“GO AND DO LIKEWISE”

Sunday, July 15, 2007

United Lutheran—Red Wing

Luke 10:25-37(The Good Samaritan)

Grace to you and peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.  Amen.

              This morning’s gospel portrays the radical love of neighbor which is called for by Jesus.  Our eyes go immediately to this passage of Luke, which offers one of the significant stories of compassion, the Good Samaritan.  Although, the term “good” is not mentioned in the text, most of us could retell the story from memory, and all of us can understand the imagery. The Good Samaritan is somebody who goes out of the way to help the fallen one-the one in need-even at great inconvenience to self.  We even have Good Samaritan laws to protect one who stops to render aid from liability to prosecution should something go awry in their well-intentioned efforts.

              But if this is just a morality tale about the importance of doing good deeds, then Jesus forgot his own message. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

              The story is set in the closing days of Jesus’ ministry, close to the time of the cross.  Jesus had set his face toward Jerusalem.  As he moves closer to the cross, there are heated arguments with his opponents.  These controversies give Luke the opportunity to demonstrate how Jesus differs from his opponents.  Under discussion is “the greatest commandment.”  The lawyer whose question occasions this parable has a prior agenda. He’s not so much interested in Jesus or the message and what it means to be part of the Kingdom of God as he is to put Jesus to the test and to justify himself. So he asks two questions in a typical rabbinic manner of teaching and dialogue.

              First he asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  As Jesus so often does, he answers the question with a question, “What’s written in the law?  What do you read there?”  The lawyer answers: “You shall love the Lord your god with all your heart, and with all your should, and with all your strength, and with all your mind: and your neighbor as yourself.”  It’s a combination of two Hebraic laws.  In fact, it’s a summary of the two laws.  One is called the Shema recorded in Deuteronomy 6:5, where one is to love God with every fiber of their being.  The second is from the Holiness Code recorded in Leviticus 19:18 which speaks of loving neighbor as oneself.  He brings the two together and presents them as one.

              It’s the second part that draws our attention this morning, “You should love your neighbor as yourself”.  Perhaps a better translation would be, “You shall love your neighbor because he or she is like you.”  That is what the original meaning said…”because he or she is like you.”

              That may or may not change our perspective on this commandment to love. Our neighbor is like us!  We are in the same boat as human beings.  We have walked through the same valley of death, we’ve been sick and diseased, confused and frightened, bewildered and amazed just like others have.  We’ve needed love, assurance, and compassion like each other.  They are like us and we are like them.

              This interpretation is supported a few verses later in Leviticus 19 where these words are recorded, “When an alien(foreigner) resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien…you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.”  The Jews were the first people to practice hospitality to neighbors.  They did so out of their own experience of being strangers in a strange land. “Love that stranger, because you were strangers once yourselves.”  “Love your neighbor, because she is like you.”

              The second question is stated in such a way that some might not qualify as neighbor, “who” implies less than everyone.  “And who is my neighbor?”  To justify himself, he lawyer asks the question with the sense of limiting the scope of his need to care for a neighbor.  He has in mind, it seems, a definition of neighbor that informs his obedience and wants this to be confirmed by Jesus.  But Jesus recognizes the definition of neighbor as comprehensive, including the poor, hired hands, the deaf, the blind, one’s own kin, and the aged.  Even Leviticus seems to exclude no one.

              Jesus now tells the parable of The Good Samaritan.  I won’t retell it this morning other than to mention again there are three persons who walk by the beaten man in the ditch---a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan and which pass by and which one stops to help the beaten man in the ditch.  Jesus tells him that to place restrictions on the identity of the neighbor is to violate the very law which he himself holds dear.  For Jesus, knowing the law is insufficient; one must interpret it correctly.  “What do you read there?”

              -If the lawyer does the law, so interpreted, Jesus says, he will live.  And so will the dying neighbor who now comes into view in the story.  Three short distinctions might help bring this commandment into sharper focus.

              *First, love, as this command describes it, is NOT a feeling!  Rather, it’s an

              action.  Don’t worry about feelings of love, or emotion.  That’s where our

              culture seems so messed up.  We always have to FEEL something!  But love-the

              actions of caring, support, patience, kindness are actions which keep relationships           

              strong and growing.  LOVE IS A VERB, as someone else has suggested.

              *Second, it doesn’t say anything about having to “like” someone.  We spend

              needless energy trying to like everyone.  Not a bad goal, but that’s an impossible

              task.  I can work at loving my neighbor who needs my compassion, my under-

              standing, and care whether I like them or not. I don’t have to like my obnoxious

              neighbor but then he doesn’t have to like obnoxious me either.

              *Third, love is not an option for Christians, it is a command of Christ.  This is

              not about whether or not someone deserves or has warranted our love and care.

