Sermon: Loving Ourself as Our Neighbor

“Loving Your Neighbor” by Dona Park, from the Anabaptist Community Bible.

Luke 10:25-42

What an embarrassment of riches we have in today’s scripture. It includes two of the most often told stories in the Gospels — the story of the Good Samaritan and the story of Mary and Martha. Both of these stories are unique to Luke; they don’t appear in Matthew, Mark or John. 

As I said in our weekly email, Lent began on Ash Wednesday with a story from Luke 9, just a chapter earlier, where Jesus “sets his face to go to Jerusalem.” He’s been preaching in the hinterlands, in Galilee — think MLK in the deep South during the civil rights era — and now Jesus is about to go to the place of religious and political power, Jerusalem, to confront the powers of oppression there — think MLK going to Washington D.C. but with an extra helping of danger. Jerusalem is the place where Jesus’ journey both ends in the cross and begins with new life. All roads lead to Jerusalem in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life.

As Jesus slowly journeys toward Jerusalem in Luke, we will hear many other stories that appear only in that Gospel, stories that we will be hearing over the next five weeks of Lent. Through these stories, we are learning what righteousness — right relationship — looks like and what living righteously will ask from us. The word “righteousness” is used often in the Bible, and I think it’s a word that might be opaque or off-putting to some of us. It helped me greatly when I came to understand that righteousness essentially means right relationship. Righteousness is not about following the rules but about acting justly and with integrity in all your relationships — to God, to others, to creation, to ourselves. What does right relationship call us to? That’s what we are learning about on this journey toward Jerusalem. 

So, let’s hear our first story for today: Luke 10:25-37. 

This parable begins with a summary of the core of Jewish teaching, spoken through the character of the lawyer: “You shall love the Holy One 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.” The lawyer combines the command to love God with all one’s heart, mind and strength from Deuteronomy and the command from Leviticus to love one’s neighbor — which is everyone. Let’s be clear about that. No one is not a neighbor. There is no hierarchy of neighbors, with one being more important than the other — with the exception that the most vulnerable are deserving of our special attention. That’s very clear in Jewish teaching.

These two core commandments— love of God and love of neighbor as oneself — form what Christians call the Great Commandment. You don’t get more essential than this. If you knew nothing about Christian and Jewish wisdom and this was all you knew, you’d be pretty set. Of course, there’s the little issue of actually living it out. The Story of the Good Samaritan illustrates that difficulty.

Because… Samaritans were the often hated enemies of the Jews. And the Jews were the often hated enemies of the Samaritans. There is deep mutual antagonism between these groups, who live side by side.  In fact, right after Jesus turns his face toward Jerusalem in the previous chapter, he enters Samaria — located where the West Bank is now — and they refuse to give him and his disciples lodging. In response to this lack of hospitality, Jesus’ disciples propose that they call down fire from heaven to destroy the village. Not surprisingly, Jesus rebukes them for this idea. And then, not long after this incident, he tells the story of the Good Samaritan.

A man is traveling and is violently robbed and beaten. A priest and Levite pass him by. They don’t do this because of concerns around ritual purity, which is the interpretation I have most often heard. Torah teachings would have commanded, in fact, that the the priest and Levite attend to this man in the ditch, and people hearing this story in Jesus’ time would have expected them to behave compassionately toward the wounded man.

Jesus is making a different point. Jews at that time fit into one of three groups: priests who are descended from Aaron; Levites who are descended from Levi; and the Israelites, who are descended from the children of Jacob other than Levi. Listeners would have expected Jesus to say that the next person coming down the road toward the man in the ditch, after a priest and a Levite, was an Israelite. But Jesus surprises everyone by associating a Samaritan with a priest and a Levite. It is this despised other who stops everything to take care of the broken, wounded man.  Jesus is saying, I believe, precisely what our our signs said yesterday at our public worship service: God’s love knows no borders. We are commanded to extend compassion to all vulnerable people because everyone is our neighbor — including the person we might least want to think of as our neighbor. (This insight is from this book.)

