St George's Cathedral, Cape Town

A Sermon preached by The Reverend Bruce W. B. Jenneker in the Cathedral of St George the Martyr, Cape Town, at Evensong on the Thirtieth Sunday of the Year, 25 October 2009

Tonight Luke holds up before us two quite different scenes. The first presents Jesus developing his ministry and deploying his team: it is a scene of stillness and calm, purposeful preparation and collaborative intent. Seventy disciples have been chosen and sent, and now on their return, they report with joy their healing miracles and the success of their preaching. Jesus and his disciples are in conference: he teaching, they learning, all of them engaged in planning the expansion of the gospel project.

The other scene is the Jericho Road – perilous and risky, the haunt of bandits and the cover for outlaws as it zigzags dangerously for about 30 kilometres between Jerusalem and Jericho. The Jericho Road is a hazardous and steep mountain path, dropping 1000 metres it winds and descends, a remote road, notorious for mugging and robbery. A walk of about six hours is the Jericho Road – demanding and tiring, long and dangerous.

Let us return to the first of Luke's two scenes. As Jesus is opening the minds of his disciples to the mysteries of his gospel, a lawyer, standing on the edge of the group, somewhat removed from it, speaks up. 'What must I do to inherit eternal life,' he asks. Notice his question and the tone in which he asks it. The lawyers in Jerusalem were trained in the law of Moses and were sought after as those who settled legal matters. Their stock in trade was answers to legal questions. No riddle of the law was too baffling for them for the law held no secrets for them. Consequently the lawyers in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus were confident, complacent and condescending, assured of the correctness of their opinions and the unassailability of their interpretations. They were ready for every question and they knew the answers to all of them. They were an arrogant lot.

The purpose of the lawyer's question, Luke tells us, is to test Jesus. The lawyer knows the answer, of course. But he asks it in an attempt to unsettle and embarrass Jesus, to expose and humiliate this upstart from Nazareth. It is not a complicated question, rather, it is the most basic, one in which every first year Yeshiva student is drilled. 'What must I do to inherit eternal life,' the lawyer asks. How should I pattern my life so that, heart, soul, strength and mind, I am pure and righteous, living in accordance with the purposes of God? You know the law, Jesus says to the lawyer, turning the question back to him, What does it say? The lawyer gives the anticipated answer: You shall love the Lord your God with all you heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself. 'You have given the right answer,' Jesus says, 'Do this and you shall live.'

But like a cat menacing a mouse, the lawyer won't give up, and so, smugly smirking, he pounces, 'Ah – but who is my neighbour? There's the rub.'

The Greek word Luke uses for neighbour translates into English as 'near one.' For those who were listening to Jesus the meaning of that word was clear – neighbours are near ones, those around and next to me, sharing my familiar space. And, obviously, for every near one there is another who is far. To talk about those who are close is to define those who are far away. To identify those who are drawn in is to circumscribe the boundary beyond which others are cast out.

Thomas Walker in his essay, "Who is my neighbour", in the insightful collection entitled Global Neighbours: Christian Faith and Moral Obligation in Today's Economy (edited by Douglas Hills and Mark Valeri, Erdmans 2008) draws attention to the spatial reference inherent in the Greek word for neighbour (plηsion) – the near one, the one who shares my space - and over against it the one who is far away, or on the other side. Neighbours, by and large, were taken by those who were listening to Jesus, as indeed they are by us, to be our familiars, the ones close by. Needless to say, by bringing the Samaritan close to the man who was mugged on the Jericho Road, Jesus is turning the world upside down. Samaritans were segregated from Jews, they were not close to them. According to the Mishna, 'He that eats the bread of the Samaritans is like to one that eats the flesh of swine.' (Mishna Shebiith 8:10). For Jews Samaritans were swine-like, despised and scorned, to be kept away and set apart. They were not close. They did not share space. They were not neighbours.

The bandits fall upon the traveller, coming near, becoming close, close enough to attack, abuse and exploit him. Next, first the priest and then the Levite come along. Jesus uses a telling word to describe their action. This Greek word (anteparechomai) is aggressively disparaging. Emphatically employing two negative prefixes, it means not moving beside, not coming near, precisely the opposite of neighbour, the near one. The man lying wounded and bleeding on the roadside is not a near one for the priest and the Levite, he is a far one, someone to be passed by and passed over.

The final character in the story, the one identified as an offending Samaritan among righteous Jews, approaches the beaten body abandoned by the roadside, and instead of passing by on the other side, which would be the expected and uneighbourly thing to do, the Samaritan comes near and has compassion on the wounded man. Again Luke's choice of word is revealing. The word he uses here for compassion is a word that he uses exclusively to refer to the compassion of God. This is the only time in all of Luke's writing that the word is used to describe a human rather than a divine action.

It is on the Jericho Road that we discover who we are, who our neighbours are and what our moral compass is. It always happens on the Jericho Road - the expressway of violence and oppression that runs through the heart of our fair land. The Jericho Road - the highway of poverty and dispossession and suffering that separates this beautiful land into those that have and those that don't. The Jericho Road – that precipitous decent into hazard, trouble and danger, where violence reigns, prejudice defines reality and life is cheap. The Jericho Road – through the corridors of power and influence where corruption and crime threaten integrity and progress, where the good and the bad are exposed, values clarified and identity revealed. There we discover the ones who are near, close enough to help, support and sustain, or at hand to harass, attack and maim. On the Jericho Road we are confronted by what others choose to be as they encounter us – and by what we choose to be as we encounter them: nearby, close at hand and approachable, or indifferent, unmoved and uncaring; those we help or those we attack, those we value and those we scorn.

We are on our Jericho Road, aren't we? As a city and a nation and a Church. We are constantly deciding who is near enough to us to matter and who is far enough to be dismissed. We are on our Jericho Road, aren't we? And we are loaded down with excess baggage of prejudice and xenophobia, privilege and influence, power and self-interest. And we are claiming for ourselves the freedom to decide what makes for dignity and respect and what must be despised and rejected. We are on our Jericho Road, aren't we? Past the shacks of poverty and dispossession and alongside mansions of sumptuous opulence, past the beggar on the corner and the R1.2 million car at the traffic light.

Who is my neighbour? is the question still, and the answer is still the one Jesus gave – a neighbour is someone who encounters the other as God does, the neighbour is one who acts with divine compassion. Here some unforgettable words from a sermon by Martin Luther King, Jnr are compelling, 'On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.' (From A Time to Break Silence, 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City)

Like those disciples in Luke's first scene, we are gathered around Jesus. He is calling and deploying us in the expansion of the gospel project, sending us onto the Jericho Road to seek out those at risk and imperilled, to protect the weak and bind-up the wounded, and then to turn around and go back to Jerusalem where the religious authorities write visions and determine priorities and where the political leaders build a world in their own image.

This is serious business. To make space for our neighbours at the table of life's provision and simultaneously to build a word where that space is not a gift, or a duty, or a kindness but a right, inalienable, absolute and unassailable.

May God, who in Christ calls us to this great work, give us the grace to achieve it.

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