A Simple Gospel
July 25, 2010
Luke 10:25-37
Perhaps you heard about the two psychiatrists who met on the street. One of them said, “Good morning! How are you?” After they had passed, the other one thought, “I wonder what he meant by that?” We’ve become accustomed to complexity, so much so that we miss the simple truth when it should be obvious.
As people of faith, we have a long and distinguished history of making things more complicated than they need to be. It all started when God gave Moses those two tablets with Ten Commandments. It was a pretty simple set of rules. Moses carried them down the mountain, got the people’s attention and they all lived happily ever after, right? Well, not quite.
For a while they lived happily, and then someone asked, “Well, I wonder what God really meant by ‘keep the Sabbath holy?’” Someone said, “This is what he meant.” But someone else interpreted God differently. And then another asked, “Can I honor my mother but not my father?” And someone else said, “What about stealing… is it OK if I copy my neighbor’s papyrus or is that copyright infringement?” And another wanted to find some wiggle room around the whole issue of adultery and coveting a neighbor’s wife… and another was wondering just exactly what constituted murder… did that include self-defense… and before anyone knew what was happening, what began quite simply, became quite complex. By the time of the first century, the Law, as the rules of the faith had come to be known, the Law had become the people’s religion. They lived by the law as best as they could, and when the time came, they died by the law. This understanding of the Law plays an important part in the story of the Good Samaritan.
You probably know this story very well. But one of the problems with knowing a story well is that we sometimes tune out the telling of it and thus never get to reflect on the details.
Jay Leno does a “man on the street” comedy bit on occasion where he goes out onto the streets of Hollywood to ask people questions. One night he was asking them about the Bible. The question was, “Do you know who the Good Samaritan is?” One man said, “He was some guy who did a good deed.” “Oh,” Leno said, “I see. Do you know anything else about him?” “Yea,” the man answered, “I think they named a hospital after him.”
I was born at Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati. My son was born at Desert Samaritan Hospital in Mesa. My father-in-law recently recovered from some heart troubles at Samaritan Hospital in Portland. So I’m glad there are hospitals named after the Samaritan. But we need to know more about this story than that some hospitals have been named after one of the characters.
In the story, the lawyer, hoping to trip up Jesus, asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Now think with me for a moment about that question…how might we ask it and answer it today?
Shall we start a list? I have a friend or two who would say it is a meaningless question since they don’t believe in eternal life to begin with. But let’s just assume for a moment that eternity is inheritable, that you and I can get there. How do we go about it?
Do we have to follow certain rules? Rules are good. I like rules. We’ve got quite a few of them at our house. Rinse your dishes before putting them in the dishwasher…empty your pockets before throwing your pants in the hamper…don’t call your sister stupid…don’t annoy your brother…don’t slam the door…and never, ever wake dad from his Sunday afternoon nap.
The Bible is full of rules. If you like rules, you will like the Bible. The Biblical term is not rule, of course, but “Law.” Law is one of the primary concepts in the Bible. The Hebrew term most frequently translated “law” in the Old Testament is torah, and it is used more than 200 times. For the Jews, for Jesus and for this lawyer (and for the Levite and the priest and the man in the ditch by the side road, and for the robbers who put him there, and yes, even for the Samaritan), torah came to mean the way of life for faithful people…a way of life, which if followed, would lead to eternal life.
The lawyer asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered, “What does torah say?”
And the lawyer answered correctly, quoted it right out of the Bible.
“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.”
And Jesus said, “Yep, that’s it! You’ve got it! You know the rules. It’s as easy as A-B-C. Do this and you will live.”
But the lawyer said, “Wait a second, Jesus. I’ve got a follow-up question…just exactly who is my neighbor.”
And the answer that followed was the story we know so well about the Good Samaritan. That phrase sort of rolls off of our tongues. In a word association test, if I said “Samaritan” you would probably say good! But the two words would never have been spoken together in the days of Jesus and this lawyer. Stupid Samaritan, wicked Samaritan, evil Samaritan, ugly Samaritan, worthless Samaritan, yes…but never “good” Samaritan. To say that the Jews and Samaritans didn’t get along is bit of an understatement. So deep was the hatred and fear of the Samaritans that when Jesus asks the lawyer which of the three passers-by was a neighbor to the man lying in the ditch, the lawyer could not bring himself to say the word “Samaritan,” and grudgingly said instead, “the one…who showed…him kindness.” I suspect the crowd around them was equally dismayed. For in naming the Samaritan “good,” Jesus was destroying cultural stereotypes.
But there was no denying it…without a doubt, the Samaritan who rendered aid was following torah. He was loving his neighbor as himself. The priest and the Levite who walked by on the other side…they were loving God all right…keeping themselves pure and clean for the Temple. But they sort of messed up on the loving others as you love yourself part, didn’t they? And here is a startling thought to bear in mind…the Samaritan, he hated the Jews as much as the Jews hated him. Yet, he helped the man. He broke the rules of the world in order to keep the rules of God.
So this story is not really about keeping rules in order to have eternal life, is it? It’s about breaking them. It’s not about following customs and social norms. It is about shattering cultural expectations. To keep it simple, let’s just say it is about love.
How can God love the sinner and the outcast? How can God love me? I don’t know, but I know that this story reassures me. This story of one person caring enough about another person, who by all rights should have just walked on by, is a parable about love… God’s love made real in a human action. And that, my friends, according to Jesus, is how we inherit eternal life. Make God’s love real. It is a simple gospel… make God’s love real.
I don’t think there are any rules about how to do that. We just do it…we just love… at least, we try to love, at least, I hope we do…
Our love for one another is a very imperfect thing. We may say cruel things to the ones we love, we may neglect them and ignore them… we may remember the betrayal of marriage vows… or the long-ago fight that drove a father away from a son… we may search our hearts and grow sad as we remember our failures to love the people closest to us as we would like to love them… and then there are the strangers we walk by on the streets, never knowing them, never learning to care for them, never seeking to understand their needs, never acknowledging that they also are children of God who want desperately to love and be loved, just like we do. We unconsciously put people into categories… loveable and unlovable, good and bad, Godly and ungodly, worthy and unworthy… but God mixes us all up together and challenges us to love as God loves… with a grace that transcends all barriers.
One of my favorite stories speaks clearly to me this morning. It is the story of doctor, a surgeon, who has just performed a difficult surgery:
I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. I did my best; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve.
Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. “Who are they,” I ask myself, “he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, so greedily?” The young woman speaks.
“Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say, “it will. It is because the nerve was cut.”
She nods, and is silent. But the young man smiles. “I like it,” he says. “It is kind of cute.”
All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with one so filled with God-like love. Unmindful of her brokenness, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate hers, to show her that their kiss still works.
Friends, there is one love that is perfect and eternal, and that love is God’s love for you. God loves you. No qualifications. No exceptions. And if you believe that, then it is only a very short step to believing that God loves your neighbor, too. And if God loves your neighbor, who are you to not love your neighbor as well.
I believe that we were created to love, for love, by love. It is a simple gospel that Jesus preaches to the all of us who are looking to complicate the story. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your strength, and with all of you mind; and your neighbor as yourself.
Repeat it after me, folks…
You shall love the Lord your God…
with all of your heart…
and with all of your soul…
and with all of your strength…
and with all of you mind…
and your neighbor as yourself.
And after the lawyer had said these words, Jesus said to him, and I say to you…
“Do this and you will live. “
Amen.