I wonder what happened to being neighborly in this political season. I have observed the political ads over the last few weeks as the parties have ramped up the rhetoric. Each side condemns to other of being off base from the wishes of the people, or the opponent has done some dastardly deed. I know this kind of campaigning is not new. However, it seems especially hateful in this year’s elections. One side calls the President a Nazi or a socialist. The other side calls the Tea Party members wacky and crazy.

Neighborliness has been the victim of this election cycle. We are mired in a great recession with people out of work and instead of working together to get out of this recession; we blame each side of the political issues and stagnate the country’s recovery. Who is my neighbor confounds us as we debate whether an Islamic mosque can be built near ground zero. We are lost in a morass of greed because of healthcare costs and TARP moneys and stimulus funds and what organizations and countries are contributing funds to campaigns. Can we be neighbors to those who truly need help? And how far do we go in giving help?

I guess my father’s sermon from many years ago can still offer some advice. The issue of ‘who is my neighbor’ was so important to him that he gave this sermon on eight different occasions. I sure hope I would be willing to help when seeing a “neighbor” in distress. I haven’t always been so inclined. Read the sermon and let me know what you think.

“True Neighborliness”

One of the best known and most beloved stories in the entire world is that of the Good Samaritan. It is so universally received, not only for its deep teaching of a universal and Godly truth, but also because of its innate simplicity and eternal beauty.

The story is one of character and depth. It begins with a theological controversy and ends in a description of “first aid” as a roadside. It arises in a question of eternal life and ends with a payment of room and board at a hotel.

“Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” was asked by an expert of the Jewish law. The scribe was not laying a trap; rather he was putting the new teacher to the test. Perhaps in self-confidence and conceit he was trying to head our Lord into a debate. It was most disconcerting to have Jesus reply, “What is written in the Law?” “How readest thou?” as if to say, “The law is your profession. You ought to know.” But the scribe was not to be caught short and rallied from the retort and recited smoothly, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God… and thy neighbor as thy self.” Then came the conclusive word: “Continually do that and thou shalt live.”

The scribe was placed in rather a poor light. He appears to have asked a needless question, who sufficient answer was the best known pronouncement of the law in which he was an expert. It was a sorry end to a promising debate. The scribe felt that he must absolve himself in the eyes of the bystanders. He must shoe Jesus that he was not without discernment. Jesus’ reply, as he would demonstrate, was far from conclusive. So ‘desiring to justify himself,” he said, “And who is my neighbor?”

It was a clever thrust, for it impaled Jesus on one of the sharpest questions of His age. The Jews did not regard a Gentile as a neighbor. How would Jesus answer? Was the lowly outcast Samaritan a neighbor? —Was a publican? — Or a sinner? Where did the line run? Jesus had shown strangely enough, a friendship foe the outcast: How would He define a “neighbor?”

So Jesus defined a neighbor in a story which lays its constraint on the conscience of mankind. He lifted the question out of the atmosphere of controversy, since in that atmosphere real questions can never be settled, and set it down — where? — on a dangerous road in Palestine.

“A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.” The road between the two cities would through mountainous country, whose limestone caves offered fine shelter to robber bands that preyed on the travelers. The road became known as the “Bloody Pass.” Many among Jesus’ hearers had traveled it. They listened and saw the “certain man” stripped, beaten and left half dead.

And then the story went on. “By chance a certain priest was going that way.” The chance or coincidence was in the parable, not in the purpose of the Teacher. He was moving with unerring intuition, dissecting with sure fingers the motive so the men. The priest was a fellow Jew and withal a pillar of the Temple. By birth and by sacred calling he was a neighbor to the robbed and wounded man, but he left him to his fate. And in like manner a Levite “… a door keeper in the house of God, a member of the hereditary order from which were chosen the singers in the Temple choirs — a neighbor to the life. Yet he too passed by on the other side.

“But a certain Samaritan —“He was a half breed, of a race which the Jews counted religiously in disrepute and with which they had “no dealings.” But “when he saw him, he was moved with compassion.”

In print the conduct of the priest and Levite seem monstrous, but in the print of our own experience it assumes a different color. Can we be sure that we would never play their part? Perhaps they were too busy with other good works. Perhaps they shrank, as we naturally do, from getting mixed up in such a case. Moreover, it was better to cure injustice at the source; better even if one man’s wounds went untended, to lend voice and influence to secure strong military protection thereafter along the dangerous road. Or how did they know that the victim was not a robber himself, a victim of a feud. There were a hundred good excuses for their callousness. If it was monstrous for them the quench sudden uprising of sympathy, the monstrous mood is very commonplace. Our diffused compassions are not often brought to the focus of actual help in an actual need. We herald the dawn of a new earth more easily than we lend our fingers to binding up present and particular wounds.

