So today our mystery is the mystery of “you.” Meaning you to me, and me to you. We are all a little bit mysterious to each other. I mean, our brains work differently, literally, we process things in different ways. You can solve about 90% of arguments by remembering that. We each have our own perspectives, and our own reasons for acting the way we do. We are so unique, as we discussed last Sunday, no wonder we sometimes leave each other feeling very, very, confused.  I am often struck by this feeling called sonder (that’s your vocab word of the day). Have you heard of it? It’s the profound and sometimes sudden realization that everyone around you is living a life as vivid and complicated as your own. It might hit you in a crowd of people, or while sitting in rush hour.

It hits me sometimes when I’m scrolling on Facebook. I joined Facebook back in 2008 when I was a 10^th grader and just one of many teens moving there from Myspace. At first, it was just a place for sharing funny pictures with my friends. Then it became a way for my family members to see what I was up to. Even my grandma made an account! Then I added friends in college, teachers and professors, and friends from various workplaces. I added folks from churches, and from seminary classes, and lots and lots of pastors that I met. So now, my “friends” on Facebook are like 800 people who know me from all the different stages of my life, which is pretty wild if you think about it. I mean, most of them only know me from one moment in my life, some from many years ago. Many of them I haven’t seen in so long that we’re basically strangers again, but we have this online space to connect. And I am constantly reminded of how much I don’t know about them. I see their weddings and divorces with partners that I’ve never met. I see their kids getting older, and their new pets. I see them creating things, making art, writing blogs, taking on new roles, and growing as people every day just like I am. There’s so much life that goes on that I don’t get to see.

We’re going through things all the time without other people knowing it. For the most part, we only get to know a small slice of each other’s lives. One of the good things that happens on social media is when someone shares something vulnerable, and it becomes an opportunity for people to see that they’re not alone, or weird, or more broken than others.  We just don’t know as much as we think we do sometimes. We are mostly mysteries to each other. We can see what’s on the surface, and what’s shared with us, but there are many things we can’t see, like a person’s past, or their dreams, or their doctor’s appointment last Tuesday, or where they slept last night. Each of us has a whole world behind our eyelids. A collection of memories, emotions, and interests that make us ourselves. But we can’t see those inner parts of each other, and it’s easy for us to make assumptions about each other because our brains are so good at filling in the gaps. We are story tellers by nature, but the stories we tell about each other aren’t always true.

Sometimes the labels we give and the assumptions that go with them prevent us from seeing people as our neighbor. This happens on social media too, in the hate comments and the awful things people say to each other. Often, it seems like we’re fighting our ideas about a person more than we are the person themselves, and that’s the rut we’re living in right now. Lots of name calling, and little interest in getting to know each other for real. At our worst, we treat each other like NPCs. NPC means a non-player character who is part of video game, basically anyone but you: the player. They only exist when you can see them, they only speak when you interact with them, and nothing that you do to them is real. But no one here is an NPC. We are all human beings. Multi-dimensional, not all good or all bad. We are more complicated than any labels, and full of stories that only we know, and the pain that we cause each other is very, very real. When the priest and the Levite pass by the stranger on the road, there is a story they’re telling themselves that we don’t get to hear. Maybe they were just too busy, or maybe the man is just too dangerous and unclean. They don’t stop to check on him, because they’ve already decided, that’s not their concern, not their neighbor.

What I noticed about the Good Samaritan this time is that the Samaritan doesn’t ask any questions before he decides to help the man. Enough time has passed for two other people to walk by, so he didn’t see this guy get robbed. He doesn’t know what happened. He doesn’t know if this guy is a criminal, or the biggest Samaritan hater in all Judea, or just someone faking their injuries to get a free bed. There are a lot of assumptions he could have made, a lot of stories he could have told, but none of it stops him from caring enough about this stranger to intervene. And he’s not called “The nice Samaritan who wasn’t like all the others and had nothing better to do that day and a little extra money to burn.” No, he’s just good, and that’s enough to challenge us. The Good Samaritan is just a good human who places a stranger’s humanity over all the reasons that he could have left him there. The Good Samaritan is more concerned with another person’s wellbeing than he is afraid, or angry, or apathetic because of their differences. And since he’s talking to an expert in Jewish law, Jesus doesn’t make the story easy by making it about a good Jew who gives help to a Samaritan, but about a Jew who needs help and finds it in a neighbor he would have never expected. Possibly one he might not have helped if it were the other way around.

