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.