"Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed mercy on him." And Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise." — Luke 10:36-37

It was a dark, rainy summer night on a remote road. David was driving home to his lake cottage after a movie in the resort village. Going around a corner he thought he saw it. He slowed, wondering if he had seen correctly.

He stopped, backed up in the driving rain, then moved his car toward the edge of the road, shining his headlights toward the ditch at the corner. Sure enough. There it was. A car overturned with its tail lights still glimmering in the darkness. It was obvious the accident was recent. There still were skid marks visible in the mud at the side of the road.

The driver of the overturned car was partially conscious and pinned under the steering wheel. David could smell gas seeping around the hot motor. He wondered about fire and explosion. Some miles from help and without a cell phone, David decided to try to work the driver free. After a struggle in the rain and mud, he was soon speeding to the county seat hospital, the injured driver moaning and half-conscious across the backseat.

Several months later, David was surprised to receive notice that he was being sued by the driver he had rescued that dark, rainy summer night. The suit claimed that David had compounded the driver's injuries by pulling him out of the overturned car and by taking him to the hospital.

David's body shook with the shock of unbelief and then burned with a slow, silent rage. He cursed his luck that he should have come upon that car that night. He wondered then why he hadn't gone on to leave the driver there while he got more help. He remembered the gas dripping on the hot motor, the threat of fire and explosion, and the danger to his own life as well as the driver's. David wondered what kind of human being it was who could sue the man who saved his life. Instead of a hero's medal or thank-you letter, it was a lawsuit. When he calmed down, he called his lawyer.

David's is not an isolated case. Numerous Americans have been hauled into court for being Good Samaritans who, it was claimed, either aggravated or increased the extent of injury of the victim they saved. If doctors have had to defend themselves against the proliferation of malpractice suits, Good Samaritans have increasingly found themselves in court being sued for an act of mercy.

So, the question arises, what kind of society are we anyway when people sue their fellow citizens for attempting to save their lives? Is it too dangerous to be a good neighbor anymore? Is it advisable to be a Good Samaritan? Is the Good Samaritan really a model for Christians in today's society? Are the lawyer, the priest, and the Levite better models? Whom should we emulate?

I.  

Consider the lawyer. It was his question that precipitated Jesus' story. After all, he was asking afresh, just who is my neighbor? Who am I obligated to help? If the second great commandment says love thy neighbor as thyself, who is to be considered my neighbor? David surely wondered about that as he drove to see his lawyer to prepare his defense.

The lawyer of Jesus' day would have been knowledgeable in religious and civil law because they were closely intertwined in his society. A good Jew was one who kept the law, all 613 commandments of the law. There were 365 negative commandments, one "thou shalt not" for every day of the year, and 248 positive commandments, or "thou shalts."

Undoubtedly the lawyer knew the legal ramifications of helping other people. He knew it was possible to get into trouble giving assistance to those in need. A friend in need may be a friend indeed, but he had also learned what a friend of mine believes and that is a friend in need is a friend to avoid! Wishing to avoid as many friends in need as possible, wishing to keep his life free of encumbrances and involvement, and desiring to justify himself, he asked Jesus, who is my neighbor?

Many Americans have the lawyer's frame of mind. Next to Israel, America is the most litigious country in the world. We are ready to sue most anyone at the drop of a hat. Frustrated, angry, and desperate about the complexities of modern life, we seek restitution in the courts! Add to that the cascade of government rules and regulations, at once the lawyer's spawning ground and livelihood, and it is no wonder we have more lawyers per capita, more per square city block, than any country save ancient Israel.

Someone quipped that in the Middle East they have billboards that read, "Love Thy Neighbor," followed immediately by six paragraphs of small print! With a little imagination we can envision Good Samaritan kits created by the legalists, which would contain "Waiver of Liability" forms the victim would have to sign before he could be helped.

Hooked on law, legalists always want to justify themselves as did this lawyer in Jesus' story. Convinced law is more real than love, they take a defensive stance behind the legal code, careful never to make themselves vulnerable and careful, therefore, never to risk love. Left to the legalists, the hapless victim on the Jericho Road would still be wounded and bleeding in the ditch.

Give us a society of legalists and soon our cities will be centers of terror and fear, for no one will come to our aid to help us when mugged. Give us a society of legalists and the libraries will be inundated with law books and legal codes, forcing out the great, creative literature.

Give us a country of legalists and soon the legal departments of corporations will be larger than research, development, and production. Give us a society of legalists and we will have churches straining at a gnat of religious rules and swallowing a camel of inhumanity to man.

Give us a society of legalists where every tenth citizen is a lawmaker, regulator, policeman, bureaucrat, or lawyer, and we soon will be tied down like Gulliver, able to break free only by raging revolution and the love of freedom and the freedom to love.

Jesus forever condemned the legalistic model for society. Consequently, lawyers and lawmakers of today who follow Jesus have the awesome responsibility to lead us to a more equitable society where we are free to love. Rather than just reap revenues off our increasingly cumbersome and onerous laws, lawyers and lawmakers have the responsibility to create laws that help the Good Samaritan rather than hinder him. We are obligated to create laws that expedite love rather than squelch it; laws that encourage neighborliness rather than discourage it.

Let lawyers and lawmakers take the lead in creating laws that aid the victim and his helpers rather than penalize them and help the criminal. If there is a great concern for criminal justice, let there be equal concern for justice for victims and Good Samaritans.

Who is my neighbor? asked the lawyer, seeking to justify himself. Jesus drew none of the ancient distinctions of humankind — Greek and barbarian, Roman citizen and foreigner, freeman and slave, Jew and Gentile. Rather, Jesus told him how to be neighborly wherever he was to whomever he could help in need. He told him to go beyond the withdrawn, defensive, legalistic model for life and to be a loving, caring person.

II.  

In Jesus' classic story the religious types are not held up for admiration either. As representatives of the aristocratic, religious elite, the priest and Levite were not, in Jesus' view, good examples of what it means to love thy neighbor as thyself.

The priest and Levite were part of the official religious staff who served the great temple in Jerusalem. Required to serve several weeks out of the year, priests and Levites often lived in the towns and villages surrounding Jerusalem. As commuters from the suburb of Jericho, they frequently traveled the desolate road from Jerusalem to their ancient city. The road rose 3,400 feet in seventeen miles. Its rough terrain and large rocks made it a likely place for thieves and bandits. It has remained so even into the twenty-first century.

In all likelihood, the priest and Levite were on their way to the temple for their religious duty. Their religious law stated that if they touched blood or a corpse, they would be religiously unclean for seven days. No doubt that religious rule was uppermost in their minds when they saw the victim in the ditch. The priest passed by on the other side. He wouldn't even come near. The Levite, perhaps a temple musician or maintenance man, paused to look at the victim and then he too went on his way. Religious duty called them. Ceremony was more important than charity, performance of liturgy more pressing than the pain of the man in the ditch.

It was precisely this kind of narrow, restrictive, religious legalism that so angered Jesus. He was impatient with religious people who majored in minors and minored in majors — people who tithed their mint, anise, and cumin but neglected the weightier matters of love and justice.

Jesus was forever impatient with narrow religious minds who were so concerned about keeping Sabbath law that they could not see the miracle of a man made whole on the Sabbath. He was frustrated with people who practiced antiseptic fastidiousness and called it religion. He could never understand the religious mind that thought it all right to pull an ox out of a ditch on the Sabbath, but not all right to release a woman from her physical bondage on the Sabbath.

It was the strangely negative, withdrawing, fearful, legalistic religious person Jesus so much criticized. When he was castigated for associating with the hated tax collectors and prostitutes, he replied they who are well do not need the physician, but those who are ill, do need the physician.

Religion should help those in need and not withdraw from them. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Religion should help life, not hinder. Religious leaders should be interested in touching the wounded and bleeding to make them whole, rather than withdrawing from them and loathing them.

