A few years ago I spent time with a non Christian man named Lloyd. I met him through a Highland member whom he was dating. Lloyd was a good doctor and he was using his talents and resources to bless people inside the hospital where he worked and outside the hospital where he lived. He did not attend church anywhere. So I invited him to attend church at Highland. Lloyd came for a few Sundays and we spent some time during the weekdays talking about his faith and mine.
Our relationship and conversations grew to the point that I felt safe in asking Lloyd if he would like to study the Bible. I remember the phone call during which I asked him that question. Lloyd had just purchased an old home in Midtown and he was renovating it. I asked Lloyd if he would be interested in coming to the church building and studying the Gospel of Mark with me later that week. And I remember his answer: “No, but if you’d like to grab a hammer and help me with this renovation I would love to spend time with you.” To this day I regret that I hung up the phone and did not pick up a hammer.
Here’s what I have concluded about what Lloyd was saying. I think he wanted to know if Christianity was more than just what took place in a church building. I think he wanted to know if Christianity would leave that building, grab a hammer and help a non-Christian with a home-project in Midtown.
More and more people are asking that kind of question. They want to know if faith has any connection to what they might call “real life.” Or is faith mostly about what people do one day a week in a building with people just like them?
Jesus takes up this issue in a parable in Luke 10.
25 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” 27 And he answered, “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.” 28 And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” 29 But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a
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Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. 34 He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ 36 Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” 37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.” (?Luke 10:25-37 ESV)
Jesus encounters a lawyer who has two questions. In Jesus’ day a lawyer was not someone who practiced criminal law. A lawyer studied God’s law. Today we would call this person a Bible professor. And he asks two questions.
Question number one is this: “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” It’s tempting to think that question is legalistic. But it is not. It is a legitimate question. The lawyer is not asking how he can do enough works to earn heaven. He is really just asking what the end game is. What would a human being look like if he or she were living out that eternal kind of life that we were all made to live?
The question is legitimate. The motive is not. We are told he asks question number one in order to test Jesus. But the test probably does not have to do with question number one. There was widespread agreement on the best way to answer question number one. Jesus even gives him the opportunity to show that he already knows the answer for himself. What is the goal of faith? T?he goal of faith is
to love God and neighbor.?Question number one allows the lawyer to get to
question number two, which is the real test. The lawyer asks “And, who is my neighbor?” That may seem like an odd question. But it will make sense in a moment.
In response to the test, Jesus tells this parable. Our story takes place on the barren road of some 20 miles that stretches through the hilly wilderness between Jerusalem and Jericho. It would be a perfect place for bandits. Sadly, several criminals assault this traveler, probably a Jewish traveller. They take everything and they leave him half dead.
But, it seems his luck is about to change. Because coming down the road are two highly respected people: a priest and a Levite. Both were professionals when it came to the most important arena for love of God and love of neighbor: the temple. Both were experts when it came to the ultimate way to love God and love neighbor – by doing so at the temple.
Both of them are reminders of this:?for many the ultimate arena for loving God and neighbor was the temple.?When it came to loving God and loving neighbor
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the ultimate expression was found in the temple. Three times a year Israelites were called to travel to the holy city and its temple. That destination was so important, in fact, that a whole series of songs were written and sung by pilgrims as they traveled to Jerusalem and to the temple. In those songs, called Psalms of Ascents, the Israelites sang about two things. First, they sang how they longed to be in the house of the Lord, the temple. Second, they sang how good it was to be in fellowship with one another there in the temple. The best way to love God and love your Jewish neighbor took place on the way to and in the holy city of Jerusalem and its temple.
That’s what this priest and Levite have been doing and have been facilitating for others. And after loving God and loving neighbors and helping others to do the same at the temple they are now commuting back home to Jericho.
Both of them stumble upon this body. We know that the traveller is still alive. That he is only half-dead. But the priest and Levite don’t. After all, someone who is half-dead may appear to be all the way dead. This probably explains why both veer to the other side of the road and pass him by.
Old Testament law taught that if you touched a corpse you would become unclean. Contact with a corpse caused defilement for seven days (Num. 19:11-22; Lev. 21:1-4).
Contamination from a corpse was bad enough for an ordinary Jew. But it was awful for a priest or a Levite. Why? Because by becoming unclean both would be prohibited from performing their duties in Jerusalem at the temple. They would no longer be able to engage in the most important expression of loving God and loving neighbor.
It is not that they don’t care about this man. It’s more that in their minds the most important way to love God and love neighbor took place at a building with a group of people who gather there on a regular basis. And they could not afford to risk that in any way.
Yet Jesus’ story shows that in doing this, both failed to love God and love neighbor. J?esus is trying to help us see that love cannot be leashed to a building in which we gather once a week with people just like us.?He is trying to help us see
that true faith practices a love that stretches outside of holy buildings and extends all the way to a barren 20 mile stretch of road outside the city. Faith applies as much to what you do in a grocery store or a sports field as it does to what you do in a Sunday School classroom or sanctuary.
But Jesus wants to press this point even further. If we had been in the crowd that day, we would have expected the third person who stumbled upon the victim to simply be an ordinary Jewish man. That would have rounded out Jesus’ critique of temple-only spirituality. And it would have fit the lawyer’s expectations.
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Remember, this is a test. And when the lawyer asks question number two we are told that he is trying to justify himself. That word “justify” means to declare yourself righteous. The lawyer believes that he has already fulfilled the command to love God and love neighbor. Why? Because loving God and neighbor takes place at the temple. And that’s what these two have been doing. And even if love must stretch beyond the temple, it must only applied to fellow Jews. That is to say, the only obligation a Jewish person had was to love his own kind. To love his Jewish neighbor.
