What did you dream about when you were a kid? You think about it? When I was a kid, I remember I was in third grade and we were at my grandparents house, and my mom called my grandparents to tell, she said, hey, tell Peyton Chad that we're moving. And I immediately burst into tears because I thought that moving meant crazy stuff.
Instead, it was just three blocks down the road. But then I began dreaming of what I feel like every little boy wants. I wanted a best friend who was my next door neighbor. And I had these ideas in my head for so many reasons that that's what happened, that from movies or television, that we're gonna move to three blocks down the road from a neighborhood that's full of children, but I still wanted a best friend next door, like my next door neighbor.
And I was gonna find, he was gonna be my age, maybe a little bit older. He was a little bit older. He was just a little bit cooler than me as well. And so I could kind of be pulled up the ladder a little bit by him.
Instead, we moved to a neighborhood that, it was 14 houses before there was somebody else I went to school with. We moved by my parents for smart and realized that, hey, let's move into a neighborhood of folks or moving out of it for the first time. And we were at the first family with kids to move in there. But you know, neighbors are interesting things.
You ever had good neighbors before? You know, Aussie Osborne, we'd sing her a black Sabbath. Solo career, infamous person. Aussie Osborne says it had best neighbor he ever had with 60s lounge singer Pat Boone.
The two of them were the perfect next door neighbors. Mary Thine, when we lived in Kentucky, it was pretty interesting period. But we called our next door neighbors there the Bumpassus. You know, in the Christmas story, the movie, the leg lamp, everything, the next door, the hillbillies, all the dogs, like our neighbors in Kentucky were the Bumpassus.
There was two houses they had formed like this hillbilly compound with. And there was no grass, it was all concrete. And it was full of motorcycle parts and baby toys and dogs. And so they were the Bumpassus.
I mean, neighbors are an interesting thing about who your perfect neighbors are. But neighbors, all, it could also be kind of a complicated thing. And today we're gonna look at, as we're gonna look at possibly the most famous parable of Jesus. And it's about asking ourselves the question, who is our neighbor?
And I think there's many reasons why this parable is just, is so such a big deal to us. But it's something that we can aspire to. It's a story that we look at, and we find hope in, it's a story that we look at, and we find so much of what in the way we think the world should be. It's also the parable that most people who don't do church, who might not believe in Jesus, who might struggle with the idea of Christianity, this is gonna be a parable that they look at and they up lift and they say, well, this is the standard, right?
And so we're gonna look at this parable today. We're also gonna do it a little bit differently. We've heard me say before that a lot of times, scripture is like an onion, it's like layers, an onion, there's multiple ways that, you know, there's an easy reading, and there's a reading that you can kind of go down a little bit deeper in there. And then when you understand that, there's another layer you can go even deeper from that point.
And today we're gonna do this, we're actually gonna peel back the story three different times and look at how we can continue journeying deeper into the story and perhaps maybe want, that is the reason that we struggle with reaching people for Jesus at times. And so let's open up our Bibles Matthew, Luke chapter 10, the words are gonna scream behind me. If you really wanna follow along, you can go to my foundry.life and a message notes has all the scripture as well. But let's listen to these words in the story of Jesus that he tells us in order for us to learn from it today.
Luke chapter 10 verse 25, this is what it says. One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question, teacher what should I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus replied, what does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?
The man answered, you must love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself. Right Jesus told him, do this and he will live. The man wanted to justify his actions so he asked Jesus and who is my neighbor? Jesus replied with the story, a Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho and he was attacked by bandits.
Then he stripped him of his clothes, beat him up and left him half dead beside the road. By chance a priest came along, but when the man was lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by. A simple assistant or Levite walked over and looked at him lying there, but also passed by on the other side. Then the despised Samaritan came along and when he saw the man he felt compassion for him.
Going over to him the Samaritan soothes his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged him. They put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn where he took care of him. The next day he handed the inn cape to two silver coins telling him to take care of his man. If his bill runs higher than this, I'll pay you the next time I'm here.
Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits? Jesus asked. And the man replied, the one who showed him mercy. And Jesus said yes, now go and do the same.
Now we're familiar with the story of the good Samaritan, but really and truly the story happens inside of this conversation that Jesus happened with his religious leader. He was a scribe, pretty much what he was, he was a church lawyer. His job was to interpret the law of God in case someone was said to be breaking the laws of God inside the Jewish community. And if we can learn a lot about Jesus, we're looking at how he's in conflict with other people.
In this story, the conflict's really interesting. What we see is Jesus is, I mean, he's being set up here. We realize that, but he's honoring the personhood of the scribe this whole time. But the conflict that Jesus has here, he's wanting this man to expand his horizons.
He sees that you get the idea of this, but I don't know if you understand the idea of this. So the man asked you a question, he's trying to catch him in something. Jesus comes back, he actually shows some pretty good conflict theory if people who are into that or if you're in management working, you have to deal with conflict sometimes. He says, he's like, help me understand what you think.
He says, well, how do you read the law? He says, you're an expert in this, the man then replies, well, you love the word you got with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, some deuteronomy. So then you love your neighbor as yourself, it's from what vid, because it's really, truly, these are the two statements that encapsulate just books and books and books of the Bible. The man responded with like Judaism 101.
You love the word you got with everything you have, and then you love your neighbor as yourself. And this is where we find just the tension point here. Because Jesus then asked him, well, what do you think about this? And his response is, well, who is my neighbor?
That's why I really want you to answer for me. Who is my neighbor? This scribe is looking for a loophole. He's trying to find a way to get away with minimum obedience, because he knows what he has a feeling which Jesus is going to say.
Because here's the issue with neighbor. And this idea of neighboring is extremely important in the Old Testament for the Jewish people, because it's about mutual responsibility. It's about me saying, okay, I am to call it to be a good neighbor, a good person to those who I'm in proximity with, those I'm living close to. That means that I'm gonna be responsible for them when they need to help, and then they're gonna be responsible for me when I need to help.
In fact, this entire ethical system of the Old Testament is built up on people taking care of each other. In fact, it's as though that you are automatically defer in preference to your neighbor. So you don't automatically assume they're doing something wrong or they're lying to. You're automatically assuming, oh, they're going above and beyond what is appropriate.
Like, how many of you might have that friend that is so nice to you, it kind of makes you nervous sometimes? Or is that person you run into? And like, is there an ulterior motive here? Cause I'm not used to being people being this nice.
Or I'm not used to people serving me at this level. It's like in the last couple of weeks, like in the chicken sandwich gate with papas and Chick-fil-A, and all the comments about the service you get, like you're not gonna hear my pleasure at papas. Like it unnerves you a little bit, it's almost unnatural. Like that's the way neighboring is supposed to work on the Jewish people.
But the tough point of it is, is neighboring is defined and narrow to them. That you are called to be this type of neighbor to other Jewish people and to the people who are living inside of your boundaries. You're called to go above and beyond for people who are like you. And so in this straw basketball, who is my neighbor?
He's trying to catch to see how Jesus is going to define neighbors. Is he going to define neighbor, narrow? Or is he gonna define neighbor in a big way? So Jesus then tells the story we're familiar with the Good Samaritan.
That's the perfect Sunday school story. I'm pretty sure I heard this in second grade vacation bible school for the first time. Like there's a flannel graph version of it, if you all remember what the flannel graphs were. There's cartoons, if there can be cartoons about a bible story, we can assume that people know it.
So he's on this road, tells the story. There's three groups, there's three people that we meet in this story though, in the Good Samaritan. We meet a priest, we meet a temple assistant, our Oivite, and then we meet the Samaritan man. Now the priest that says, the man was going from, just to the context of the story a little bit too, the man is going from Jerusalem to Jericho.
And he's going down, there's an elevation changes, but 17 miles away from each other, there's an elevation change of around 4,000 feet. Like this road is pretty gnarly. And at one point in time, it's 2,000 years ago, the road narrowed to the point probably about as wide as this room and the cliffs went up about 200 feet on either side. And it's like all sorts of like little hidey holes for people to come out and get you.