              Love is not an option and it is often hard work.  But it is the “Christ-like” thing

              to do. In the face of “the other” we are called to see the face of Christ.

              The call of this story is to show God’s own mercy and love to one another, a

call that transcends human barriers and spills out to the world in many surprising and unexpected ways.

              But “who is my neighbor?”  It would have been one thing if Jesus had told a story in answer to that question about someone helping a Samaritan(an outcast).  But in fact it is the other way around.  Here a Samaritan turned out to be living out God’s will better than many from Israel probably were.  Not only was a foreigner to be accepted as neighbor, but a foreigner was even a better example of faithful living. THAT HURT!

THAT WAS A STRONG LESSON!

              That nagging question, “Who is my neighbor?” haunts us.  For Jesus seems to place the boundaries much farther out, pushing to the extremities of our concern and compassion and beyond.  But can we, by our own strength, do these things?  Can we love God with undivided hearts?  Can we love others with total altruism, total unselfishness? If we could, then the cross was unnecessary.  We say about faith, “I cannot by my own reason or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, nor come to him, but the Holy Spirit calls me…”  I believe that insight is germane here in this story as well. While Jesus may seem stern, he is also showing his questioner that like the rest of the human race, we are unable to be what we ought to be, to love as we ought to love, and act as we ought to act.

              I’m reminded of another man who confronted Jesus asking how to earn eternal life.  Having taken him through the commandments, Jesus told him to sell all he had and give it to the poor and follow Jesus. He would have eternal life.  But the man went away sad for he had much. Jesus explains, “What is impossible for mortals, is possible for God!”  Karl Barth writes that in the truest sense, Jesus is the Samaritan who shows mercy to one left for dead.  Jesus alone could act as neighbor to the fallen ones.  Jesus alone fulfills the twin commandments to love God and others.  But Jesus did it for all of us!

We are to seek to do likewise, but only with the help of God. In and through Christ we can act in deeds of love and kindness.  That’s why the gospel of Jesus is not “Good Advice”, but “Good News”.

              One of the dynamics of this story is the extent to which the Samaritan pushes himself.  More than half of the parable is devoted to the Samaritan’s actions—feeling pity, bandaging wounds, pouring wine and oil, lifting the man upon his animal, caring for him at the Inn, securing the innkeeper’s hospitality—an excessive amount of description.

It suggests that more than “go and do likewise” is being proposed here.  It seems to me that the extravagance with which Jesus describes the Samaritan’s action isn’t meant as instruction in first-aid procedures but as an invitation; we are meant to experience the healing sting of the wine, to enjoy the relief of someone taking charge of us. Perhaps to see ourselves as the person in the ditch

              Before we “go and do likewise” or go and do anything at all, we are meant to know the care and compassion of the stranger who finds us abandoned, lifts us up and provides us with hospitality.  Far beyond providing instructions in practical morality, the actions of the Samaritan stranger opens a window for us to recognize nothing less than the compassion and care of God for us. It addresses us not only what we ought to do, but in who we are, and our deep need for care as well. This compassionate flow of care for our neighbors needs to flow from our own experience of God’s forgiving and undeserved love for us.  As individuals, as families, as a congregation, and as a whole church our response to the need of others is because of and on behalf of the crucified and risen Christ.

              It should come as no surprise that our own national church-wide expression underscores the ELCA World Hunger Appeal with the final words of Jesus in this text, “GO AND DO LIKEWISE”.  The underpinnings of the whole appeal since its inception in the mid-1970’s has alternated between these words from Luke 10(Good Samaritan Parable) and the words from Matthew 25…”AS YOU HAVE DONE IT TO THE LEAST OF THESE, YOU HAVE DONE IT TO ME!”  The appeal is always, always brought forward in the context of the Good News of Jesus.  There is a distinct ethical content to this story of the Good Samaritan.  The Christian life is a life of self-sacrifice and neighbor-love.

              The same might be said for the concern our Hunger Committee has lifted up relative to the 2007 Farm Bill which you have been hearing about.  It isn’t simply a political appeal, it is about how we respond as Christians caring for our neighbors close to home and in distant lands who desire to be self-sustaining.  It is about how we provide for those who are unable to provide for themselves nutritionally in this land and abroad.

It is about the alien living in our midst who needs to know the love of Christ in word and action.  It is about millions banding together in compassionate advocacy, it is a symbolic gesture of goodness not unlike the Samaritan, not unlike the compassionate action of Christ.

              For our faith certainly should inform our common life, as well as our personal lives.  As we see the needs of others, let the compassion shown us in Christ empower us to, “GO AND DO LIKEWISE!”    We come to the table of the Lord this morning—forgiven, loved, fed, and experiencing the compassion of Christ.  So that we may also,

“GO AND DO LIKEWISE!”

                                                                                    Pastor Clark Cary