Jesus addresses this belief in the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5 Jesus says “you have heard that it was said love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” The lawyer and most of his fellow Jews believed that. The greatest obligation was to love your Jewish neighbor. To love your own kind–that’s who neighbor referred to. Those who are not Jews, and especially those who are pagans, were not to be loved. They were to be hated.
The lawyer believes that he has already met that obligation. He has loved his fellow Jew and he has attended temple. Therefore he should be declared righteous. Justified.
That is why Jesus introduces a Samaritan into the story. If the third person is just a Jewish layperson who ends up helping this Jewish victim, then Jesus can only make the first point. He can only help us see that love is intended to stretch beyond sacred buildings to lonely stretches of roads. Jesus not only wants to talk about where we love. Jesus also wants to talk about who we love.
So Jesus introduces a Samaritan. In the lines of a recent Taylor Swift song, there was nothing but bad blood between the Jews and the Samaritans. In fact, a few verses earlier, some Samaritans have spurned the Jewish disciples of Jesus. In response the Jewish disciples want to call fire down from heaven upon the Samaritans (Luke 9:54). That’s pretty much how things were between these two races.
The last thing the Samaritan should do is to stop and help this Jewish man. The Samaritan was obligated to love his own kind and to hate his enemy–the Jews.
Still the Samaritan stops and loves. He overcomes what might ordinarily divide him from the Jew. And he loves. He is compelled to bind the man’s wounds, use wine to clean the wounds and ease the man’s pain, use oil to soften the skin and speed healing, take the man to an inn, nurse him through the night, leave resources for the innkeeper to provide for the man’s needs, and promise to return and check on both of them.
And what is Jesus saying with this story? J?esus invites us to a love that is unleashed upon all who are around us not just upon those who worship with us.
Jesus not only wants us to unleash love so that it’s free to be expressed on Monday
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as well as Sunday, at the workplace as well as at the church place. He also wants love unleashed so that it’s free to be expressed even upon those who may be different from us.
Harper Lee’s novel G?o Set a Watchman?explores this challenge. The book focuses on Jean Louise Finch who grew up in a small Alabama town called Maycomb. During a visit home, Jean Louise talks to Claudine, a childhood friend. Claudine has recently returned from a trip to New York City, where Jean Louise now lives. Claudine, a white woman, expresses amazement that while she was in New York, a black woman sat down next to her at a cafe. Such things didn’t happen in Maycomb. Whites and blacks were segregated.
“I don’t see how you live up there with them,” Claudine says to Jean Louise.
“You aren’t aware of them,” Jean Louise comments. “You work with them, eat by and with them, ride buses with them and aren’t aware of them unless you want to be…You just don’t notice it.”
“Well I certainly noticed it,” Claudine states. “You must be blind or something.”
And the remainder of the book explores whether or not Jean Louise truly is blind when it comes to race.
That is exactly what the Samaritan models. That’s what Jesus calls us to. A love that is blind, at least to those things that divide us. Jesus invites us to a love that is unleashed upon all who are around us not just upon just those who worship with us.?A?love that is not satisfied to only love our own kind. A love that sees past whatever makes us different and loves anyway.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was the older of the two brothers who set the bombs in Boston at the Boston Marathon. Tamerlan was the one who died trying to escape. Since the tragedy, no cemetery had been willing to allow Tamerlan’s body to be buried, due to widespread protest. No one wanted his body buried in their town.
Martha Mullen, a Christian, felt a conviction to help. As reported on National Public Radio, Martha began contacting Islamic funeral services, eventually locating a Muslim cemetery in Virginia that would accept Tamerlan’s body.
An NPR reporter asked Martha, a total stranger to the Tsarnaev family, why she chose to get involved, especially given the risk that she might, herself, be targeted by angry protesters. Martha answered by pointing back to this parable:
Jesus tells us to, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and your neighbor is not just someone who you get along with but someone who is alien to you … if I’m going to live my faith then I’m going to do that which is uncomfortable and not necessarily what’s comfortable …. I feel like it was the right thing and it’s important to be true to the principles
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of your faith.?[Martha Mullen to Audie Cornish, “All Things Considered,” National Public Radio (5-10-13)]
Jesus invites to unleash love in similar ways. To let love loose outside the
walls of the church and upon even those with whom we may have the greatest differences.
To help you do that, we are launching something this week called “Go 901.”Go 901 is being run alongside the Highland Youth Group’s TIME: Campus. Through an initiative called TIME: Campus our teenagers are spending this week exploring how to love God and love neighbor in their schools. And through an initiative called Go 901, Highland adults are urged to unleash love beyond these walls to neighborhoods and workplaces.
Each day this week, Go 901 challenges you to do one specific thing to love neighbors and coworkers. S?o, the call this week is simply this: Participate in Go 901 or TIME: Campus. Y?ou should have received a handout about Go 901 as you entered. If you did not, you can pick up additional copies at the Go Center this morning. You can find it on our website as well. The handout lists specific ways to unleash your love this week on neighbors and coworkers. It’s designed to help you get love and faith outside these walls and out there into the world.
In addition, for those of you who’d like to really explore what it means to love your neighbor, we have copies of two books at the Go Center this morning: H?ow To Love Your Neighbor Without Being Weird?and T?he Art of Neighboring.?Both books can help you love your neighbor and coworker well past just this week.
There are a lot of people around us who are just like my friend Lloyd. and they are asking if Christianity is more than just gathering in a building with a group of people who are just like you. They are asking if Christianity has anything to do with real life out there. They are asking if Christianity might grab a hammer to do home renovation in Midtown. What we are asking you to do this week is to live in such a way that the answer is yes.
