Who's My Neighbor?

Who's My Neighbor?
Homily for July 10, 2016    Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary - C
by Dcn. Bob Bonomi

If someone asked you, “Who’s your neighbor?” what’s the first thing that comes to your mind?  (Besides someone being mugged and left for dead?)  Is it the person who lives next door to you or on the same street?  How about your co-workers?  Or, for those of you who have children, how about the parents of a child that shares a class with yours?

Or, how about the person that share’s your faith? Look around – go ahead – would you consider the person who is sitting close to you to be your neighbor?

I think you get the idea.  Our word “neighbor” comes from the Old English word “nēah-gebūr”  - nēah, or near, and gebūr, or dweller, and so we might consider those who live or work or close to us as neighbors.  We might also consider people that we associate with, or those that we at least share a common interest with, as neighbors.  And that was exactly the perspective of Jews at the time of Jesus.  Neighbors were those closest to them.

In a sense, I come to you today as your new neighbor.  My name is Bob Bonomi and I will be serving you as one of your deacons.  I’m originally from northern Idaho, and growing up I was typical of many cradle Catholics – I’d go to church for Christmas and Easter sometimes but I wandered away from my faith – so those of you whose children have wandered from the Church, there is still hope for them.  Remember, God works miracles every day.  I didn’t come back to the Church in earnest until about 1990, after a particular difficult period in my life.

I moved to Texas the first time in the summer of 1980 as an engineer and computer specialist – in the middle of the 100-year heat wave – and I discovered that Texans don’t outright lie, they just don’t tell all of the truth.  When I interviewed for the job that February I was told that the “mean temperature of Dallas was 75 degrees”.  Yep – 75 is half-way between 125 (which it was in Wichita Falls when I came through on the 4th of July weekend), and  25 (which it was during the ice storm that rolled through later that fall.)  But nobody told me that there were only three seasons in Texas: almost hot, hotter than Hell, and don’t worry, it will be hot again soon. 

I will have been married to my wife, Rene’, for 35 years this December, and we live in Plano.  We have two grown children, and two small dogs.  I was ordained on Groundhog’s Day, 3½ years ago, and prior to coming here I served as a deacon at St. Francis of Assisi in Frisco.  I currently work in the business office of St. Patrick’s just down the road from here and have been there for almost 9 years.  Prior to that I was a computer specialist and have had my own computer consulting company now for over 25 years.  I know some of you from my old days with the Knights of Columbus at Prince of Peace, and I’ve already met several of you during the last couple of weeks.  I’m looking forward to being a good neighbor.

Which brings us to today’s Gospel.  The scholar answers his own question to Jesus about what it takes to obtain eternal life with the two greatest commandments which comes from the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, the foundation for Jewish law.  The first, “Love God” comes from Deuteronomy, chapter 6, beginning with verse 4 and is part of the Shema, or the main Jewish prayer which they are to recite three times a day:

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, The Lord is One. / Blessed is the name of His glorious kingdom / Forever and ever. / And you shall love the Lord your God, / With all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your possessions."

The second, “Love your neighbor”, comes from the book of Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 18:

“Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against your own people.  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Now, the scholar could have stopped there, but he wanted to put Jesus on the spot by challenging him about who should be considered a neighbor.  See, In Jesus’ time it was the Jewish custom to live a life of what might be considered “national isolationism” – after all, Jews were the “chosen people” of God and deserved special treatment or consideration, while anyone who wasn’t a Jew was considered an inferior.  Even though there were many laws specifically about caring for all those who were marginalized, including not just the poor, widows and orphans, but aliens, laborers, the deaf and blind, even lepers and sinners, those outsiders were obviously not in God’s favor and so were treated as inferiors.

It was one of the reasons why the Jewish leadership distrusted Jesus and had such a problem with him – his “signs”, his miracles, aided those who were outsiders, not the elite or even the “chosen”.

There were two primary reasons for their distrust. The first had to do with pride.  Jewish leadership didn’t believe that the marginalized deserved to be considered worthy of the earthly gifts that God should give to those who “earned” them by being a “good” Jew.  They allowed their ego, their arrogance, their pride, to color their thinking and their behavior toward others.  Jesus’ actions were not consistent with living “the good life” as they saw it.

But the second reason was far more insidious – fear.  They were afraid that the status quo of their lives, the comfort of their own existence and the known way of their lives would be threatened and they would lose the power and control they exercised over others.  Jesus treated outsiders not only as equals, but often in a preferential manner.  With his question, the scholar wanted to show others just what kind of threat Jesus posed to all Jews.

In answering the scholar’s second question about “who is my neighbor?”, Jesus changed the focus from a “who” – who is a neighbor to me – to a “what” – what makes me a neighbor to others.  His parable struck right at the heart of their fear of losing the status quo. 
In the parable, why did the Levite or the priest fail to help the injured man?  Scripture scholars suggest several possible reasons:

• Perhaps they are on their way to perform religious services and if the victim was dead and they touched him, they would become “unclean” and would not be able to perform their duties.
• Perhaps they are overwhelmed at the prospect of transporting an injured man through the mountains and finding assistance for him in the next town
• Perhaps they are afraid, fearing that the man has been placed there to lure them into an ambush.
• Perhaps they are disgusted by the gore and prefer not to dirty their hands and clothes.

But aren’t these our fears, too?

In any case, the Good Samaritan doesn’t let any of these things interfere with his helping someone who was in grave need.  He was obviously a businessman who traveled that stretch of road often and had business to attend to, yet he still took time and his resources to help without measuring the cost.  He did what he could do for the injured person, and then went back about his business.  But he did not forget about the injured person, for he said that if more was needed, he’d give it.

So, who is our neighbor today?  Or, rather, who is it that we are called to be a neighbor to?  We are over half-way through Pope Francis’ Year of Mercy, and when I see people who are in need of God’s mercy, I wonder if we’re getting the message that Jesus is telling us in the Gospel today.  That WE are our brother’s keeper.  That WE are the source of God’s Mercy to others.  That WE are called to be a neighbor to one and all.

Who is the neighbor that we see laying on the side of the road today?
Are we afraid to help them?