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.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
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.
The Practice of Love
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.
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."
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!"
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
Excuse 1: I don’t do anybody any harm!"
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.
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.
Excuse 2: "Charity Begins at Home."
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.
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.
The Challenge of love.
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."
Be a neighbour to those who need your love.
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.
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.
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."
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