13th Sunday After Trinity 2016

August 21, 2016

Luke 10:23

“Who Is My Neighbor?”

The disciples were the first ones to whom Jesus revealed the great secret of God’s nature. He pronounced an indirect blessing on them, telling them that they had received what the great prophets and kings of history had hoped for. They saw the climax of God’s plan of revelation and salvation, through Jesus Christ, the Messiah. David, Hezekiah, Josiah, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel had all looked forward to this day, but had not been allowed to see it. This placed great responsibility on the disciples, as it does on all of us today. The disciples had revelation no one before them had received. How would they handle this blessing? How would they share it with others; would it be in weakness or in strength? The disciples were the good soil in which Jesus has planted God’s Word. The time was coming for them to produce results. Are they up to it? Would they take care how they listened? Would they hear and do the Word of God?

In today’s gospel we see a lawyer, a man with excellent religious credentials standing among the crowd. He studied God’s law continually and interpreted it, so the people would know how to obey it. He tried his best to obey the law himself. He helped administer justice within the Jewish system. People respected his expertise and his life. He stood and posed a question for Jesus. He thought it would reveal the weakness and falseness in Jesus’ teaching and lead people away from Him back to the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, who were the only qualified religious leaders. God had given Israel an inheritance, namely the land of Israel. They had forfeited this inheritance through disobedience. Now they looked for a new inheritance, one that would last forever. The rabbis debated exactly what this inheritance was. The lawyer was going to give Jesus an opportunity to provide a new definition of Israel’s inheritance.

Instead, Jesus bounced the question back to the lawyer. Both of them agreed the answer must be found in Scripture, particularly in the Law of Moses. So Jesus asked, “What does the law say?” Both knew the Law had to be interpreted for modern times, so Jesus asked for the lawyer’s own interpretation. Now the lawyer was being tested, not Jesus.

True to his profession, the lawyer quoted Scripture. Interestingly, we read in Matthew 22:37–40 and Mark 12:29–31, Jesus quoting the same Scriptures. So, both from the Jewish leaders’ viewpoint and from Jesus’ unique teaching, these Scriptures stand at the top of all other Old Testament teaching. Love God. Love your neighbor. If you do those, then you will be and do what God expects in the Old Testament. We must understand is that such love must not be half-hearted. It must be all encompassing. Every part of you—your thoughts, emotions, feelings, and actions—must be controlled by love for God and for others.

For once Jesus agreed with a Jewish religious leader. Again, he emphasized the nature of this answer—not just an idea of the mind, but an action of one’s strength, a feeling of one’s soul, an emotion of one’s heart. Love must control the entire person.

The leader tried to take the offense again and put Jesus on the defensive. He had one more trick question: “Who is my neighbor?” That is another way of asking, “How far does my love have to extend?” Jewish legal interpretation sought to govern every situation and every relationship: Jew and Gentile; Jew and Roman; man and woman; free man and slave, priest and laity, clean and unclean, righteous and sinner. Every relationship was clearly defined, and the definitions determined how and when a person could participate in Jewish worship. This question was vital to Jewish identity.

Jesus answered the lawyer with a parable to keep all but the true believers from understanding. He described a normal trip a person would take, a seventeen-mile walk from Jerusalem, down to Jericho, through a mountain pass that fell almost 3,300 feet in elevation. Herod had built the New Testament Jericho as his winter palace on the same spot Hasmonean rulers had earlier built their palace. (The Hasmonean’s were a dynasty established by the Maccabees) Herod built three palaces, a swimming pool, and a sunken garden. Government officials frequently made the trip from Jerusalem to Jericho, as did Jewish religious and political leaders. Criminals took advantage of the upper class’s need to travel this winding, crooked road through dangerous passes. They hid behind the large rocks above the narrow passes and preyed on travelers. Jesus told the story of one victim without identifying the man by his race, occupation, or reason for traveling.

Fellow travelers soon happened on the situation. First, there was a priest, the highest of Jewish religious officials. He hurriedly stepped to the other side of the road and continued on his important business, even though rabbinic law expected him to bury any corpse he discovered. Next, we see a Levite, who by occupation carried out the more mundane tasks of temple worship and operation. He passed quickly by without helping. No reason why, other than neither of these men had enough love for this particular “neighbor” who had been stripped and savagely beaten.

Next we expect a member of the Jewish laity to help since the clergy had failed the love test. Instead, we get an unexpected Samaritan, one who in Jewish eyes had little reason to be in Jewish territory and who would be the last person to qualify as a neighbor to be loved by a Jew. That is the conclusion the lawyer would come to using his method of interpreting the Law. But, from the ditch the dying man was lying in, anyone who will offer first aid and emergency assistance qualifies as a loving neighbor. Jesus uttered shocking words for a Jewish audience who had been grilled in legal interpretations and prejudiced judgments. The Samaritan had compassion—a Greek expression built on the word for a person’s inner parts, the seat of emotions and feelings. It expresses Jesus’ feeling for those who are in need. This is true neighborly love—a love that goes beyond anything society or religious law expects and acts simply because of the extreme need of another.

The Samaritan took the dying man from the ditch and restored him to health, under supervised care, at an inn, without cost to the suffering man. The Samaritan representing everything the Jews hated became more than just someone they should love as a neighbor. The Samaritan became the hero of the story, the person showing love, the individual whose love Jews should imitate.

Jesus had the lawyer set up for the obvious question: “Who among the three was the loving neighbor?”

The lawyer then gave the only possible answer: the one who showed mercy to the traveler. Again, this Greek term (mercy) is often applied to Jesus, who responds to calls for help. Jesus promised God’s mercy to those who show mercy in Matthew 5:7. So, Jesus told the lawyer to go and show mercy like the Samaritan had done.

Like some theologians and Bible students today, Jewish rabbis enjoyed debating the fine points of doctrine; and this lawyer (a student of the OT law) wanted to hear what Jesus had to say. We get the impression that the man was not seeking truth, but was only trying to involve Jesus in a debate that he hoped he would win. The lawyer proved to be evasive when it came to facing truth honestly and obeying it.

Our greatest responsibility today is to obey the greatest of the commandments, which the man quoted accurately from Lev. 19:18 and Deut. 6:5. But we cannot rightly love God or our neighbor until we have God’s love in our hearts. If we cannot keep the greatest of the commandments, how can we ever hope to please God? How important it is to see that salvation is by faith, not by keeping the law; but, once a person has been saved, he or she can depend on the Spirit to help fill their hearts with love.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan was given to answer the evasive question of the lawyer. “Defining your terms!” is an old trick of lawyers and debaters. Instead of getting involved in abstract terms, Jesus presented a concrete case; and the lawyer understood the point.

We must not “spiritualize” this parable and turn it into an allegory of salvation. The point is simply that our neighbor is anybody who needs us, anybody whom we can help. The “hero” of the story is a Samaritan caring for a Jew; the priest and Levite—professional religious workers—are not heroes at all. The question we must answer is not “Who is my neighbor?” but “To whom can I be a neighbor?”

Amen.

Fr. Bill Shepard†

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