“And who is my neighbor?” To ask the question is a condemnation. True neighborliness is not curious to know where boundaries run; it cares little for boundaries as sun and rain care for the contours of our maps.. It seeks not for limits, but for opportunities.

“Who is my neighbor?” Nearness does not make neighborliness, the priest and Levite ere near both by race and by office, and the Samaritan, by race and by office, was remote. People may live, divided only by a narrow wall, and yet not be neighbors. People may live with no intervening wall, and yet not be neighbors. Only the eyes and the spirit of the Samaritan make neighborliness.

“Who is my neighbor?” “I do not know,” Jesus retorts; “But life will reveal him to you. He is not of one class or nation. He is anybody in need. You will find him as you journey. You will come upon him by chance. He is not of this or that religious allegiance; he is not a sinner or a saint. He is not brutish or refined. He is ‘A certain man’ — any man needy at your roadside. The parable goes on to tell us that true neighborliness has three definite qualities.

The neighbor had “insight of sympathy.” He was the only man traveling on the road who really saw the victim of the robbers. The priest and Levite saw a bruised and battered man but they did not see a man made in their own likeness. Rarely do we see people and rarely do we wish to really see them. We are content to look upon the armor we wrap around them to excuse our ignorance or selfishness. We say he is American; he is German,; or a negro. We label them Catholic or Protestant. Rarely does ur sight pierce beyond the accidents of wealth or poverty. Rarely do we discover a human being, one desirous of love, affection, and kindness. Max Mueller has written that to the Greek every foreigner was a barbarian, to the Jew, every alien was a “gentile dog”; and the Mahometan, every stranger was an infidel. Then Jesus came, and erased these condemning titles from the dictionaries of mankind, and wrote in their stead, “brother.” The stricken man was brother to the Samaritan because the stricken man was also human. It si required of a neighbor that he shall pull aside the armor long enough to see “a certain man.”

Then secondly, the model neighbor rendered a “personal service.” It would have been easier to be compassionate by proxy — to have phoned the hospital and have them send out an ambulance. But the Samaritan bound up the wounds with his own hands. He poured in oil and wine. He placed the unfortunate on his own beast. He might have paid toll the customary charities and held himself aloof. He might have sat the committee and directed relief from afar. But in giving help he gave himself.

It would be absurd to speak against any of the organized charities we have in the land. Charity need channels. Unguided pity like unguided water stagnates into a malarial swamp. But the wellspring of neighborliness is personality in the strictest sense of the word — the spirit of the individual. “I may hire a man to do some work, but I can never hire a man to do my work,” said Dwight L. Moody. There must be personal service rendered to have the true spirit of brotherly love. “If I give all my goods to feed the poor and have not love, it profiteth me nothing” — and it profits the poor hardly more. Life demands that we choose a road through life and act the neighbor to those who fall by the wayside.

Then thirdly, the model neighbor rendered a “thorough service.” Beginning to help, he saw it through. Of spasmodic and inadequate relief it has been wittily said that it creates one-half the misery it relieves, but cannot relieve one-half the misery it creates. But the Samaritan’s love was painstaking and complete. He made himself responsible even for the prolongation of help beyond the limits of probable need. “Whatsoever thou spendest more, I, when I come back, will repay thee.” Such love is costly. His beast was weary and his saddle stained with blood, property rights surrendered at the demands of love. His journey was broken and his business errand hindered; profits capitulated to human need. The Samaritan suffered, but he counted the suffering for joy. It was a thorough job done. He did not start something and then leave it half done. He set forth his true character; the quality of which is eternal life.

One thing is to be remembered in all this. The Samaritan spirit is not to be conceived as merely humaneness or as a substitute for religion. True religion in its outworking is neighborliness, and neighborliness in its final implications is religion. A religion which “passes by on the other side” is a mockery, not a faith. “Kindness is enough.” Let him remember rather that Jesus fashioned the parable from the fiber of His own spirit; that Jesus died as a Good Samaritan at the world’s darkest roadside; and that the fountain head of the motive of Jesus is found in that mystic depth from which He said: “I and my father are one.”

“and he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself. And He said unto him. Thou has answered tight: do this and thou shalt live.”

The Reverend Norman Stockwell – Sept. 3, 1944 at Jerome, Gooding, and Shoshone, Idaho. Sept. 16, 1945 at Navy Chapel in Long Beach, California. Aug. 22, 1946 at St. Thomas in Taunton, Massachusetts. Nov. 14, 1948 at Palouse, Washington. June 10, 1956, Aug. 31, 1958, and Aug. 27, 1961 at Twin Falls, Idaho. 

