Monday, May 3, 2010

May 2, 2010
Seminarian Mark Reichert
Luke 10:25-37


The Golden Rule states “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In the minds of many, the parable of the Good Samaritan is nothing more than an illustration of this rule. It is ironic that such a well-known account is so often misunderstood as a simple morality guide. The Golden Rule certainly has application here, don’t get me wrong; but only after it is put in its proper place. The parable speaks to the most basic of all religious questions: What must I do to inherit eternal life? It’s the natural mindset of the world that if we do our best to follow rules and laws, we should be rewarded. However, we have an underlying misunderstanding about God’s Law: it is not just a bunch of rules to be followed superficially. God knows our hearts and he is concerned about our attitudes. Jesus teaches us here that the requirements of the Law stem from the spirit of the Law, which is love. Selfless love is the fulfillment of the Law; in our text we see that the expert failed by that standard, but Jesus fulfilled it.

We may read the first few verses of this account and raise an eyebrow at Jesus’ words. Let’s recount: The expert asks how he can obtain eternal life; Jesus asks him what the Law says; the expert answers, “Love God and love your neighbor.” But then Jesus replies “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.” A curious answer coming from the Savior of the world, right? But the simple fact is that the expert did answer correctly – he quotes directly from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. Scripture does in fact say that the one who perfectly fulfills the Law will have salvation – Jesus maintains that when he says “do this and you will live” – that’s based on Leviticus 18:5. However, when Jesus told him this, it wasn’t meant as a challenge. In reality, the Law was meant to crush his sinful pride and show him the hopelessness of his attempts to earn his own salvation.

Now that question and answer session was embarrassingly simple for the likes of this so-called expert in the Law; after all, it didn’t take an expert in the Law of Moses to know how to inherit eternal life. So he tried to justify himself by essentially asking, “Okay, I get all that, but what I really want to know is this: who is my neighbor?” Now the question may have seemed innocent enough; after all, it would have been good to understand such a vital portion of the Law both for his own sake and for that of his hearers. But let’s remember that this expert meant to test Jesus. Undoubtedly he asked Jesus to define exactly who his neighbor was because he wanted everyone in that crowd to know just how faithful he had been to the Law. He evidently would have had to show a lot of love to his neighbors to equal the amount of love he clearly had for himself! However, Jesus tells him this parable to uncover his pride and show him his misunderstanding.

Jesus tells of an unsuspecting traveler going from Jerusalem to Jericho, who was mugged and left half-dead by robbers, which was common along that way in those days. And hopefully the expert was willing to take this to heart, because Jesus then told of a priest and a Levite (some might say experts in the Law) who came along one after the other to the spot where this man was lying. Both see him, decide against helping him, cross to the other side, and high-tail it out of there before anyone knows they were there. By all accounts, their actions were inexcusable; they were the spiritual leaders of Israel and should have set a clear example of faith and duty for their people to follow. Instead they totally contrasted the love that the Law called for. They were selfish hypocrites; they knew very well what the Law said, but didn’t practice what they preached. Perhaps they thought it was too dangerous to stick around for long to help the man. Perhaps they were tired and sore from the work at the Temple they were returning from and didn’t want to expend the effort. Perhaps they considered themselves too dignified to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty by helping him. Who knows for sure, but what we do know is that it was sinful arrogance that caused them to leave the man as they found him.

However, where these experts failed to uphold the Law, the Good Samaritan acted rightly in his heart and his actions. When he came to the same spot, he didn’t cross over to the other side and continue on. He saw an opportunity to help a man in need, and he took it. Without regard for his own safety or standing, he showed what selfless love is all about. Let’s not forget that they are still on the road where the man was first robbed and beaten, maybe even shortly afterwards. The circumstances certainly could have been dangerous, but that was no obstacle to this Samaritan. On the other hand, Jews and Samaritans hated each other. He might have asked himself whether that man would do the same for him; the answer is probably not. However, this was really no dilemma for him. Quite simply, he didn’t see a Jew; he saw a neighbor whose every need he could willingly care for by sacrificing his own time, effort, resources, and money to do so.
The expert’s question was “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus now once again puts the ball in his court, asking, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The answer was obvious: “The one who had mercy on him.” Perhaps the expert had thought that only those people whom he lived near and worked with, his friends, and his close relatives really counted as his neighbors, and certainly no one outside of his fellow Jewish countrymen! Anyone else was inconsequential, since after all, it was common Jewish teaching and practice to “love your neighbor and hate your enemy” (Matt. 5:43). However, Jesus shows him that his question was wrong - it really should be, “To whom can I be a neighbor, and how can I prove myself as such?” By Jesus’ definition, our neighbor is anyone whose need is evident to us and to whom we can be of help and service. The expert’s focus was self-service; thus, he sought to limit the extent to which he had to apply his love to others. Because his heart was not right, his thinking was wrong. He came initially to Jesus to exalt himself, but when Jesus told him to “go and do likewise,” he left completely humbled. There was no other feasible response for him than to admit that he was utterly unable to live up to those expectations because they were simply too great.

Jesus says in Matthew 22(:40) that all the commandments of the Law and the Prophets shake down into these two categories: love for God and love for neighbor. Are you as comfortable and content with that as the expert in our text evidently was? Do you kid yourself into thinking that you do these things like you should? Jesus taught that showing love for God is doing everything he commands in exactly the way that he commands. That is, think right and act right always. Do it all perfectly, without ever lapsing into the slightest failure, because if you really want to put the matter of being saved on the basis of doing or earning, then this—and no less—is what you must do.

