Who is My Neighbor?

Address given by Rep. Stan Moody, Ph.D., at the Christians for Justice Conference
October 23, 2005 in Waterville, Maine.

I want to begin this evening by saying that in a lifetime of working out my own salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12), I have never witnessed a more defining moment for the Church of Jesus Christ in Maine.
 

Those of us who minister among what is commonly called the Frozen Chosen ought to be grateful this evening for this very public attempt by the so-called Christian Right to ratify discrimination into law by denying to others certain basic Constitutional rights.

For in the sense that iron sharpens iron, what is on the hearts and minds of every thinking Mainer tonight is the fundamental question: What do I believe?

So I come here tonight with a thankful heart - thankful for the opportunity not only to share my thoughts and beliefs with you as both a pastor and a legislator, but thankful for such a clear and defining moment for the church.

A few days ago, I read a quote by a Baptist minister and leader in the YES on One initiative.

Now I must confess that I dont know the context of that quote, but having said that, I cant imagine any context that would redeem the statement. It was, If we dont discriminate, Maine will degenerate.

I am shocked by such a statement from the pastor of a very successful evangelical church. Not only does he presume to speak for God, but his words strip God of His sovereign power and grace. He puts to the lie the question raised by the Prophet Isaiah, Who can know the mind of God, or who has been his counselor?

That statement strikes at the heart of the Gospel that defines for us, Who is God? and Who is my neighbor?

Is the God I worship sovereign? Can I handpick my neighbor, or must I love the neighbor I am given?

I believe that the question Who is my neighbor stands at the threshold of Christian faith and practice. I want to walk you through some familiar Scripture to demonstrate why that question is so relevant to us today.

In the 10th chapter of Lukes Gospel, Jesus runs into a lawyer who wants to have a theological chat. This lawyer enjoys a position of privilege in the church at Jerusalem. Privilege always entitles one to chat on the issues of the day, and lawyers are especially good at chats.

But Jesus is a better debater and eventually leaves the lawyer and you and me speechless. He demolishes our ideas of what is good and what is evil and points out that often we encourage evil in our attempts to be good.

This lawyer begins his intimate chat with Jesus by asking Him, Rabbi, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

This is coming from a man who was quite confident already that he was OK with God. As a matter of fact, eternal life was not on his radar screen, but since it was the pivotal message of the ministry of Jesus, he poses the question. It is a rhetorical question that has no purpose other than to engage in a chat that might be useful to entrap the good rabbi.

What does the law say; how do you read the law on the subject of eternal life? The lawyer answers correctly: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.

Were on the same page, Jesus tells him. There is no disagreement between you and me on this subject. Do this and you will live.

The most important word in this entire account is the first word of v. 29 - But. But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, And who is my neighbor?

Big mistake! He shouldnt have asked that question. He was doing great up to that point. Now Jesus is about to clean his clock. Because at the root of this mans theology was an insistence on being able to choose which neighbor he wanted to love.

Jesus takes one of the worst possible scenarios from His culture and makes this lawyer come face to face with his racism and his bigotry and his rebellion against God.

His selective love was keeping him from the Kingdom of God and from eternal life.

The question, Who is my neighbor? can be rephrased to ask, How am I to know who I can ignore and marginalize and still squeak my way into heaven?

The answer that Jesus gives him in the parable of the Good Samaritan can be summed up in one sentence: You are to love your neighbor, especially when that neighbor is perceived to be your enemy.

That is the feature that ought to distinguish the Christian life - love of neighbor even when that neighbor is perceived to be your enemy.

And that is where the Church of Jesus Christ in Maine faces its own watershed experience on the eve of the referendum question on November 8.

Whether you believe merely in the moral and ethical teachings of Jesus, or whether you believe in the crucified, risen Lord, the question remains, Who is my neighbor? And the answer is the same.

Whether you are orthodox evangelical, as am I, or a humanist, the question and answer are the same.

But there have always been those within the confessing church who insist on being selective about who they love and who they do not love - to whom they will turn the other cheek, and to whom they may insist on ignoring or pushing back into the closet and out of public view.

Every generation has its declared enemies. Most of the time, those enemies are Bogeymen that we think are going to destroy the status quo of our lives and destroy America and our way of life.

When I was a kid in growing up in rural Maine, there were a lot of those Bogeymen. First Japanese and German Americans were going to help Hitler or the Emperor take over America. So they must be marginalized.

And we have that awful chapter in American history of the Japanese internment, where entire families of loyal American citizens were stripped of their rights, their possessions and their dignity.

America ignored Jesus message, Your neighbor is anyone whom you perceive as being your enemy.

Then there were the Catholics. It was believed that the Catholic agenda was to get into positions of power and make the Pope dictator. That thinking was especially dominant in the Presidential election of 1960. By todays standards, it is an embarrassment.

There were the Communists and the McCarthy hearings on un-American Activities. We were exempted from loving the Communist, so we should strip him of his career and his reputation so he cannot take over our society.

Then there was the black community in the South.