The sinner Jesus denounced most often was the religious legalist who did nothing to help his fellow man. Goodness is not a passive morality; it is not a "colorless" abstention from certain vices. Most of Jesus' teaching deals not with prohibitions, says B. Harvie Bronscomb, "but with positive commands" (The Teaching of Jesus, p. 168). Jesus praises those who do good and not those who do nothing and call it religion. He is ever on the side of those who reach out in helpfulness, rather than on the side of those who withdraw in self-righteousness and defensiveness.

Who is my neighbor? Not this man, said the fastidious religious leader concerned about his ceremonial purity. Thus a religion that divides people in need from those who can help is not an adequate model for our day.

III.  

The model for love, the model for a loving society, the example for neighborliness Jesus chooses is, of all people, a Samaritan. Want to know what it means to love your neighbor as yourself? Look at this Samaritan.

While filling out an application for a factory job a man was puzzled by the blank after "person to notify in case of accident." Finally he wrote "anybody in sight." No doubt the victim felt that way. Notify anybody, even that Samaritan.

However, that was hard medicine to swallow for most of Jesus' contemporaries. The Samaritans were a mixed breed. Ever since the Assyrians had conquered Samaria in 722 BC, the residents had intermarried with non-Jewish peoples. Roughly equivalent to Asians marrying Westerners, or African Americans marrying whites, the Samaritan offspring were the mulattos of their day and looked down upon — especially by the Jewish purists.

Perhaps it was because he knew what it was to be excluded and despised that the Samaritan had such compassion on the victim in the ditch. Since he had often been ostracized, unnoticed, excluded, and unwanted, he had a special pity for the wounded traveler. A traveling salesman himself, the Samaritan knew the perils of travel.

How was this Samaritan neighborly? For one thing, he did not give the victim what he did not need. For example, one summer at a northern lake, I had driven my motorboat across the lake at night to take some friends back to their cottage. When I was ready to leave the marina, my boat wouldn't start. One of the boaters said he knew what the problem was.

He grabbed his tools and began to board my boat, ready to tear my engine apart in the dark of night. Smelling his breath and noting his tipsy condition, I gently persuaded him it might be better to wait until daylight. Any mother of a three year old who wants to help mommy bake a cake knows there are times when help is no help at all. The same was true of the little old lady helped across the busy New York City street by two Boy Scouts doing their good deed for the day. Once across the street she turned to them in consternation and said, "But I didn't want to cross the street!" The Good Samaritan gave the help that was needed.

Note further his help was immediate, personal, and direct. He did not leave the victim in the ditch and resolve to lobby for better police protection along the road or determine to urge the road commission to improve the road to discourage bandits. He did not hurry on to form a committee for the improvement of Jericho Road while the victim expired from exposure.

Instead, he gave the victim what he needed then. He poured a medicinal mixture of oil and wine on his wounds. After tenderly applying bandages, he gently placed the victim upon his donkey and brought him to an inn to a clean room for rest and regular care. Out of his own pocket, he paid the innkeeper the equivalent of two days' wages and promised more on his return if the expenses were more.

It was not required that the Samaritan love the victim the same way he might love his family. He was not required to have warm affection for the victim; rather, he was expected to demonstrate good will and to help him in his need. It was not required that he be a combination lawyer, chaplain, and orthopedic and plastic surgeon to help the victim. Rather, it was required he help the man in the best way possible with what he had.

Love is risky. It is not stupid. It is not foolish. But love is vulnerable. Love does take chances. The Good Samaritans of the world do lay themselves open to attack either in the streets or the courts of law.

We must not let the legalists, the defensive, fearful, narrow exclusivist people bind our society in fear or choke it with laws that reward the bad and penalize the good. Any such revised version of the Good Samaritan story will not do for the people of the new day.

Instead, Jesus calls us to love our neighbor by being neighborly wherever we are. The gospel is not a declaration of rights, but a declaration of responsibilities. As one sociologist has remarked, even a slight increase in good deeds on the part of each of us would change the world. Indeed it would. May God give us the strength and courage to continue to be Good Samaritans. Amen.