Scripture/Sermon of the Day. July 10, 2022
Luke 10:25-37
Defining “Neighbor”
25 Just then a religion scholar stood up with a
question to test Jesus. “Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?”
26 He answered, “What’s written in God’s Law? How do
you interpret it?”
27 He said, “That you love the Lord your God with all
your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence—and that you love your
neighbor as well as you do yourself.”
28 “Good answer!” said Jesus. “Do it and you’ll live.”
29 Looking for a loophole, he asked, “And just how
would you define ‘neighbor’?”
30-32 Jesus answered by telling a story. “There was
once a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he was attacked by
robbers. They took his clothes, beat him up, and went off leaving him half-dead.
Luckily, a priest was on his way down the same road, but when he saw him he
angled across to the other side. Then a Levite religious man showed up; he also
avoided the injured man.
33-35 “A Samaritan traveling the road came on him.
When he saw the man’s condition, his heart went out to him. He gave him first
aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. Then he lifted him onto his donkey,
led him to an inn, and made him comfortable. In the morning he took out two
silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take good care of him. If
it costs any more, put it on my bill—I’ll pay you on my way back.’
36 “What do you think? Which of the three became a
neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?”
37 “The one who treated him kindly,” the religion
scholar responded.
Jesus said, “Go and do the same.”
Reflection/Sermon:
I. Some translations say a religion scholar talked to
Jesus and some say it was a lawyer. In Jesus’ day they were both similar because
the first five books of the Bible were called the Torah or the Law. The law was
based on the Ten Commandments and the other commandments that Moses received
from God. Jesus talked about the kingdom of heaven and eternal life a lot so the
person wanted to know how he could “get” it.
II. That’s a very human desire, isn’t it? When we hear
about something nice, we’d like to know how we can have it. That’s why credit
cards are so nice — they help us get things we might not otherwise be able to
afford.
But this scholar wanted something that even a credit
card couldn’t buy — ETERNAL LIFE!!!! He wanted to live forever and he wanted
Jesus to show him how to get that.
III. The person was an expert in the law so Jesus
asked the man to answer his own question — “What does God’s law say about that?”
So the man quoted two parts of the the law, the Torah: Deuteronomy 6:5 and
Leviticus 19:18: Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Of all the more
than 600 laws in the Old Testament, those are the two most important, the man
said, and following them would lead one to eternal life.
IV. Jesus said, “That’s the right answer.” In other
words, according to Jesus, when we love God and each other, we enter another
dimension, which he called the kingdom of heaven, or eternity. But the scholar
still had questions. Like — what does love look like, practically speaking. And
especially — what, or who, is my neighbor?
So Jesus, right there on the spot, made up one of the
most powerful and disturbing and widely known stories in human history. People
all over the world have heard this story, which is so short — it’s just a
paragraph! But we still talk about it — it still stretches our consciousness
until it breaks — it literally blows our minds. And it’s so simple. A man was
beat up and left on the road “half dead.” And someone passing him on the road
stopped and helped him. THAT’S IT!!!
V. That’s the nice version of the story. Jesus added
some characters which made the nice story dangerous — dangerous to his life.
Jesus told this parable to Jews, and he made the villains two of the most
respected leaders of the Jewish community, and he made the hero a man that the
Jewish community hated — a Samaritan, the enemy.
VI. One of the questions this story asks us is: Who do
you hate? Because if we’re alive — if we’re still breathing — there must be
somebody we hate. And Jesus takes that person we hate and makes them The Good
Samaritan — the hero who will save us. Jesus makes us look at our enemies and
shows us a way to love them, because spiritually, they will save our lives.
Jesus knew that if this world is going to change, if this life is going to get
any better — it has to start with us. In the story that Jesus tells, the person
who saves our life is our enemy.
VII. There’s a show on public TV called Independent
Lens and a recent episode was a documentary called July 4, A Day In The Life of
America. It was made in 2015. There were 90 camera crews that were sent to
different parts of this country, rural, city, rich, poor, people of color, white
supremacists, Ku Klux Klan, muslims, Christians, Native Americans. The people
that I was most impressed with were those who said that despite the challenges,
we must learn to listen to people who are different from us, and we can learn to
live together, and we can even learn to love people we thought were unlovable.
In our reading this morning Jesus showed us what the
kingdom of heaven — eternity — looks like. It’s as simple as showing mercy to
our enemy, and loving the person we thought was unlovable. We might say that
that’s impossible, but God works these miracles every day — on people just like
us.