in terms of time lost and money spent) or with an eye towards repayment.

For those looking to this story about the acceptance of the outsider, this story is less about Samaritans and Jews, whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans, than it is yet another complicated challenge from Jesus to transform our daily life from business as usual to one of radical hospitality.

Who is my neighbor? Maybe the right question to ask ourselves is, "Who am I a neighbor to?"

And then go and do likewise.