The Neighborly Thing To Do

While browsing through the website for my hometown newspaper, the Door County Advocate, I found myself drawn to the Traveling Back section, an impromptu history lesson of Midwestern sensibilities about small town life ranging back ten, twenty, and sometimes a hundred years ago. Since my own memory is stretching back farther each day, sometimes I stumble upon events I remember or which involve people I used to know. One particular story caught my attention today, and I thought you might find it interesting too. Taken from "50 Years Ago, July 17-19, 1956," the event chronicled includes a cow, a lightening bolt and a resurrection of sorts.

"A West Jacksonport cow, knocked unconscious by a lightening bold July 13, is alive and well today because of a quick-thinking Wisconsin Public Service meter reader who administered artificial respiration. The meter reader, Bill Wiesner, was in the area when the lightening struck the cow, knocking it over with its legs in the air. Wiesner pumped the front legs and a neighbor came over to help. When the cow showed signs of life, the two men, assisted by the cow's owner, Frank Lautenbach, heaved the animal to her feet and she ambled away."

Residents of the Northeastern United States may possess a frugal Yankee nature, and the Southerners can lay honest claim to some fine hospitality, but we Midwesterners are as practical and multi-talented a people as you will find anywhere. We are also a neighborly sort who like to see things work out to best advantage for all concerned, especially defenseless animals minding their own business on a stormy afternoon.

The story is from a vantage point a few years before my time, but it apparently wasn't all that unusual for someone who could help someone else in an emergency to do so. Although the frontier was already faded into the distance, the pioneer spirit of assisting each other for the good of the whole community was a strong instinct that still clearly served its intended purpose. Nowadays we hear more about not being able to get service people to our homes to handle their actual jobs, let alone extending themselves to just be kind and helpful. God forbid you should have an electrocuted cow in your back yard when the cable company representative finally shows up to install your high speed interned connection because they probably won't have the skills or the inclination to revive the poor animal.

Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan, found in Luke 10:29-37, doesn't speak about what occupation this traveler who assisted the beaten and bedraggled victim of the story held, or what a glitch taking the time to provide help may have put into his own schedule. What we do know is that Samaritans were not well-loved or even respected by the Jewish community at the time, and perhaps Samaritans felt equal disgust toward their Jewish contemporaries. Basically, Jesus was being put in a corner by a lawyer who wanted to justify his own position on how to inherit eternal life. Jesus and the lawyer had already squared off on loving God, our neighbor and ourselves as was written in the law. But the lawyer wanted more, something specific to prove to himself and whoever was listening, that would indicate what the law really meant. So the lawyer asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" What the lawyer meant was, "What does it mean to be a neighbor?"

And so, Jesus recounted the full parable, how two people who should have helped the beaten up soul on the side of the road walked on by before the Samaritan stopped to help. And then Jesus posed a question back to the lawyer. "Which of the three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?' He said, 'The one who showed him mercy.' Jesus said to him,"Go and do likewise (Luke 10:36-37)."

Jesus' parable answered the question, teaching us that being a neighbor meant extending our thoughts, beliefs and actions beyond the social norms and societal pressures of minding our own business and not helping people we are told not to like, even if there is no discernible reason not to help or like them. By stretching ourselves out a bit, exercising compassion and kindness and lending a helping hand to someone in need, we are living into the great commandments. We are also extending God's grace a little further into eternity. We are being neighbors.

And so we are called, to do the neighborly thing, whether that means resuscitating cows, helping a fellow traveler with medical treatment and lodging or providing a cup of coffee when our next door neighbor's supply has run out. We are called to be neighbors, to offer kindness and compassion and mercy whenever we can.

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