May I speak and may you hear in the name of the one God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
"Who is my neighbour?"
I'm going to tell you a true story which I recently heard. It was told by a Christian lady who was a young woman during the second world war. She lived in the city of Manchester during the worst periods of bombing in the early 1940s. One night, when she and her family were hiding in the air raid shelter at the bottom of the garden, her house was the victim of a direct hit. It was reduced, instantly, to a pile of rubble. The young woman was devastated to see her house destroyed by the enemy. From that day she hated the Germans more than she had ever hated them before. She swore that she could never forgive them for the destruction they had caused; for their evil devastation of the lives of ordinary people.
A few years later this lady became severely ill, and through her church she agreed to accept prayer with the laying on of hands. When those hands arrived they were the hands of a German woman. Later in the week, two more ladies came to visit her to lay on hands and pray for healing; one of those women was a German. The woman who told the story said, "I never thought I would ever hug a German, but I did." Who was this woman's neighbour? Well, she would never have anticipated it, but those two Germans, her natural enemies, were her neighbours.
"Who is my neighbour?"
When Jesus is asked this question by a Jewish lawyer, he replies - as he so often did - in a parable. Had we been there at that moment, and had we been asked by some bystander to predict the kind of story Jesus might have told in response, we might well have predicted a parable about a good Jewish man who, on his travels, encounters somebody who has been beaten up and left by the side of the road. The Jewish man, being faithful to God's law, would bend down to him, bandage his wounds, put him on his animal and take him to the next inn where he would pay for him to be looked after. The story, had it been told this way, would have been given added weight if the man in need was a well-known enemy, perhaps even a Samaritan. The good Jewish man would take care of him in spite of the fact that he was his enemy. And this story would teach the people that, if they are to be followers of God's law, they must be prepared to help even those whom they would not naturally help. That would have been quite a good story.
But Jesus does not tell that story. Instead he turns it completely around, no doubt surprising everybody. You see, in Jesus' story it is the Jew who is the one in need. He has, admittedly, been rather foolish; the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a dangerous one. It covered a distance of seventeen miles and represented a descent from about two-and-a-half thousand feet above sea level to about eight hundred feet below sea level. It ran through rocky desert country; hence it was the ideal place for robbers to attack defenceless travellers. This poor man has fallen victim to such an assault.
Then what happens? Well, two people pass by. Each of them should have stopped to help, but neither does. Both of them are, let's say, 'good' men; the first a priest, the second a Levite. But both of them pass by on the other side. And the one who does stop is not a Jew but a Gentile - and not just a Gentile but the worst kind of Gentile: a Samaritan. Now, Samaritans, as you know, were generally hated by Jews. They were, if you like, half-bloods; a mixed race resulting from the intermarriage of Israelites (left behind when the northern kingdom was exiled) and Gentiles (brought into the land by the Assyrians). There had been grave disagreement, between the Jews and the Samaritans, over questions of how and where to worship, dating back centuries before Christ. And yet here, in a Samaritan, we have the perfect example of Jesus' teaching. And the Jew is not the one offering help but the one receiving it.
The lady who lost her house in Manchester during the blitz - the one who said she would never forgive the Germans - it was only when she had to receive help from a German that she was able, truly, to love her neighbour. When she was ill, in receiving prayer from one who was her natural enemy, she was in fact putting herself in the position of the Jewish man, lying there, injured on the Jericho road. She was the Germans' neighbours, and they, of course, were hers.
"Who is my neighbour?"
I wonder if any of you have read any of those wonderful little essays by G.K. Chesterton? I've recently been enjoying them, and in one of these, Chesterton addresses this very question. He writes, 'We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour. Hence our neighbour comes to us clad in all the careless terrors of nature; he is as strange as the stars, as reckless and indifferent as the rain. He is Man, the most terrible of all the beasts.'
This is why, Chesterton explains, the Bible shows such wisdom when it speaks not of one's duty towards humanity, but one's duty towards one's neighbour. We're not called to our neighbour because he has necessarily done anything good to us, or because we have made a special effort to visit him. No, Chesterton writes: 'We have to love our neighbour because he is there - a much more alarming reason for a much more serious operation. Our neighbour is the sample of humanity which is actually given us. Precisely because he may be anybody he is everybody. He is a symbol because he is an accident.'
Many hundreds of years ago a monk by the name of Aldwyn began to build a Benedictine priory in the wild forest that clothed the eastern slopes of the Malvern Hills. Nine-hundred and twenty-five years later, here we are sitting inside it, and today is St Benedict's day. St Benedict founded his monastery many years earlier, and his famous 'rule' - which was applied almost universally in Western monasticism - was completed around the year 525. St Benedict ran his community strictly and in accordance with the biblical teaching on loving God and loving one's neighbour. His 'rule' is quite extensive, and in the middle of it he emphasises the importance of hospitality in the name of Christ. It is sadly ironic, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, that the very people who should have offered help to the injured man are the ones who pass by on the other side.
St Benedict, therefore, writes this: 'Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ, for He is going to say, "I came as a guest, and you received Me" (words there from St Matthew's gospel) - And to all let due honour be shown, especially in the reception of the poor and of pilgrims. To them the greatest care and solicitude should be shown, because it is especially in them that Christ is received.'
'It is especially in them that Christ is received,' says St Benedict. You see, it is in serving others - and therefore in receiving from others - that we receive the Lord himself. Those pilgrims and the poor who visited the monks here in the Priory, could - and would - have been anybody. As Mr Chesterton would have said, they were the monks' neighbours simply because they were there. The Bible teaches us to love our neighbour. Why? Because God loved us first. He loved us not because we had done anything to deserve his love, but simply because we were there. Or, more to the point, because we are his.
Two thousand years ago, God came to us in Jesus Christ. In the words of St John, 'He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.' And yet, Jesus loved these people precisely because they were his; he preached good news to them, he healed them and ultimately he died for them on a cross. And that means us. So John continues, 'But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.' You see, we cannot earn our Lord's offering on the cross. He merely invites us to receive it. For, as Jesus himself says, 'the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.'
So this evening, as we go forward to the Lord's table, we go to receive him in the bread and the wine. Jesus calls us to receive him just as we are. Perhaps some of us are lying there, injured on the Jericho road. Perhaps some good folks have passed by on the other side. Jesus does not pass us by. He bends down to us as a servant; he bandages our wounds, he picks us up and takes us to his heavenly inn and there he looks after us. And as we receive Christ, so we receive one another, in his name.
So, "Who is my neighbour?"
Your neighbour is right there in front of you; today, tomorrow, wherever you go, wherever you stay. And when you need help, the neighbour who comes might be a Samaritan, or a German. If we are to love our neighbours we must learn to receive from them, just as we must learn to receive the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is in his name that we love our neighbour; and it is in his name that we ourselves are loved. Amen.
Peter Edwards
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