Your Neighbor is Yourself

Deuteronomy 30:6, 11-14, 19-20
Luke 10:25-37


Rockville United Church
Rev. Dr. Duncan D. Newcomer

July 15 2007

“Now a lawyer stood up and to test Him, asked...” now what is so devilish about that? Not the Bible-day or our-day meaning of “lawyer,” but it’s the standing up and testing thing. If you met Jesus would you stand up and try to test him? Well, it seems wrong doesn’t it? What is this verbalized attitude of “Rising to Test!”

There is a wonderful religious practice in the East of greeting someone, of meeting the other, with the bowing of the head and the touching together of one’s hands and saying, “I honor the divine within you.” We can say the Christian version of that is Christ’s identification with the poor and the ill and the sinner and the troubled, and our recognition of Christ in each other. That suggests that we – if we are not to keep company with the devil – approach others with a sitting down, not a standing up, at least a lowering of ourselves and some welcoming invitation, not some testing of the other right off the bat.

The devil is forever putting others to the test. In scripture, Jesus’ most intense encounter with the devil comes with the devil’s triple-testing of Jesus in the wilderness. We can see the devil in this lawyer standing up to test Jesus.

The purpose of a lawyer’s cross examination is to dialogue to the truth. The back and forth of lawyers in our legal system is to be a saw that cuts to the truth so that justice can be done. That is the moral purpose of that language style – not to cut people up and their inner Christ down. So also to question authorities is to refine virtue in authority not to be rude and cynical. To question authority is a crucial role in democracy, in science, for the purposes of freedom and fact. But the feeding frenzy of the news media is not the freedom of the press to educate the populous. Only a bored people need eat such so-called “news.”

This lawyer would be a distortion of our legal process. A corruption of democratic news gathering. Critical thinking is his game, but not for enlightening truth and the real story. Critical thinking is not the same thing as talking critically. This man would not even make it into a Socratic dialogue. Socrates would not be impressed with his pursuit of truth, so why would Jesus engage his rude routine? Well who knows how Jesus got to be so “Christ-like!,” but he was, so he side-steps this arrogant man and says, “How do YOU read the Bible? What do YOU think? Tell me what you know about the way God wants us to find life.”

As in other times when Jesus meets up with the devil this guy quotes scripture well. Perfectly, in fact. He repeats the great commandment of their common Hebrew Faith. “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

Bingo! Mr. Lawyer! Three cherries on the slot machine line up! You win. And out comes your bundle of quarters! However, quoting Deuteronomy back to the lawyer, Jesus says – and if you do this “life is yours,” you will have life.

It is interesting how Jesus brings him down. The guy didn’t pretend to be asking for “life,” he asked for “eternal life.” There is something self-aggrandizing about the devil don’t you think? It’s not “how can I live a life, but how can I live the life of God, eternal life?”

Of course the divinity of Jesus is how he moves this devil-lawyer-man off of his premise – “Let me rise up to test you!” and moves him onto Jesus’ own premise – “How can I help you be good?” Not, how can I help you get the answer right.

You know this dialogue with Jesus strikes me as relevant to the Capital of America, Washington, D.C. The Christian scriptures have a tendency to look for the heart of darkness within the Capital cities of the day. Jerusalem and Rome are exposed by Jesus and Paul, not exalted – and I find it easy to imagine Jesus exposing this D.C.-devil-way of talking. This stand-up testing-for-self-justification way of talking. World Capitals become spiritual slums easily by losing respect for the heart of truth in exchange for the marketing of truthiness as self-justifying spin.

There might even be a little language osmosis that takes place in a Capital region when people become accustomed to cutting comments, and testy criticisms. A purpose for a spiritual community near the Nation’s Capitol might be to affirm that while the pen is not only mightier than the sword, it is not another kind of sword. Clergy and church members alike so often talk down to each other. Maybe it’s the “high” things we talk and think about. I remember a book about Christianity and inner-city youth gangs called “The Cross and the Switch Blade.” It’s easy, it seems, to have it be the cross as a switch blade, and the Christian as the sharp-tongued one.

It seems to me remarkable that Jesus doesn’t come back with a quicker put-down to this devil be-ridden man.

A psychotherapist could easily have said: “I guess you don’t feel very loved, respected, appreciated or understood and cared for. I guess that’s why you talk in such a snide and self-aggrandizing sort of way?” A therapist could say that, but where’s the heart or spirit in that? Wouldn’t that be just a sharp tongue in a velvet mouth?!

But since Jesus saw the purpose of his life to change people by announcing to them the reigning heart of God, then story, a story, seems like the way to talk. Abraham Lincoln learned this from the Bible, and from Jesus’ words, and he was a master of heart-felt truth and soulful power right here in Washington, D.C. It can be done!

Jesus’ good Samaritan story works because the man comes to the truth of the story: Pity. The one who is the neighbor is the one who shows pity. Showing pity makes you a neighbor.

The robbed man is not the neighbor, he’s the victim. To be a neighbor is to show pity towards the other, towards another. And in “the world according to Jesus” the more unlikely the other is, the greater is the call to pity, which is why to have pity for yourself is so hard to come by. The way to find pity in your heart, and for yourself, and your neighbor, starts with how we talk. How we address Christ within and Christ in the world. Testy self-justification is a language which Jesus translates and transforms into love.

Now I ask you, given this linguistic analysis of Luke’s story of Jesus, is God’s call to love neighbor as self, and Jesus’ call to be the one who becomes a neighbor, also a way for you to show pity on yourself, just for starters and let the devil sharpen his tongue elsewhere?

If it is so outrageous to think I should be sorry for and take pity on myself and be a neighbor to myself, how much more outrageous is it to believe you’d be joining God in talking to you in that neighborly, loving and forgiving way? Amen