This gospel holds a warm place in my heart as this was the first gospel I preached at Sunday mass, 21 years ago, and the issues are as timely today as they were then. Then again, there hasn’t been a time in our history as a people where they weren’t timely. The lawyer who posed the “who is my neighbor” question wasn’t interested in who are his neighbors, but who aren’t. Not “who must I include” but “who may I exclude.” Not “who must I love,” but “who may I hate.”

It doesn’t take much imagination to see how much of our public discourse these days. I’m writing this in the hours after George Zimmerman was acquitted of 2nd degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin. Much is being made of the fact that they are different races: Trayvon was black and George describes himself as Hispanic. What troubles me most about this lies in the fact that George was volunteer patrol in a neighborhood watch. I understand the need for protection in our homes, but what has happened when we need to be armed to protect ourselves from our neighbors? Instead of seeing them as people of our community, as those who live closest to us, we see them as those who want to harm us or steal our stuff. There is much of this case that we do not know, but we do know that George approached Trayvon because he was unfamiliar. Perhaps the fact that Trayvon was young and black contributed, but we don’t know that. We do know, because he said so, that George approached him because he felt threatened.

In the gospel reading Jesus goes to some length to turn things around on us. The “good guys” who were supposed to help the traveller (the priest and the Levite) passed him by while the “bad guy” (the Samaritan) did the right thing. Why did this happen? Perhaps the priest and the Levite were afraid they would become unclean if the traveller died, and they reacted out of fear. The Samaritan, however, had every reason to ignore the traveller. Samaritans were strangers from a distant land with unfamiliar customs, and perhaps a different agenda. Sound familiar? I’m sure there were any number of disciples there who liked the story but wish Jesus hadn’t picked a Samaritan to be the hero. But of course that’s exactly why he did.

The happy ending to this gospel story is that the lawyer gave the right answer. We don’t see him again (and don’t know his name) and his actions after this encounter with Jesus are lost to history. I hope and pray that he came away from this with a renewed sense that we are all neighbors to each other. I wish the same for ourselves.

We live here in San Diego and we are backed up to the border with Mexico. Are they our neighbors? It’s hard to look at all the fencing, the patrols, the floodlights, etc. and see that we are taking this story seriously. Our neighbors to the South, by and large, are not people for us to fear, but people who want to be with us. We should want to be with them also.