I wonder what happened to being neighborly in this political season. I have observed the political ads over the last few weeks as the parties have ramped up the rhetoric. Each side condemns to other of being off base from the wishes of the people, or the opponent has done some dastardly deed. I know this kind of campaigning is not new. However, it seems especially hateful in this year’s elections. One side calls the President a Nazi or a socialist. The other side calls the Tea Party members wacky and crazy.

Neighborliness has been the victim of this election cycle. We are mired in a great recession with people out of work and instead of working together to get out of this recession; we blame each side of the political issues and stagnate the country’s recovery. Who is my neighbor confounds us as we debate whether an Islamic mosque can be built near ground zero. We are lost in a morass of greed because of healthcare costs and TARP moneys and stimulus funds and what organizations and countries are contributing funds to campaigns. Can we be neighbors to those who truly need help? And how far do we go in giving help?

I guess my father’s sermon from many years ago can still offer some advice. The issue of ‘who is my neighbor’ was so important to him that he gave this sermon on eight different occasions. I sure hope I would be willing to help when seeing a “neighbor” in distress. I haven’t always been so inclined. Read the sermon and let me know what you think.

“True Neighborliness”

One of the best known and most beloved stories in the entire world is that of the Good Samaritan. It is so universally received, not only for its deep teaching of a universal and Godly truth, but also because of its innate simplicity and eternal beauty.

The story is one of character and depth. It begins with a theological controversy and ends in a description of “first aid” as a roadside. It arises in a question of eternal life and ends with a payment of room and board at a hotel.

“Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” was asked by an expert of the Jewish law. The scribe was not laying a trap; rather he was putting the new teacher to the test. Perhaps in self-confidence and conceit he was trying to head our Lord into a debate. It was most disconcerting to have Jesus reply, “What is written in the Law?” “How readest thou?” as if to say, “The law is your profession. You ought to know.” But the scribe was not to be caught short and rallied from the retort and recited smoothly, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God… and thy neighbor as thy self.” Then came the conclusive word: “Continually do that and thou shalt live.”

The scribe was placed in rather a poor light. He appears to have asked a needless question, who sufficient answer was the best known pronouncement of the law in which he was an expert. It was a sorry end to a promising debate. The scribe felt that he must absolve himself in the eyes of the bystanders. He must shoe Jesus that he was not without discernment. Jesus’ reply, as he would demonstrate, was far from conclusive. So ‘desiring to justify himself,” he said, “And who is my neighbor?”

It was a clever thrust, for it impaled Jesus on one of the sharpest questions of His age. The Jews did not regard a Gentile as a neighbor. How would Jesus answer? Was the lowly outcast Samaritan a neighbor? —Was a publican? — Or a sinner? Where did the line run? Jesus had shown strangely enough, a friendship foe the outcast: How would He define a “neighbor?”

So Jesus defined a neighbor in a story which lays its constraint on the conscience of mankind. He lifted the question out of the atmosphere of controversy, since in that atmosphere real questions can never be settled, and set it down — where? — on a dangerous road in Palestine.

“A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.” The road between the two cities would through mountainous country, whose limestone caves offered fine shelter to robber bands that preyed on the travelers. The road became known as the “Bloody Pass.” Many among Jesus’ hearers had traveled it. They listened and saw the “certain man” stripped, beaten and left half dead.

And then the story went on. “By chance a certain priest was going that way.” The chance or coincidence was in the parable, not in the purpose of the Teacher. He was moving with unerring intuition, dissecting with sure fingers the motive so the men. The priest was a fellow Jew and withal a pillar of the Temple. By birth and by sacred calling he was a neighbor to the robbed and wounded man, but he left him to his fate. And in like manner a Levite “… a door keeper in the house of God, a member of the hereditary order from which were chosen the singers in the Temple choirs — a neighbor to the life. Yet he too passed by on the other side.

“But a certain Samaritan —“He was a half breed, of a race which the Jews counted religiously in disrepute and with which they had “no dealings.” But “when he saw him, he was moved with compassion.”

In print the conduct of the priest and Levite seem monstrous, but in the print of our own experience it assumes a different color. Can we be sure that we would never play their part? Perhaps they were too busy with other good works. Perhaps they shrank, as we naturally do, from getting mixed up in such a case. Moreover, it was better to cure injustice at the source; better even if one man’s wounds went untended, to lend voice and influence to secure strong military protection thereafter along the dangerous road. Or how did they know that the victim was not a robber himself, a victim of a feud. There were a hundred good excuses for their callousness. If it was monstrous for them the quench sudden uprising of sympathy, the monstrous mood is very commonplace. Our diffused compassions are not often brought to the focus of actual help in an actual need. We herald the dawn of a new earth more easily than we lend our fingers to binding up present and particular wounds.

