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You may remember the Beatles, back in the 60's
singing "All you need is Love." There's no
doubt that there was a great truth carried in those
simple lyrics. If we were to look around the world today,
it's clear that a good dose of love would cure many of
the world's ills. But it's easier said than done isn't
it? I mean we have no problem loving those who are close
to us, our family and friends, but what about those who
are different from us? What about those who are our
enemies? That gets a bit harder, doesn't it? In fact it
goes against normal human nature. When someone does
something to us, the natural human response is to want to
get even. This was shown very clearly in the response to
Sept 11. Even though people in Australia were hardly
affected in any direct way by the attack on the World
Trade Centre, we saw an incredible response of animosity,
not to the perpetrators, but to those they supposedly
claimed to represent, the followers of Islam. According
to one newspaper report I read, Muslims in Australia had
been spat at, assaulted, harassed and threatened. Petrol
bombs had been thrown at Mosques and community centres.
Even here in multicultural Melbourne there was an
incident where two girls were thrown off a tram because
they were wearing the traditional Muslim head gear. It
seems that hatred is much easier to generate than is
love. |
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So in this parable that we're looking at today,
Jesus teaches something that's totally radical. He says,
for God's people, love is something that reverses the
natural response of human nature and that extends even to
your worst enemy. |
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You see, things weren't that much different in
Jesus day to the way they are today. The only difference
was that instead of the major divide being
Christian/Muslim or Protestant/Catholic, it was
Jew/Gentile or Jew/Samaritan. For the Jew of Jesus' day,
the Samaritans were a despised people. That's because
their religion was an amalgam of Judaism and the pagan
religions of a variety of countries from which the
inhabitants had been brought by the Assyrians 6 or 700
years before. And even though they claimed to worship
according to the traditions of the Patriarchs, they
didn't do it in Jerusalem. They'd set up an alternative
temple in Samaria. Whereas Judaism had sought to purify
their religion of all pagan practices, Samaritan worship
was tainted. So the Jews would have nothing at all to do
with Samaritans, and it would seem the feeling was
mutual. So that's the context in which Jesus speaks. A
feeling of hostility and animosity equal to or even
greater than that shown by certain parts of our
population to Muslims in recent days. |
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But of course that's just background
information. What this parable is really about is the
nature of love. The account, though, begins with an
expert in the law posing the question, "What must I
do to inherit eternal life?" It sounds like a
genuine question on the surface, if we didn't know how
often such experts had tried to trap Jesus with innocent
sounding questions on other occasions. In fact Luke tells
us he was just asking it to test Jesus. |
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But Jesus wasn't going to be caught out quite as
easily as that. Instead, in the manner of a good teacher,
he turns the question back on the questioner. He asks,
"What does the Bible say? What does your reading of
the law tell you?" |
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Well, the lawyer knows his stuff, and he quickly
replies with the orthodox response, "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." Maybe he hopes that
Jesus, being this radical teacher from Galilee, might
question this orthodox response. Perhaps he's a little
surprised when Jesus applauds his answer. In fact Jesus
says that he's found the secret to eternal life. "Do
this and you will live." That doesn't sound very
radical does it? But that's because we haven't heard the
whole story yet. |
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The Practice of Love |
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But before we go on, it's worth meditating for a
moment on the fact that this lawyer knew the answer
before he asked the question. How often do we ask this
sort of question, not because we want to know the answer,
but because if we keep asking it, it puts off the day
when we have to do something about it. This was one of
the problems with the Pharisees of Jesus' day. They'd
debate the meaning of the law till the cows came home.
They'd narrow down the interpretations of various laws
until they had it all neatly defined to the nth degree.
Jesus regularly criticised them for their concentration
on fine detail but ignoring of the more important
requirement of obedience to God. And that's what this man
seems to be doing here. What he wants is a nice safe
intellectual debate with Jesus about the meaning of life,
so he can score a few points before he goes home to his
mates. But what he gets is nothing like it. |
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Jesus' response, you see, comes not from a
desire to convince him intellectually, but from a
pastoral response to see his life changed. He says,
simply, "Do this and you will live." "Stop
debating and start practising." |
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Well, clearly that isn't good enough for this
lawyer. He doesn't want to be told how to live. And he
certainly doesn't want to look stupid in front of his
peers, so, we're told, he seeks to justify himself. He
understands the implication of Jesus' short statement to
go and do it. He realises that Jesus' answer is an
implied criticism of his love of debate rather than
action. But he's been on the debating team for a long
time and he isn't going to be put off that easily. So he
seeks to justify himself by asking for further
clarification of this simple commandment. It's a time
honoured method of delaying action. He says: "And
who is my neighbor?" "Hah, got you there!"
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We all do it at different times don't we? We all
feel a little uncomfortable with a command like this,
because it seems too hard. So we shift the focus from
action to question. You see, if we can't clarify who the
object of this love is then we don't have to do it. G.K.
Chesterton once wrote that Christianity hadn't been tried
and found wanting; it had been found difficult and left
untried. |
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But Jesus isn't going to let us get away with
that. He has a simple answer to this question as well,
but this time it comes in the form of a story. He tells
the story of a man, a Jewish man, going down from
Jerusalem to Jericho, a hazardous journey because of the
isolation of the route. It was a notorious place for
bandits to attack sole travellers and that's exactly what
happens. |
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But perhaps it might help us to put it into a
modern context. In the context of the events of last
month, Jesus might have told the story of a share trader
who had been caught in the initial explosion of the World
Trade Center and who had managed to crawl out onto the
street before the building collapsed. He's lying there
half dead and an FBI agent comes along. He sees him lying
there, but looking up notices that the building is
starting to groan as though its about to collapse so he
hurries on to get clear. After all he won't do anyone any
good if he's dead before he begins his investigation.
