Stranger and Neighbor

“Stranger + Neighbor”

March 9, 2025 Cobleskill United Methodist Church

Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Luke 10:25-37

First Sunday of Lent 

Luke 10:25-37

25 Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ 26He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ 27He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.’ 28And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’

29 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’ 30Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. 31Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. 34He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” 36Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ 37He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’

Today is the first Sunday of Lent.  Lent is the forty-day season in our church calendar in which we journey with Jesus to (and through) the cross. Lent is, essentially, a spring cleaning for our souls in which we examine our lives, focus on turning away from sin (personal and systemic) and turning toward God and life and love. 

One of the ways we can focus on turning away from sin and turning toward God is to examine the world around us and our own lives and look at places where we have used labels and categories to separate ourselves from others.  Where have we put boxes around people and ourselves to keep each other apart and separate. Each week this Lent we will have an invitation to consider how Jesus redefines and upends the labels and definitions we cling to.  When we want simple answers, Jesus brings another perspective. When we want to see things in black and white, Jesus asks us to look at what is in between these two binaries to see a world that is more complicated.  The story of Lent, the story of our faith, is a story of messy middles and nuanced surprises. 

We begin the series with what might be the most tender polarity: stranger and neighbor. There is no denying that we are all keenly aware of the labels, beliefs, and assumptions that make us strangers to one another.  We have boxes that we put each other in.  Categories for strangers so that we can remember how we’re different.  Right/Left.  Foreign/Local.  Religious/Secular.  Sick/Well.  

In our scripture this morning a lawyer asks Jesus an age-old question.  How do we get to heaven?  What must we do to be good; to inherit eternal life.  Jesus answers the question with a question:  What is the most essential lesson you’ve learned from the scripture?  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and might.  And love your neighbor as yourself.  But that answer assumes we know what neighbor means?  

So in our scripture, the lawyer continues, “Who is my neighbor?” It was a test for Jesus.  It was a test to see if Jesus would stay inside the lines of conventional wisdom.  Jesus answers the question this time with a parable, a story.  

In this story, there are three kinds of people.  Three categories of people.  Three boxes.  And they are all categories that Jesus’ first audience would have been very familiar with.  

In the first: A man who has been injured. Attacked on a road that people knew well as being dangerous.  People could relate to his suffering.  But the complication is that this man was bleeding.  And in Jewish purity culture, his open wounds were untouchable.  

In the second category: We have two religious people: a priest and a Levite.  Jesus’ audience would have recognized these men as powerful, upstanding, respected, busy, elite.

In the third category: We have a Samaritan.  Jesus’ audience would have recognized this man as being different from them.  He worshiped in a different way.  He lived in a different, separated land.  And not was he considered different.  Jewish culture would have considered him wrong.  

We know these kinds of categories, too.  We put different names on them, but we know them.  

Jesus knows that in our minds and in the minds of his first audience, we will make conclusions about these categories.  We think we know who the neighbor will be.  We think we know who the stranger will be.  Jesus tells us this story to help us deconstruct what we think we know about neighbors and strangers.  When it’s the Samaritan man who stops to tend the wounds of injured Jew, Jesus reminds us that we don’t live in a world of black and white thinking.  That empathy and kindness and love blur the lines.  

Mary Beth: 

When I first moved to Albany three years ago, I was interested in connecting with people.  Before long I heard about the immigrant community and in particular one woman who wanted to learn to drive. Lina (names have been changed for purposes of this story) had come with her Muslim family from Bangladesh a few years before and was slowly but surely learning English.  If she could drive, it would help her get a job, and care for her husband and three children.  So, after checking my insurance coverage, we started getting to know each other, getting to know my car, what the road signs meant, and what happened when you put your foot on the gas.  

There were many anxious moments for both of us, but as we made our way slowly around our neighborhoods we also smiled and talked. She invited me up to their apartment on several occasions and shared tea and special food. On one occasion after sunset, during Ramadan, we sat on the floor with the whole family sharing a meal together breaking their fast. And we kept getting my car, she the driver, me the passenger and teacher.   

The short story is that Lina passed her driver’s test and has a job and became a citizen.  The longer story is that we, as different as we are, have become friends.  A white, olderish, Christian retired woman pastor who sometimes dresses in pants, with a youngish, south Asian Muslim woman who wears flowing robes and a head scarf..  I taught her to drive, and she hemmed my pants, made me some lovely hand towels and served me food.  And as much as our language would allow, we talked religion and God.  As much as we were different, I for one, felt that we had a lot in common.

But there’s more to this story.  At the end of the Muslim holiday of Eid, I was invited to join the celebration with the women of the family.  Mia, their high school senior daughter with her perfect English, asked, “Would you like me to draw henna on your arm like mine, and the others?”   Feeling adventuresome, I said yes.  But also feeling uncertain about it, I said, “Just paint a small one, here on the inside of my wrist.”  “Not too obvious,” I thought but didn’t say out loud.  The design would not wash off for about a week, and what would people think if they saw it on me? 

So, Mia laid my open hand in front of her, opened her phone to a design she wanted to follow and started to draw.  Small, I said, small.  So, it started small, but then the design grew.  My young friend carefully created a design that in her culture was a sign of joyful celebration.  

My eyes got big as she continued across my hand, and then up my fingers.  When she was finished, the big beautiful design took my breath away.   

And I realized that God had met us in the in between. On my outstretched arm.  As different as we were, we were so much the same brought together by kindness, empathy and love.  

 The boxes that some would draw around us were removed in those moments.  And, by the way, also between me and another young woman: She was the clerk at the CVS that week when I reached out my decorated hand for the receipt which her decorated hand placed in mine.  Not strangers but neighbors.  

Who is your neighbor?  We ask this same question in a million different ways: “Who is in and who is out?” “Who should I align myself with and who should I distance myself from?” “Who can I trust and who should I fear?”  But instead of answering our questions with a specific list of people, Jesus asks us to consider a neighbor isn’t a neighbor because of some similarity with you, but because of the way they treat you and the way you treat them. 

What boxes in your life have you put people into?  What labels and stereotypes do you need to deconstruct?  Can you remember a time when someone surprised you by reaching outside of their “side” to lend you a hand.   

Grace and Peace, 

Pastor Anna