Like I think of the Canyon Pass and Fury Road, like just like I can almost go like spaghetti, western music, alongside the man's walking down and to make it even worse in Greek, the name for this particular road was The Way of Blood. Like is that treacherous? Like I've got a sidebar, I've got a list of like heavy metal songs out of the bible and I added The Way of Blood to it this week. I mean, you're setting the tone up, like everything about this and the man gets robbed and beaten and left for dead.
And it's the kind of thing that happens on this, like you take your life in your own hands if you travel this road. So he's laying there, left for dead on the side of the road and the priest comes by, the priest is going the same way he is from Jerusalem to Jericho. It's not uncommon, Jericho was a seed for the priests, like many of the priests who lived in Jericho and they served two weeks a year at the temple. They only really worked two weeks a year, we talked about that a few weeks ago, who would love to have a job, we only worked two weeks a year.
But their whole lifestyle though is set up because in order for them to keep themselves richly pure enough to do their temple duties, it takes them months to get ready for this. But the priest is going home from his temple work. Like he's done, like he has a vacation from super-holiance for a little while before he has to get back to prepare himself for the next year. And part of being richly pure for him to serve at the temple and the way that the priest served at the temple in the presence of God is to not touch things that are dead.
So this priest who's walking by and sees this other Jewish person and chooses to go to the other side of the road and to pass by. But the funny thing is, priests are allowed to break the ritual purity for the sake of saving other Jewish persons life. That's in the Old Testament as well. And he had to pass from holy, the reason he needed to say richly pure was over with for the whole year, but he still chose to go to the other side of the road and to pass by.
Next person comes by as a Levite. Now the Levites were the assistants, they were the same tribe as the priests, but they were from a different family like tree that broke off and they're here and their job was to assist the priest in their ministry at the temple. They used to wait for me to describe like the historical role that the Levites had at the priest, they were like the rotis. Like they literally the ones who had to carry all their junk and set stuff up and chopped the wood and like skin the animals, like their job was to support staff.
And they kept up the same levels of ritual purity. They had the same work schedules while they worked two weeks in the temple year and then they went home and didn't and then had to get themselves richly pure again to come back and work the next two weeks. And so the Levite, same situation to the priest, he walks, he's walking by, he even sees the guy. He goes and walks over, checks things out.
Like you might kick him a little bit, like see what's going on, but then he decides, you know what, I'm not gonna defile myself with this. I'm gonna cross other side of the road, I'm gonna keep on going. And so you see, this story goes on and what you could say is that Jesus, okay, Jesus is about to say something about how the priestly class is broken and whatnot. So a normal Jewish person's gonna come and he's gonna help the man and take care of him.
But no, Jesus is a Samaritan, like this is the worst person that can be imagined. And the quickest way that you can describe what the Samaritans were is that they were ethnically contaminated. The Samaritans were what was left of the northern tribes of Israel. And after the Assyrians came, they hauled off all the royalty in the ruling class and the merchants and the artists, everybody who mattered, they left all the poor people.
And then they moved in other countries, poor people, to inhabit their, it was kind of a strategy of political, like just ruin. Like let's make them, where they can never do anything bad again. Let's destroy their civic life, their economy, their culture, their world, everything. We're gonna move in, all these other cultures.
And they're gonna lose their uniqueness of who they are. So the Samaritans were these Jewish people who held out who had to live there and ended up having to intermarry to stay alive and to survive. And they worship God just as the Jewish people do, but they say they work, but they worship him in a different place. Remember the Jewish people think that God dwells in Jerusalem.
So the Samaritans were ethnically despised, they intermarried, they also worship God in the wrong place. This, just a Samaritan being on the road, that's pretty much only traveled by priests and Levites, going to and from where he's put himself in the worst possible place for him to be. But then he sees this man, scripture says he has compassion on him. His body is physically moved to respond to this person's needs.