Then Mayor Giuliani comes by on his way to a meeting with
some Government Officials. He too sees the man lying
there, but decides someone else can look after him, he
has more important things to deal with. Finally, along
comes one of the Muslim fundamentalists checking on the
results of their terrorist attacks. He sees the man lying
there and takes pity on him. He helps him up, he takes
him down the road and hails a taxi and takes him to the
nearest hospital where he pays for his treatment in
advance and promises to return the next week to check on
him and cover any further expenses he might have. |
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It's all wrong isn't it? It just wouldn't happen
like that. Yet that's exactly the sort of situation that
Jesus describes. And he finishes with the question,
"Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor
to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?"
The answer is, "The one who showed him mercy." |
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Now let me suggest that Jesus removes two common
excuses for love in this parable and then in fact turns
the whole question itself on its head. |
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Excuse 1: I don't do anybody any harm!" |
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Some people read the law of love in the reverse
sense. That is, if I don't hurt anyone by what I do, then
it's as good as loving them. No doubt that would have
been the response of the priest and the Levite in this
story. I mean it would have been foolish to stop. There
wasn't much they could do for the man anyway. He was
already half dead. And if they stopped they'd run the
risk of being attacked the same way he had. Besides
which, it would be against the Jewish law to go near him
if he were dead already. That would make them unclean,
unfit to do their temple duties. Besides which, the law
didn't actually require them to doing anything about him,
as long as they didn't add to his hurt. |
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It's so easy to turn a blind eye to those who
are in need isn't it? To simply overlook them, or find
we're too busy to do anything about them. To rationalise.
To think that as long as we don't hurt them it's as good
as loving them. |
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Excuse 2: "Charity Begins at Home." |
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The second way we tend to limit the way we love
is to think of our neighbour as restricted to a certain
group. It might be geographical, it might be religious or
ethnic or cultural. We might decide that God helps those
who help themselves, so that's all we have to help.
That's a common excuse for not showing love to the
socially disadvantaged. "There's plenty of jobs out
there for those who want them. All they have to do is get
off their backsides and go looking for one." Putting
everyone who's disadvantaged into the same category of
dole bludger or social parasite. That way we don't have
to worry about them. |
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No doubt the Lawyer in our story would have
limited the idea of neighbour to those of Jewish descent,
but Jesus turns that on its head. He makes the accursed
Samaritan shine out as neighbour to the injured Jewish
man. He shows that neighbourly love has nothing to do
with culture or ethnicity. Rather it depends on mercy and
care shown to someone in need, irrespective of person.
You see, Jesus points out that the man has been stripped
of his clothing, so there's nothing to indicate whether
he's a Jew or a Samaritan. All the Samaritan sees is
someone in need of his care. And that care extends to
risking his own life, in walking slowly with the man
slumped in the saddle, despite the risk of further
attacks by bandits and to paying for up to two months
stay in an inn for the injured man in an act of great
generosity. |
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The Challenge of love. |
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But Jesus' final thrust in this answer, the
sting in the tail of the parable if you like, is the way
he asks the question at the end. Notice how he subtly
turns the question around from who is my neighbour, who
am I to love, to who acted as a neighbour to the man in
need. It's a double edged answer isn't it? It shows up
the hypocrisy of those who want their love to be
restricted to their own social or ethnic group, but it
also portrays this member of a group the lawyer despises
so much as the one who shows up that hypocrisy. In fact
the lawyer can't even bring himself to say "the
Samaritan." |
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Be a neighbour to those who
need your love. |
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You see, the point of this parable is not to
clarify who we're to love. It's to say, stop trying to
clarify or to justify. Just start being a neighbour to
others. Why? Because being someone's neighbour implies
loving them. And who are we neighbour to? Anyone who
needs our care and mercy. That is, anyone we come across,
irrespective of whether they're friend or foe. This takes
it from the general to the specific. It's no use being
like Charlie Brown who once said "Of course I love
the human race, I just can't stand Lucy." In fact
Lucy is the test of love. Are we ready to be neighbours
to our Lucys. |
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Of course the prime example of this sort of love
is that of God himself. "This is love, not that we
loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the
atoning sacrifice for our sins." (1 John 4:7-10
NRSV) "God proves his love for us in that while we
still were sinners Christ died for us. ... 10while
we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the
death of his Son" (Rom 5:8-10 NRSV). The sort of
love that Jesus is talking about, the sort of
neighbourliness he's describing in this parable is a love
which willingly engages in positive acts of care and
extravagant acts of self-sacrifice, irrespective of our
relationship to the one in need. It's a love that doesn't
ask 'Who?' but asks only 'How?' Jesus in his parable of
the sheep and the goats, in Matt 25, describes how both
the things we do and the things we fail to do reflect on
our love for him. It's no good using those excuses to
avoid loving. God is only interested in seeing how we act
as neighbour to those we come across in our daily life.
Jesus said, as much as you did it to them, you did it to
me. That's how seriously he takes it. |
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Jesus' challenge to the lawyer is go and do it.
To a large extent this is meant as a challenge to his
self-satisfaction, his self-reliance. In the end eternal
life is won only by Jesus Christ. We receive it only by
grace through faith in his saving work. But having
received that grace the challenge remains, "Go and
do likewise." "Love your neighbour as you love
yourself." "By this all will know that you are
my disciples, if you love one another as I have loved
you." |