I had the privilege of belonging to a Southern Baptist church in VA when I was attending law school in the turbulent 1960s. Try as I might to get the Southern Baptist Convention to permit people of color merely to attend worship services, they would not budge.

Today, few people think twice about having a black neighbor.

Here in Maine, one of the key issues that dominated the evangelical agenda in the 50s and 60s was Sunday liquor sales. Sunday liquor sales were going to destroy our culture.

Today, we know more about alcoholism and its treatment than ever before in our history. And the founder of AA, Bill Wilson, was a professing Christian.

All of these instances of abuse and bigotry arising out of fear have been at the heart of the theology of the Christian Right who profess to believe that Jesus Christ is Lord but who practice something quite to the contrary.

Today, the Bogeymen against which the Christian Right insists on expending its energies are the abortionists and the homosexuals who, they claim, will destroy our nation.

I have no idea of how in the long run this will play itself out. But if history is any indicator, God will speak to America through a faithful church. And the results will be something quite different from what we might imagine them to be.

The bottom line is that if the confessing church truly loves God with all its heart, soul, strength and mind, we will have no issue with the matter of who is our neighbor or with our neighbors lifestyle. And we will trust God to sort out the lifestyles.

It is when the church begins to doubt the sovereignty of God that it begins to justify itself by handpicking which neighbor it is going to love and which neighbor it chooses to marginalize.

Mere tolerance doesn't cut it. We have to get beyond tolerance.

The very word tolerance suggests putting-up-with. Everybody does that. It comes under the heading of going along in order to get along.

You don't need to get involved to tolerate someone. You just need to pass by on the other side of the road without any harm done. That's not good enough.

I despise the expression, Love the sinner and hate the sin. The practice of all too many Christians today is exactly the opposite. They hate the sinner and love the sin. Hating the sinner is at the root of this business of handpicking the neighbor they want to love. And loving the sin of others keeps them from having to pay attention to their own sin and keeps them in business.

The writer of the Gospel of Luke brings Jesus across the path of John the Baptist, both declaring that the Kingdom of God was at hand.

The presence of the Kingdom is about a radical departure from the way we naturally act and think.

As citizens of the Kingdom of God, we are compelled not only to have a warm feeling of love toward our enemy, but we are propelled into action - to take active steps to ensure that our enemy has the best of everything that we want for ourselves.

In the 10th chapter of Luke, the writer puts Jesus enroute from Galilee to Jerusalem, where He is going to die in order to fulfill the things that were written about Him. On the way, Jesus teaches what is required of a disciple.

They pass through Samaria, where they were subjected to taunting and ridicule. James and John asked Jesus if He wanted them to call fire down from heaven to destroy the taunting Samaritans. They were flexing their new-found spiritual muscles and willing to kill their neighbor.

But Jesus rebuked them because they failed to want for the hated Samaritans the best of what they wanted for themselves.

All the way along this journey to His death in Jerusalem, Jesus is teaching the radical distinctions of what it is to be a disciple: You may be homeless if you follow me…let the spiritually dead bury the dead…no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.

Love of God, you see, requires that service to God and neighbor come first, even before our own creature comforts. There is nothing there about Focus on the Family. Instead, it is all about focus on the Kingdom of God.

The lawyer is not unlike us. We want to know what good things we should do in this life in order to be accepted in the life to come. But his mistake is seeking a casual conversation about the things of God. He is anything but serious about discipleship.

The church today is full of casual conversation about a God whose throne, the Psalmist tells us, is heaven and whose footstool is the earth.

To this lawyer, the Gentile was not his neighbor. His was what is called a homogenous culture - people of the same race and mindset presuming to speak for God. And so Jesus told him this parable of a Jew traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho and being left beaten and naked by robbers and left unattended by that same homogenous culture.

You know the story. Two religious leaders came by. These were people of high standing in the church. They were the moral pillars of society - a priest and a Levite. In all likelihood, they were traveling in the opposite direction, in a hurry to attend to their priestly duties at the Temple.

First came the priest. We are told that the priest saw his wounded brother. And he passed by on the other side of the road.

Then came the Levite. The Levite not only saw him, but he went over close enough to look at him and then crossed the road to the other side.

But the hated Samaritan knew who was his neighbor - anyone who is perceived to be his enemy. And he not only attended to the mans needs, but he put in place a follow-up plan. He not only did the right thing; he became proactive, seeing the right thing through to the end.

Jesus asks the lawyer, Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? The answer was, He who showed mercy.

It is not difficult to understand who are the beaten, robbed, distressed or naked in our culture, is it? Some are there because of circumstances; some may be there because of sheer laziness perhaps; some may be there because of choice; some are there because we have pushed them there with our love the sinner and hate the sin nonsense.

But the Church of Jesus Christ is here for a reason - to address these wrongs and make them right.

The answer to the question, Who is my neighbor? is, Anyone who crosses your path - especially anyone whom you perceive to be your enemy.

The answer to the question, Which of you is a neighbor? is, He who shows mercy.

And the advice that Jesus gives to you and me as we fight the temptation to make our lives safer and freer from discomfort is, Go and do likewise.