“And who is my neighbor?” To ask the question is a condemnation. True neighborliness is not curious to know where boundaries run; it cares little for boundaries as sun and rain care for the contours of our maps.. It seeks not for limits, but for opportunities.

“Who is my neighbor?” Nearness does not make neighborliness, the priest and Levite ere near both by race and by office, and the Samaritan, by race and by office, was remote. People may live, divided only by a narrow wall, and yet not be neighbors. People may live with no intervening wall, and yet not be neighbors. Only the eyes and the spirit of the Samaritan make neighborliness.

“Who is my neighbor?” “I do not know,” Jesus retorts; “But life will reveal him to you. He is not of one class or nation. He is anybody in need. You will find him as you journey. You will come upon him by chance. He is not of this or that religious allegiance; he is not a sinner or a saint. He is not brutish or refined. He is ‘A certain man’ — any man needy at your roadside. The parable goes on to tell us that true neighborliness has three definite qualities.

The neighbor had “insight of sympathy.” He was the only man traveling on the road who really saw the victim of the robbers. The priest and Levite saw a bruised and battered man but they did not see a man made in their own likeness. Rarely do we see people and rarely do we wish to really see them. We are content to look upon the armor we wrap around them to excuse our ignorance or selfishness. We say he is American; he is German,; or a negro. We label them Catholic or Protestant. Rarely does ur sight pierce beyond the accidents of wealth or poverty. Rarely do we discover a human being, one desirous of love, affection, and kindness. Max Mueller has written that to the Greek every foreigner was a barbarian, to the Jew, every alien was a “gentile dog”; and the Mahometan, every stranger was an infidel. Then Jesus came, and erased these condemning titles from the dictionaries of mankind, and wrote in their stead, “brother.” The stricken man was brother to the Samaritan because the stricken man was also human. It si required of a neighbor that he shall pull aside the armor long enough to see “a certain man.”

Then secondly, the model neighbor rendered a “personal service.” It would have been easier to be compassionate by proxy — to have phoned the hospital and have them send out an ambulance. But the Samaritan bound up the wounds with his own hands. He poured in oil and wine. He placed the unfortunate on his own beast. He might have paid toll the customary charities and held himself aloof. He might have sat the committee and directed relief from afar. But in giving help he gave himself.

It would be absurd to speak against any of the organized charities we have in the land. Charity need channels. Unguided pity like unguided water stagnates into a malarial swamp. But the wellspring of neighborliness is personality in the strictest sense of the word — the spirit of the individual. “I may hire a man to do some work, but I can never hire a man to do my work,” said Dwight L. Moody. There must be personal service rendered to have the true spirit of brotherly love. “If I give all my goods to feed the poor and have not love, it profiteth me nothing” — and it profits the poor hardly more. Life demands that we choose a road through life and act the neighbor to those who fall by the wayside.

Then thirdly, the model neighbor rendered a “thorough service.” Beginning to help, he saw it through. Of spasmodic and inadequate relief it has been wittily said that it creates one-half the misery it relieves, but cannot relieve one-half the misery it creates. But the Samaritan’s love was painstaking and complete. He made himself responsible even for the prolongation of help beyond the limits of probable need. “Whatsoever thou spendest more, I, when I come back, will repay thee.” Such love is costly. His beast was weary and his saddle stained with blood, property rights surrendered at the demands of love. His journey was broken and his business errand hindered; profits capitulated to human need. The Samaritan suffered, but he counted the suffering for joy. It was a thorough job done. He did not start something and then leave it half done. He set forth his true character; the quality of which is eternal life.

One thing is to be remembered in all this. The Samaritan spirit is not to be conceived as merely humaneness or as a substitute for religion. True religion in its outworking is neighborliness, and neighborliness in its final implications is religion. A religion which “passes by on the other side” is a mockery, not a faith. “Kindness is enough.” Let him remember rather that Jesus fashioned the parable from the fiber of His own spirit; that Jesus died as a Good Samaritan at the world’s darkest roadside; and that the fountain head of the motive of Jesus is found in that mystic depth from which He said: “I and my father are one.”

“and he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself. And He said unto him. Thou has answered tight: do this and thou shalt live.”

The Reverend Norman Stockwell – Sept. 3, 1944 at Jerome, Gooding, and Shoshone, Idaho. Sept. 16, 1945 at Navy Chapel in Long Beach, California. Aug. 22, 1946 at St. Thomas in Taunton, Massachusetts. Nov. 14, 1948 at Palouse, Washington. June 10, 1956, Aug. 31, 1958, and Aug. 27, 1961 at Twin Falls, Idaho.