And so he goes through the patterns of taking care of him, he puts him on his donkey, he takes him to an inn, he gives the inn, the inn, a keeper to equivalent of two months of wages to take care of him and he says, I'm gonna come back to make sure everything's good. I'm willing to be responsible for this person, that Jesus closes the story off and said, so who is a neighbor to the man in need? And this is described, he couldn't even bear to even say, he was so mad at this, he realized how much he'd been called out by even asking the question. He couldn't even say the Samaritan, he just said the one who showed mercy.
And then Jesus calls out to go and do the same thing, to go and to show mercy. So there's three layers of depth to this story, I wanna still look at this one. The first one is probably pretty similar to what our kids are talking about over in Foundry Kids this morning. So I'm gonna use a little bit different language because I call this first layer of the Good Samaritan story, don't be a jerk.
It's gonna be a jerk. It's probably other words we could use instead of jerk too for that, but don't be a jerk. Show compassion for people, even those that you're different from, different means different things. Show compassion, it's a basic human response.
God calls us to be compassionate people. The problem here was that this religious leaders and the priests and the Levite, that they weren't even willing to go beyond their religious restrictions. They felt that they pretty much weighed out, and taking care of somebody is not worth as much as me doing what the law allows me to Jesus actually brings this up in the sermon on the Mount, which is kind of like the total of Jesus' ethic is in the sermon on the Mount, but chapter five, it reads this, you have heard the law that says, love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say to you, love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you, and that way you'll be acting as true children of your father in heaven, where he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends the rain on the just and the unjust alike.
If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you're only kind to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that, but you were to be perfect.
Even as your father in heaven is perfect. Not just to worry about people who are like you. Like that's not that admirable is it? But Jesus calling folks is to a higher level of responsibility for each other.
Because that's the thing, the beautiful way that God designed our world to work, the beautiful way that God designed you and I to relate to each other is one of mutual responsibility. It's one of us saying that I'm willing to take care of you, because I know I might need you to take care of me. This beautiful design God has in this world, and instead this priest and this Levite, they reduce it to the middle school cafeteria. I say, no, I'm not willing to bank my reputation on you.
I'm not willing to bank my safety, my security, my good standing on you. I said, yeah, you're just not worth it. Jesus, love your neighbor as yourself. Don't be a jerk.
Only being a neighbor to people who are like you is being a jerk. The second layer of this onion that we kind of peel back and we build off of that is this. It's to love others. And here's the tension point here.
Like you might say, I can't get this in the Bible and I'm in the front with this, but I don't want to love somebody I don't agree with. That's really hard. I find that difficult. But here's the thing, where do we feel like we have to automatically agree with somebody to love them?
And there's Samaritan in the way that he acted towards this Jewish person. It never said that he agreed with him. It never said that he was a sympathizer or anything like that. He said, he had a physical response to him being in need and said, I'm willing to help you with this need in that moment.
Now mutual responsibility, the way that God designed this to be, it's a safety net. It's what it is. It's a, in case of really bad things happen to me, there are people mind neighbors are willing to take responsibility from me, are willing to watch over me, are willing to protect me, are willing to make sure I'm safe. And the story with Jesus shows us is that our responsibility is followers of God, that if we understand the love of God, I want to share the love of God, that means that we extend the benefits of neighboring to other people, whether or not they will ever reciprocate the benefits of neighboring to us.
That we remove ourselves from a system of credit and debit with that person. We realize, you know, my responsibility right now is to take care of their needs, is to show them this love. It's us saying, I feel safe enough right now for me to extend my safety to you. I'm sharing with you my safety net.
I'm going to take care of you and your moment of need. Matthew chapter seven, back into the sermon on the Mount. Jesus says, this isn't me familiar. Due to others, whatever you would like them to do to you, this is the essence of all that is taught in the law and prophets.
The same thing the man asked Jesus, he said, love the word your God, our heart's soul mind and strength, they love your neighbor as yourself, it's the essence of the law and prophets. Due to others, whatever you would have them do to you. It's going to put this in 21st century language. I really think that what this is asking us is, as us having a posture to say to people, I want your life to be as awesome as I want my life to be.
