“The Neighborhood”
July 13, 2025
Rev. Rebecca Migliore
I grew up singing, “It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor, would you be mine? Could you be mine?” as we took a bird’s eye view of little houses and little streets, and then zoomed in to Mr. Rogers coming in his front door, taking off his coat and jacket and putting on his sweater, and his tennis shoes, talking all the time. It wasn’t until I was in my adulthood that I realized how much theology Rev. Fred Rogers (a Presbyterian pastor) was able to simply instill into my brain with that catchy little tune.
“Who is my neighbor?” is the question that the expert in the law asks Jesus. But I am getting a little ahead of myself. The lead up to one of Jesus’ most famous parables, The Good Samaritan, is crucial to understanding what Jesus was getting at. We start our lesson for today with another question, a test for Jesus—“Teacher, Rabbi, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And in typical Jesus fashion, Jesus doesn’t provide an answer but another question (maybe because Jesus sees this for what it really is—not someone who is actually interested in the answer but only in “catching” Jesus in a misstep).
Jesus throws the ball back into the expert’s court—“What does it say in the law?” And this expert responds correctly (in Jesus’ eyes) quoting both Deuteronomy (Loving God with all we have) and Leviticus (Loving our neighbor as ourselves). Jesus smiles. “Yes,” he says, “you have it right. Do that, and you shall live.” The story could have stopped there—and we would have been poorer for it.
But the expert, you know how experts are, they think they need to show how much they know, and probably are testing everyone else around them—This expert then presses the issue. “But who really is my neighbor?”
It’s a good question. Is everyone who lives close to us a neighbor? And how far of a radius do we have to draw to say that those people are neighbors—I mean, surely Jesus, you can’t mean for us to treat everyone as a neighbor? There have to be some limits, don’t there? What about the houseless person walking down our street? What about those who aren’t in our socio-economic bracket—who can’t afford to live in all the luxury housing we are building everywhere I look? What about those who look differently than we do, think differently than we do, speak differently than we do, worship differently than we do? Who is a neighbor? Who is in our neighborhood?
And then Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. We remember that just a few verses back, the writer of Luke has made sure that we understand there is animosity between the Jews of Jesus’ time and Samaritans—for so many reasons. The disciples were ready to rain down fire and brimstone on one Samaritan village that did not welcome them. And yet, we know that Jesus had healed and preached in Samaritan regions. And he is insistent that no matter what, no matter where, the good news must be preached “The Kin[g]dom of God has come near.”
I find it interesting that Jesus doesn’t exactly answer the question the expert asked. Yes, there is a story with a point. Or maybe lots of points. Some have even suggested that the question Jesus decides to answer is not “who is my neighbor” but “how are we to be neighbors”? Certainly Jesus is getting his own thoughts on the subject into this parable.
Because the priest and the Levite were holy men, serving God each in their own way. They would have known the law, known what it was they had to do to inherit eternal life—would have been able to answer the question Jesus posed to our expert, in just the way our expert answered it.
But, then there comes this parsing of what the law says and how to accomplish that in real life. So, yes we are to love God (firstly) and then to love our neighbor as ourselves. But the law also had special restrictions about the body being clothed (in other words not naked) and still others about touching the blood of another—and even more restrictions about touching a dead body. If you did one of these things, there was a whole series of cleansing rituals that had to take place before you could enter the temple, or eat with others, or basically do anything. And Jesus is, probably correctly, stating that many religious people placed the prohibition of touching blood over the commandment to treat neighbor as self. (And as an aside, these were times when tribal connections were very strong—and you could have someone from one tribe not be very neighborly to someone from another tribe. This wasn’t just a problem with people considered a different ethnicity or religious persuasion).
So this poor man, had been traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, along the treacherous path (both because it was a steep decline, and because robbers knew that people would be traveling on this road and could waylay them). When I looked up the elevations of Jerusalem and Jericho, I was surprised how steep the drop is between the two cities. Jerusalem sits high in the Judean hills, approximately 2600 feet above sea level.
On the other hand, Jericho is in the Jordan Valley, and is one of the lowest cities in the world. It sits 800 feet below sea level. (And this drop happens in just 18 miles).
Everyone could imagine what happened to this man—an everyman. And many who would be listening to this story had made that journey—because people routinely went to Jerusalem and then had to go home. There is our everyman, naked or close to it, because the robbers have stripped him of everything. He has been beaten severely (and we can imagine that he is bleeding from several places). In fact, without close examination, he looks half-dead, or maybe even dead, depending on whether he can moan or move. It is also obvious that the man is on or close to the road itself—because everyone who passes by knows he is there. That is the scene that Jesus has set up.
We know nothing of this man. We don’t know if he is a Jew or a Samaritan. We don’t know if he was rich or poor (and since he was robbed and stripped, we can’t even look at his clothes to make such a determination). We do know he is in need. We can imagine that if we were in such a position, we would hope that someone would stop and help us.
But the priest and the Levite, see the man, see him naked, and bloody and possibly dead. And they pass on by. Now certainly this is a judgment on these particular religious individuals. They didn’t follow the second part of the “way to get to eternal life.” But I’m also pretty sure that the crowds (and certainly the expert) were thinking—well, maybe they get a pass. Religious people (of all people) aren’t supposed to touch blood, or dead people—and this was a fairly well traveled road, someone else will stop and help.
Maybe the priest and the Levite told themselves that they would talk to the next person they saw or stop at the next dwelling to help out this poor unfortunate one.
Yes, we can make the priest and the Levite out to be bad guys who can’t bother to do the cleansing ritual that would be required if they stopped. Or maybe we imagine that they had important places to go—maybe even to help out at the temple. This everyman wasn’t in their calendar for the day. He was “in the way.” And so they passed on by on the other side. Jesus is condemning their actions, and the law that would have allowed them to think that their actions were correct. Think of our Amos reading, where God is telling Amos that God is laying down a plumb line—a straight line, a way of telling whether you are balanced, whether you are plumb. Jesus is implying that what they did is not right, not plumb.
And then we have the Samaritan—who came upon this man, had compassion, bandaged his wounds, put him on his own animal, took him to an inn, took care of him, and paid for his stay, and when he had to leave, paid for this man until he got back (when he would pay any balance due). “Who do you think was the neighbor?”, Jesus asks. Did you get that subtle twist (that upside-down, inside-out that is so common in parables)? The expert asks who was a neighbor, to the expert. Jesus told a story where we find out a neighbor is as a neighbor does. And who is this neighbor, but a horrific, disliked Samaritan (in the expert’s eyes). How do we know this? Because when Jesus asks which of the three (priest, Levite, Samaritan) was the neighbor—the expert cannot get himself to say “the Samaritan.” He says, instead, “The one who showed him mercy.” The One? Jesus has made his point. He only says, “Go and do likewise.”
That must have been hard for our expert—to recognize that an enemy could be our neighbor, in fact was our neighbor, and acted better than we ourselves might have done. And it asks hard questions of us as well. Do we allow other things to get in the way of living out Jesus’ commandments to Love God and Love our neighbors, all our neighbors, as ourselves? Do we try to limit who is a neighbor? And who do we think is in our neighborhood? How big is our neighborhood?
The more I thought about it, the more I am sure that Jesus would have liked Mr. Rogers’ song. Although maybe Jesus would have sung, “Would you be a neighbor? Could you be a neighbor?”
In this beautiful neighborhood of God’s world.
On this beautiful day,
in this beautiful place,
will we choose to be a neighbor?
May it be so, Alleluia, Amen.