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Luke 10: 25-37 | “The Example of Love”
The13th 4thSunday after the Feast of Trinity | 30 August 2015
Dear Saints,
This most wonderful of parables, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, is put here in the Scriptures by the Holy Spirit for us, for our instruction, repentance, and edification. But before they were published for the entire church, they were spoken by Jesus to a certain Jewish lawyer.
Lawyer had a different sense in ancient Israel. This was someone who’s life was given over to the study of the Torah, the Law of God. He would spend his time reading the Scriptures, the Rabbis, and he would debate these questions of the law in the synagogues.
This lawyer comes to Jesus, and we have the great advantage from the text that we know what is motivating his questions.
His first question, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” is motivated by the same things that motivated all the Lawyers and Pharisees, they wanted to test Jesus. This was mostly a negative motivation, that is, they wanted Jesus to fail, to stumble at a question, and by this prove that He was neither God nor the Messiah. This never happened. In fact, Jesus would constantly answer their questions with such profound complicity and clarity that they would leave silent. But it could be that this motivation to text Jesus was positive, that this particular lawyer had heard something in the teaching of Jesus that caught his interest, and now he wants to learn more.
This might explain his question. This was not the kind of question that was used to trip up the Rabbis. “Should we pay taxes to Caesar? What is the greatest commandment? How will marriage work in the resurrection?” This lawyer asks the most basic theological question, “How am I saved?” “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
This is the kind of question you ask to someone who you think is teaching a different doctrine. When we are talking to our friends, and they are a different confession, Catholic or Baptist or whatever, and the conversation stumbles across a difference in the theology, then we almost instinctively go to this question, “Well, how are we saved?” Something like that is happening with this lawyer. “Jesus, I’ve heard you teach about the kingdom of God, the Son of Man, of death and life, of mercy and grace, and it seems like there is a different doctrine. How, then, is a person saved?”
It seems, though, that the question is, at this point, mostly intellectual. He is asking not because he wants to know how to be saved, but because he wants to know how Jesus would answer the question. So Jesus puts it back on him, “What does the Bible say?”
And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
This is the perfect Rabbi answer. It goes under the category, “Ask a law question, get a law answer.” It is almost word for word the same answer that Jesus give to the question, “What is the greatest commandment?” Now, the surprise for us is that Jesus did not completely condemn this answer for having nothing to do with God’s grace and mercy, nothing to do with the forgiveness of sins and God’s kindness, but He lets it stand.
And [Jesus] said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
If there is a way to be saved by the Law, this would be it, totally keeping it with everything you’ve got. This, of course, is an impossibility because of sin, both original sin and actual sin, but especially original sin, that inborn condemning corruption the we inherit from Adam. It seems like this lawyer has no place for sin in his theology, and therefore no place for forgiveness and mercy.
He has read the Old Testament and missed the blood, missed the law that condemns and the promises that forgive, but there is something in the response of Jesus that gets him. He asks a second question, and this one has a different motivation.
But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
This question is not theoretical, but practical. The law has done its most important work, at least it has begun to do it. He stands accused, guilty, his conscience is pricked, and we see here the instinctive reaction of our flesh when the law has convicted us: self-justification.
He heard the law preached from his own lips, “Love your neighbor as yourself”, and he has wondered, for a moment of brutal and dangerous candor, “Have I done it? Have I kept the law? Have I loved my neighbor?”
We know, of course, that he hasn’t. You know that you haven’t. I know that I haven’t. We hear this kind of thing preached at us every Sunday. We confess it all the time. We are used to being sinners. But can you imagine this thought dawning on you for the first time, “Maybe I’m not perfect? Maybe I will not inherit eternal life?”
And there is a visceral reaction from the sinful flesh. “Who is my neighbor?”
You see what this question does? It limits the law, shrinks it down. It is an attempt to make the law manageable, doable, accomplishable. It wants to put limits on love. It wants to limit the neighbor list.
Love requires everything. Love the Lord your God with All your heart, and all your mind, and all your strength. Everything you’ve got is pour out in love. Love ends with death. What greater love has man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend. There is never a time when you can say that you’ve accomplished the command of love.
My parents, for my birthday, got me a little pedometer, which keeps track of all the steps I take in a day. I’m mot reading anything into it. And if I take 10000 steps then it buzzes and I get a nice little message that says, “Congratulations, you’ve reached your goal.” Imagine that you have a loveometer. You would never get that message. You never give enough, never die enough, never serve enough.
(There is a danger when we hear this preaching that we say, “If I’ll never finish, then I won’t even start.” This is the devil’s voice. We know we are sinners because we have tried and failed. Because we have begun and not finished. Because we have ventured and risked loving the neighbor, and come up short. It is especially when we try to love that we actually see that we are sinners. It is when we attempt the keeping of the law that it accuses us.)
And that is the problem, the law always accuses. If I want to stop the laws accusing then I have to change the law, reduce it, soften it. The easiest way to do this is to cut down my neighbor list.
Remember the “Neighbor List”? We preach about this all time. We have a working list in our mind or our conscience of the people that we consider our neighbor, and those people we are obliged to love, and if anyone is not on the neighbor list, then we self-justify our not loving them.
The biggest problem with the neighbor list is the people who we’ve taken off. If a person sins against us, then they are off the neighbor list, I don’t have to love them. If a person is my enemy, then they are off the neighbor list, I don’t have to bless them. Jesus is especially, in this parable, getting after racism, which says that if a person is of a different culture then I am not obliged to love them and help them.
They are not on my neighbor list. This is wrong. It is a useless attempt at self-justification, and the end of this road is destruction.
So, the question put before us today is this, “Who have I removed from my neighbor list? How have I softened the law? With what person or what people have I falsely liberated myself from the obligation to love? Or, simply, who do you hate, and consider an enemy?” Repent. Jesus says, “Love your enemy. Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you. Pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44)
This is not easy, in fact, it is not possible. We will begin, and time after time, you will fail. Love is never done, at least not our love. But look, while we were still His enemies, Christ came for us, for you. He was beaten, stripped, abandoned for you. His love, and His love alone, is complete, finished. He has delivered you, rescued you, scoped you up in the arms of His mercy, and He forgives you.
He, in His resurrection, has inherited eternal life, and He brings that to you, freely, not of works, but by grace. His love rescues us, and in this we poor sinners rejoice. Amen.
The peace of God which passes all understanding guard your heart and mind through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller
Hope Lutheran Church | Aurora, CO