"Simply, To Love" July 15, 2007 Pentecost 7 (Proper 10)

(First read the text for this sermon: Luke 10:25-37)

It’s so simple that it’s disarming.

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" This is a pretty dangerous situation for Jesus, isn’t it? It’s a public setting. This scholar of the religious law is one of those who are calling Jesus out, trying to figure out what it is he’d teaching, testing him.

But, in the fashion of a rabbinical debate, Jesus turns the tables on the questioner with a question of his own. He says to the scholar of the law, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?" And the scholar answers from the law (from the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures). He quotes Deuteronomy (6:4-5): "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 then he adds a quotation from Leviticus (19:18): “and your neighbor as yourself." The words from Deuteronomy would have been no surprise. Called the “shema,” they were to be spoken twice a day, in devotional practice. Did the expert in the religious law add the words from Leviticus as his own innovation? Or was that gaining acceptance at the time among the teachers of God’s law?

In any event, it impresses Jesus! He replies, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live." What Good News in this! What Gospel! What life, what joy, freedom, what lightness! It’s so simple that it’s disarming! We are, simply, to love!

The scholar of the law, though, is unwilling to leave it in such simplicity. But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" In response, Jesus tells a story. It is, perhaps, the most famous story in our civilization: about a man who is robbed and beaten up and left for dead; about how the first two travelers to come across him pass by on the other side of the road; about how it is only the third traveler who stops and helps and saves the man’s life.

You may know the details, and the meaning, and the implications of this most famous story. The road to Jericho was infamously dangerous. The road descended more than 3,000 feet in 17 miles, and it wound around through lots of narrow passes, giving bandits many places to hide. Anyone on that road was taking his life in his hands.

And so, in favor of the first two travelers to come along, the ones who didn’t help: on such a road, if you came across someone lying there, is he only pretending to be hurt? Is he himself a robber, just waiting for some poor sap to stop to help, so he can attack? In addition, these first two travelers are a priest and a Levite – both of whom are charged by God to maintain the religious purity laws – and, of course, touching a dead body would cause them to become religiously unclean! That means they would be unable to perform their God-given work! (Check out the instructions in Leviticus 12 – 14, to see what the duties of priests and Levites were.)

And, then, you know that the one who does finally stop to help is a Samaritan! It is hard for you and me to understand the offense Jesus would have caused by telling this story. (In our language, we even have a phrase: “a good Samaritan,” to describe someone who stops to help change a flat tire or something. But the fact that we have that phrase in our language shows that this part of the story has lost all the toxicity it would have had in Jesus’ telling.) Let’s see if I can make this as offensive as Jesus would have sounded. How about if I say, instead of “Good Samaritan“ – “a good terrorist”; or “a good member of Al Qaeda.” That overstates it. Samaritans didn’t blow themselves up to kill innocent people. But God’s chosen people hated Samaritans! Indeed, for a Jew, the very soil of Samaria made him unclean! (Many of God’s people would walk miles farther in a journey, to go around the region of Samaria, rather than to walk through it.)

Look at what happens in the story. Jesus asks the scholar of the law, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" This religious official answers, "The one who showed him mercy"; because he can’t even bring himself to utter the words, “the Samaritan.”

Jesus holds up someone who is hated by God’s people, someone who is unclean, someone who is far beyond the margins – as an example of God’s love!

We are, simply, to love. It’s so simple that it’s offensive! We are to love even those we hate.

It’s so simple that it’s impossible! (Next thing you know, we’ll be coming across a passage where Jesus explicitly tells us to love our enemies!)

All of this comes to sound like bad news, doesn’t it? It’s law from God. It condemns us. We cannot possibly comply. We can’t possibly please God. How can we love those we hate?

It is only possible as the ability to love is given to us by God. It is only possible as God opens us to the possibility. It is only possible as God opens us to love, in our prayer.

There is the Good News: what is impossible to me becomes one of God’s possibilities!

Isn’t this the way it works? How often it is that I realize that I am beating myself up over something –because I haven’t performed up to my expectations of myself (which are way higher than anyone else’s expectations of me!) – that my prayer becomes, simply, “You love me!” “You love me.” “You love me.” That is my prayer, simply said, over and over – until God is able to lead me to believe that (again!), and so that I stop beating myself up. God loves me. When I come again to believe that, then I can come again to loving others with the love that comes from God.

It’s so simple that it’s disarming. All of those things that have me so wound up in anger and anxiety? They simply melt away, in the love that comes from God. (Have any of you experienced any of this?)

Who is the Samaritan today? Around the world? Near to home? An adversary, perhaps, in your day-to-day life?

Who is hated?

Is there any joy, is there anything good, in hatred?

Instead, believe the risky and freedom-giving Good News! Do what God makes possible to do, through our prayer.

We are, simply, to love.

In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.


Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia