Psalm 82

Luke 10:25-37

On Monday my son Kurt treated me to a Father’s Day present. He took me to the Brewers-Cubs game at Miller Park in Milwaukee. I was curious about the new park with its retractable roof and I wanted to see Scott Posednik, last year’s rookie sensation, in person because my son had also given me a bobble-head doll of Number 20 for Father’s Day.

It was quite a game, and the stadium was packed with both Brewers and Cubs fans. In fact when the crowd roared the noise was about equal between the two groups. However, there seemed to be a lot more Cubs hats and shirts than Brewers.

Here we were neighbors. Cheering on our teams and mostly giving good natured kidding to one another during the low scoring game. Some said the atmosphere between Bears and Packer fans would not have been so amiable.

Neighbors. Sometimes we can be pretty good neighbors. And other times we can be very hostile neighbors. Just think of the neighboring Israelis and Palestinians. It was almost that bad in Jesus’ time when the Jews and the Samaritans avoided one another like the plague. Most likely you know the story. Both the Jews and the Samaritans thought they were the "true" followers of Moses. Each group said the other had perverted the faith ---- going back to the time of the Exile some 700 years before Jesus. The Jews worshiped at the Temple in Jerusalem. The Samaritans worshiped at the Temple on Mount Gerizim. The Jews were the urban Southerners. The Samaritans were the rural Northeners. They hated one another.

Then we hear Jesus’ story about the bad neighbor Samaritan who becomes a good neighbor to a wounded Jewish man on the road to Jericho. We have heard this story countless times. If there is one story from the Bible that we know ---- it is this one.

How would you tell the story today? Who are some neighbors to us? People who are different from us, but still live near us? When I was at the Brewers-Cubs game I could not help but notice how many of the Cubs fans were probably of Mexican or other Hispanic origin. But the crowd was overwhelmingly white or light brown in color. Not many black faces.

Well. Do we have some ethnic diversity here? Of course there are the Amish. I like to kid my urban friends about the dense traffic on Highway H when we are dodging Amish buggies by the side of the road. People have told me stories about Amish folks coming to help construct the Evangelical Free Church. Good Samaritains, I suppose.

Another ethnic group which we do have in our area is the Indians. That might be a bit more controversial than the Amish. I’ve heard what I would call prejudiced remarks come from the lips of Central Wisconsin white folks about Central Wisconsin Native American folks.

How about telling the story of a white farmer whose car disabled when a deer hits him near Hatfield? The president of the Neillsville Mnisterial Alliance passes her, but he’s got an important hospital call. Then an Interfaith Caregiver comes along, but she has to get to her next appointment. But an Indian who just got off his shift at the Casino gas station pulls up in his rust bucket, stops, uses some home remedy he learned from his mother, and then takes him to the Hochunk Medical Center. Who was the neighbor? Hmmm.

Or think of this incident related by Lori Rosenkvist, a member of Lutheran Church of Peace in Maplewood, Minnesota, USA

The woman in the hospital bed next to me was elderly, hard of hearing, and spoke a language that was not familiar to me, so my recovery time was either very quiet or very noisy, (depending on whether she was awake or asleep!). A few times, her oldest son waved a greeting to me when he was coming or going. And in the evening, he asked if he might visit with me. He asked how I was doing and we compared notes on health matters. He offered encouragement, surprising sympathy, and spoke gently to me about God’s great love for me, and God’s intentions that I be well. I was surprised at the "God talk" between strangers, and I wondered to myself about his faith story. But as I was building courage to ask, it was time for him to go. "I’ll pray for you," he assured me as he stood to leave. And was gone.

The next morning, he returned as I was waiting for my family to pick me up. He wished me well and again, assured me he would be praying for me. Then he leaned closer and confided quietly, "You know, in this life, we learn satisfaction. And how do we dothat? We don’t look at the one who has more and envy that person. We look at the person who has nothing, and we understand that what we have is enough. You will be fine. Our gracious God will see to that. God, who has 99 names: excellent, marvellous, powerful…. I am a Muslim, did you know?"

In that moment, I was startled to notice that I hadn’t had time to put in front of me any of the filters I have that said "Muslim." In that split second of realization, I wondered about the "rightness" of so many things. Might one share "faith" with a person of a different faith? Might the prayers of a person of another faith actually "work"? These and a dozen other thoughts raced as I calmly replied, "No, I didn’t realize."

In truth, I had wondered earlier about his background. Our language and skin colour differences were ob-vious, but I tried to avoid stereotyping and had only wondered abouthis life story, his journey, his family. Iwondered, if he had begun his con-versation by sharing this faith-name, how differently might I have heard all else that would have followed?

And I recognized how, even in my own life, which I had hoped was mostly free of racism, the judgments still built barriers of fear and mistrust, and made me see a caricature, not a human being.

Yet here was this person right in front of me – uninvited but welcome, offering care and concern with no strings attached, except for the bond of prayer. And I thought to myself that I was blessed indeed to receive the healing offered by this good Samaritan.

Good Samaritan Neighbors in 2004 right here in the great Midwest. Who knows where we will encounter them?

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