Jesus is pushing us to expand our definition of neighbor, and not just to help them, but to trust them to help us. We are not meant to be saviors; we are meant to be neighbors which means that we help each other. For a group of people who might’ve said “I’d rather stay on the side of the road than get help from a Samaritan” this really turns things upside down. We don’t always understand each other. We hear this kind of stuff all the time. I don’t understand what they’re saying. I don’t understand why they dress like that. I don’t understand why they pray like that. I don’t understand why they need Pride parades. I don’t understand why they need Juneteenth celebrations. The radical idea within this parable is that you don’t need to understand someone to care about them. Some things are not yours to know. You don’t need to understand a person to know that each human life is full and valuable and worthy of care.

Now remember that this parable is a part of how Jesus is answering the question: “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” This parable is a secret code for eternity. The combination to unlock life without end is caring about people in radical and life-saving ways. Because we belong to a worldwide neighborhood. We need one another to thrive, and we all deserve to be cared for when we are the one on the side of the road. A world where neighbors care about each other, is a better world for everyone. We don’t get to draw lines around who qualifies as our neighbor, or to put it in even stronger terms, who qualifies as a human being, deserving of our care and important to our neighborhood. Even though we are different, we are also so very alike. We all need food, water, and shelter. We all want to go home to our loved ones at the end of the day. We are all real human beings with whole human lives. Your pain is as real as my pain. Your life is as real as my life.  So, when we see people as labels or ideas, instead of whole human beings, that has very real consequences.

For my last NGLI gathering in Philadelphia, we read a book called “The Purpose Gap: Empowering Communities of Color to Find Meaning and Thrive” by Patrick Reyes. It’s about the gap that marginalized people must overcome to find and follow their purpose in life, because they don’t have the same resources and opportunities, and because there are many barriers. One of his points is that when we tell the story of those who have overcome such adversity, we focus on how they made it out of those circumstances. They escaped like shooting stars – the exceptions to the identity they were born with. But that’s not the whole story. It doesn’t include all the people who helped them to succeed, usually the very family members and communities that we celebrate them leaving behind. So, Reyes explains that what we need is not more shining stars, but constellations. As constellations, we are one of many stars who are a part of a bigger picture. One of many neighbors who belong to a bigger community. Not just a few exceptional individuals, like a single good Samaritan, but a whole sky and whole world full of them. Our church is even a part of a constellation of care within Medina, connected to the work that is being done by other groups, like Kidz Connected, Habitat for Humanity, and the Next Step-Up Shelter. We amplify good through our connections.

Humanity’s problem is not this group or that group of others. Selfishness and apathy are wrecking this world for all of us, and so we have got to start spreading the good news that it does not have to be this way, that we can and should care about each other. We can and should be neighbors to each other. A simple idea, but we’re still struggling with it 2,000 years later. Jesus is calling us to curiosity, compassion, and courageous love across difference, teaching us that we should treat everyone, no matter who they are, with love, respect and kindness.  That is the key to the mystery of you, not understanding everything about you, but knowing we are connected anyways. If you love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, it should look an awful lot like loving your neighbor as yourself, for they are the very image of God, regardless of what they look like, what language they speak, what clothes they wear, what music they like, or whatever label you put on them. The mystery in you reflects the mystery in me: that both of us are worthy of love and care. Perhaps if we learn this, we will solve the mystery of life everlasting, and life that is truly abundant. May it be so. Thanks be to God. Amen.