July 15, 2007

Like a Good Neighbor

by Rev. Dr. Jim Carlson

Luke 10:25-37

Opening Illustration:

Luke had various purposes – Christianity is universal, not just for Jews.

Christians not a threat. Jesus had disagreements with Jewish leaders concerning interpretation of Jewish law.

Parable of Good Samaritan is an account of legal question put to Jesus by Jewish leaders.

Greatest commandment – Love God and love neighbor

Who is neighbor? Parable written to illustrate.

Tell story: Jericho – 18 mile trip down 3200 feet.

Man robbed and beaten – clothes taken: looked like a corpse.

Priest passes – returning from Jerusalem. Passes on the other side – Can’t risk being defiled. (Slide)

Levite Passes – Assistant to priest.

Samaritan passes – has compassion, dresses wounds of Jewish man.

Takes man to an inn, gives innkeeper two days wages, promises to pay the rest when he returns.

Which one was a neighbor to this man? The one showing mercy.

Point is that love of neighbor does not know categories.

World at time of Christ was defined by categories. What Jesus was saying was revolutionary.

People still define others by categories – excuse not to treat people as neighbors.

Death of Ladybird Johnson – Fought to end categories which defined people in U.S. (Slide)

Although previously reluctant to make speeches, she enrolled in a public speaking course in 1959, which prepared her for the campaign. Her insistence that her receptions be racially integrated made news in the South, and she often received guests with prominent African-American women.

In reaction, she was spat upon by segregationist protestors outside the hotel where one of the events was being held. Her refusal to turn against her southern heritage was a factor in at least mitigating some of the regional hostility to the Kennedy-Johnson ticket. At one Montgomery, Alabama event, Mrs. Johnson recognized several cousins in the audience and called them to the podium, winning the crowd's sympathies. Even when heckled by Republicans at an airport appearance and swatted with a picket sign by one of them, she retained her poise.

In the midst of the race, LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act. Mrs. Johnson's support of this was so strong that she sat in the front row as he took pen to paper, the only woman present. Despite being First Lady for only several months, she had already established a record as being supportive of civil rights.

Even the small symbolic act of touring with an African-American congressional wife arm-in-arm through the White House living quarters earned her praise in the national black daily newspaper Chicago Defender. The traditionally pro-segregationist Democratic South was wary of the direction the Johnsons were taking the party and it was again the First Lady who expressed her understanding of the resistance.

Without denigrating their traditions, she emphasized how racial integration would benefit southerners of all races in a "new South."

The issue arose sharply at the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City when Mississippi African-Americans, declaring they had been purposely barred from their state's all-white delegation, formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and demanded that LBJ recognize, and permit them to be seated in the hall. LBJ asked his wife to draft his potential response to this.

The First Lady penned a statement, affirming that the legal delegation should be seated but that the "steady progress" on racial equality that LBJ had initiated would stand and continue under him as president "within the framework of justice." Ultimately, a compromise was achieved.

Her example of neighborliness toward people she was taught to avoid is an example to us all.

Who are the unlikely Samaritans in your life? How can we as a church attend to the broken, beaten, stripped and dying people of Waukesha?