Luke likes to pair stories with female and male protagonists. So, in this story (Luke 10:38-42), the sisters Mary and Martha come to the fore.

This story seems to complicate the moral of the story of the Good Samaritan, which suggests that we should never withhold acts of love and service. The Samaritan, who is held up as a model of righteousness, goes on a business trip and is “distracted” by the needs of the wounded man in the ditch. Jesus praises the Samaritan for heeding that distraction (insight from here). But Martha seems to be chided by Jesus for heeding her distraction — for dropping everything to provide hospitality to guests who suddenly show up. Many of you know that, now and then, providing hospitality to guests is an almost unbreakable social norm in the Middle East. It’s just what you do.

Martha’s work is worthy work — in fact, when Jesus says she is distracted by her many tasks, the word for “tasks” comes from a Greek word that means service, diakonia. It’s where we get the word “deacon” from, which refers to those folks in churches who attend to the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of others.  Mary’s work is service, an act of love. 

But her service has become a source of anxiety for her. (Insight from this podcast.) She is distracted. The Greek word translated as “distracted” here has layers of meaning. It means burdened. It means greatly troubled. It means being over-occupied — we might say overfunctioning today. It means pulled away.  The general sense here is being pulled in different directions, resulting in anxiety, stress, agitation. Ever feel like that?

We’re all pulled in so many directions right now. So much is wrong. There are so many victims of violence left in the ditch. So many ditches. And there are so many emails or texts telling us to call our Senator about this or join in that action or give time or money to this good cause that is trying to protect vulnerable people and our vulnerable planet. So many acts of service, of diakonia, that need to be performed. And then there’s the everyday acts of service — putting food on the table for  ourselves and our loved ones, reaching out to the person in our community who is in the hospital, helping our child with homework, hosting someone who needs a place to stay.

These are good things. These are acts of love and service to our neighbor, which is everyone. We are commanded to perform these acts of love and service. And, we are commanded to love our neighbor as ourself. Which means we’re supposed to love ourself. Which means we are supposed to be in right relationship with ourself, also.  

I think Jesus recognizes that Martha isn’t in right relationship with herself in that moment. Maybe Martha wants to be like her sister and sit at Jesus’ feet and have her soul be nourished by his words, his presence. Maybe her soul is hungry, so hungry, and needs that food. But, no, she won’t extend hospitality to herself, only to others.

Maybe Martha, like Mary, realizes that Jesus is heading to Jerusalem and that is going to be a very dangerous destination. What will happen to him there, under the eye of Sauron? Where there are Roman soldiers on every street ready to clamp down on anyone who stirs up the crowds? Maybe Martha is longing to spend time with Jesus because she doesn’t know how much more time she has with him. But, she isn’t loving herself enough to give this to herself. 

Martha probably feels like she has no choice but to do the right thing — which is to privilege other people’s needs above her own, to do what of expected of her, what she expects of herself. But Jesus says, “Mary has chosen the better part.” Which means that Martha also has choice. Perhaps in that moment, she needed to choose an act of love and service to herself and sit at Jesus’ feet.

Friends, this is a hard time to be a person with a heart open to the pain of the world. There is so much pain, so much that is wrong, so much cruelty. And if you are someone with some privilege and some power, you may rightly feel even more responsibility to do something to demonstrate love of neighbor, love for the people being attacked and thrown in ditches. And — it’s not an either/or, it’s a both/and —  it is also OK to love yourself, to extend care to yourself. 

What do you need to do to nourish your soul in these anxious times? Do it and don’t apologize for it or feel guilty about it. What act of love and service do you need to extend to yourself? Do it. And then write that Senator, care for the wounded, show up for the action, and shout your outrage — with or without words — as loudly as you can. 

May Jesus, in his journey toward Jerusalem, where he will confront the cruel powers, the hateful powers, may this Jesus lead us every more deeply into righteousness, into right relationship. Amen.