Furthermore, loving God includes loving your neighbor perfectly and selflessly, because He commands that as well. But like our expert in the Law, the sinner in each of us keeps asking the question “and who exactly is my neighbor?” You see, it is also our nature to expect there to be finite, reasonable limits to the Law; we don’t think it’s fair to be confronted with a task we can’t accomplish. Satan tries to convince us that we are doing what God expects of us, when in fact we are falling pitifully short of it. Just as there’s no limit to the love God shows us, so also there are no limits to the love God expects of us. God cares about our attitudes as well as our actions, and he doesn’t just want us to show love as a heartless, mechanical exercise. He wants us to love selflessly, from the heart, as He loves us, and like the Good Samaritan, to be willing to show that love to anyone in any way at any time.

All things considered, the expert’s stubbornness was astounding. Do you think he finally got the point by the end of this account? You would hope so, but think about this: do we finally get the point when the same things happen to us? Or does our pride cause us to deny our fault and to dig in and try even harder to earn God’s favor? Though Satan would have us do so, when Jesus commands us to “go and do likewise,” He is confronting us with our complete inability to fulfill God’s Law on our own. Think for example about how we’ve overlooked a family member in need of support because it didn’t fit into our schedule or budget; how we’ve turned a blind eye to a friend whose life was falling apart because we didn’t want to stick our nose into business that wasn’t ours; how we’ve looked down upon someone for whom our Lord Jesus gave up his very life for no other reason than their fashion style or the color of their skin; and how many other countless ways we’ve given God a bad name by living a selfish and sinful life. Are these examples of love for our neighbors, brothers and sisters? Are these the deeds by which we think we merit salvation? The fact is that we have stumbled at every point in the Law any number of times; stumbling at any point of the Law just once makes us less than what God demands. Indeed, these are examples of efforts that deserve nothing but condemnation.







So then rather than continuing in a downward spiral of pride into Satan’s stronghold by challenging ourselves to be better people, we need to finally submit to the fact that we can’t even do that on our own, much less earn salvation. Only then with broken and contrite hearts can we truly find understanding of God’s Will at the cross of Christ, who has fulfilled the Law perfectly at every point for us.

So let’s start again from the beginning of this account. The expert asks, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He was looking for a way to earn his own salvation, not realizing that the Way to salvation was standing right in front of him. And the answer to his question? Well, good luck fulfilling those requirements; there has only been one person that’s ever walked this earth who could and did – again, the one standing right in front of him. Jesus loved God perfectly by always obeying every one of his commandments the right way in life and by willingly submitting to His Father in death. He loved his neighbors perfectly by coming to earth to serve, rather than to be served, as He deserved. His love and concern for others were limitless – he showed them in his patience with unbelief and stubbornness, in his miracles, and in his teaching. Yet He says in John 15(:13): “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” He showed his perfect love for his neighbors of all times most of all in going to the cross to die for them. Though we deserved banishment from his presence and death at his hands, He suffered and died to bring us to himself for eternal life in heaven. That’s love, friends.

So when the God who so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son for us asks you to love as He has loved, how do you respond? How else can you respond but with humble thankfulness and a resolve to do so with his help? Though he was in no way obliged to do so, he came to earth to keep the Law that we couldn’t and offered himself as the perfect sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. The blood that he graciously shed for us covers us and all of our shortcomings, so that God no longer remembers any of our sins against Him or our family, friends, co-workers, classmates, or anyone else we would call “neighbor.” If that is not motivation, then what is? That love that Christ first showed us compels us to show that same selfless love back to God and to our neighbors, and he has promised to empower us for this task by sending the Holy Spirit to work in us.

Not only is he our motivation to love, though; he is also our example of how and who to love. We see Jesus in the Good Samaritan, as the one who showed selfless love to his neighbors both in attitude and action when all others did not. Our neighbor is not just a means to an end, as the expert in the Law selfishly seemed to think, and loving our neighbor is not some superficial obligation. Rather, in love and thanks to God for loving us, the Gospel motivates us to exercise our faith by applying the Golden Rule and asking ourselves ‘what Jesus would do’ so that we can take full advantage of all the opportunities God gives us every day to follow Jesus’ example of love for neighbor. And not only do we see Jesus in the Good Samaritan, but also we see him in the man in need of help, as Jesus gives us this assurance and encouragement from Matthew 25(:40): “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”

So when we hear the words “go and do likewise” from Jesus, he is not setting us up for failure. He is calling us to the right attitude for the love and service that flow naturally from our faith. Recall Jesus’ allusion earlier to Leviticus 18:5. There the LORD says, “Keep my decrees and laws, for the man who obeys them will live by them.” With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. Consider Galatians 3:11 – “Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, ‘The righteous will live by faith.’” Have faith in God, who has saved you and now strengthens you to do His will. Through faith in Him we can resist the devil’s temptations to relapse into our natural self-reliance and self-serving pride, and through faith in Him who is our inspiration and example we inherit eternal life and can now reflect His selfless love rightly back to Him as He deserves and to our neighbors as He wills, just as we are told in Galatians 5:6 that “the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” In that light, now go and do likewise. Amen.

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