This is not just about defense. This is not just about not getting revenge or negative situations and connotations. This is about us being willing to interject positivity in the life of someone else. And at the same level that we hope to see it in our own lives.
I want your life to be as awesome as I want my life to be. The last layer that we can build off of only when we kind of dig into this is what the priests and what the we by we're not willing to do. It's for us to be willing to be called unclean for other people. And the priests and we by that I can't risk my standing for you, you're not worth it.
It's about us saying, you know, I'm not looking for minimal obedience, I'm looking for total obedience. And my response to you right now is whatever you need, I'm willing to do. I'm willing to risk my own safety for you. Is this whole purity favored by God, holiness matrix at the priests and the Levite supposedly had your, it collapsed in the story.
They weren't willing to follow the law to the full extent because they were terrified they would be called unclean. In our own life and our own culture, our own workspaces, our own schools and the social spaces that we inhabit, there's a version of unclean that every one of us can risk, right? We know what it means to not belong. Being willing to be called unclean for someone else is us saying, hey, I'm willing to risk my own sense of belonging for you.
Because I know this is what's right. There's an interesting just kind of repetition in this passage if we look at it and this one or let's go through three quick verses as we wrap this up. But verse 25, it says this to us. So one day an expert and we just lost up to Jesus asking, by asking this question, teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?
Just a few verses later, we read this. Right, Jesus told him do this and you will live. Then the last verse, verse 38, we read this. The man replied, the one who showed a mercy and Jesus said, yes, now go and do the same.
We cannot encounter this story without realizing it's calling us to action. This is not just metaphor. This is not just a good feeling. This story is about physical action in our life.
If we love God fully with all our heart and soul in our mind and strength, then the natural after effect will be us loving our neighbor as ourself. Will be us loving others as God loves us. What part of this makes us think about is that our response to our understanding of the love of God will be the love of God that we show. If we've only minimally accepted and understood and lived in the love of God, then we're probably only going to show a minimum amount of love to other people.
We seek to love the water God, our heart and our soul and our mind and our strength. It's the entire metaphysical makeup of a human. To the fullest extent we have processed the love of God, we will be able to share that love with other people. This is the thing I've been thinking about this story over the last couple of weeks.
I said this earlier. Would you all not say this is probably the most common parable? This story is just part of our own cultural framework for morality. And the thing that I've been thinking about in this story is thinking about people that have a hard time with Jesus, that have a hard time with church.
And knowing that this is what's lifted up is the ethic of what Christians should be doing, how we should be behaving. But so many times we stop it. It's step one, we stop it not being a jerk. We're like, I'm not mean to people.
I'm doing good. I keep my head down, I stay in my lane, and I'm not a jerk. I'm all right. What if the reason that people who don't know Jesus going to this parable so much is they're saying, I need people to act like this, and you claim to believe this, and you don't act like this.
Like, I need a neighbor in my life, and what I'm used to is you unneighboring me. What if people who don't know Jesus, all they need is people who are willing to become unclean to be alongside of them? To not live into their culture, but to say, I'm going to love you so much that I can stand beside you. I can pour all in wine on your wounds.
I will put you up on my own meal. I will carry you to an end, and I will take care of you with no expectation of you being responsible for me. What if that's what the world actually needs from us? And if not being a jerk is only going halfway.
Jesus asked the man, who's a neighbor? He said, the one who showed mercy. He said, go and do likewise. Go show mercy.
Go love others with the level that God has loved. Let's pray together. Father, we all have our own stories of love. We have our own stories of disappointment.
And what we pray for inside of those is us saying, instead, God, we just want to simply share what we have comprehended. Lord, we want to trust beyond the level of our comprehension. We want to have a hope that goes beyond our own levels of being comfortable. God, we desire your mercy and our lives.
And we desire to be the ones that show and share mercy. And it's your holy and precious name we pray. Let's stand and sing together today.