This morning we saw the importance of mission and our commitment to it. This is something we must be on about, but there is more to the Christian life, that was only one rock of discipleship. In the next three talks, they will be on about our relationships[1]. We are to look to others to help, we are to look to Jesus for instruction and we are to look to God trusting Him in prayer.
This story today mentioned the two-fold love that is towards God and neighbour, and I think this story kicks off a two-part series on what this means. We will see in the next two talks a focus on loving God and neighbour. This talk it is about love towards our neighbour.
What Must I Do To Inherit Eternal Life?
This whole discussion and Samaritan story that follows comes from an initial question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” on the face of it, this is a great question, a fundamental question that seeks to answer a whole bunch of existential angst. Jesus is asked the same question later in Luke 18[:18]. I think lots of people have this question today - like they did with Jesus back then. People are searching. Do you know people around you who are uncertain about life after death? Many people don’t know what’s out there. There are those who are acting out in blind faith that when you euthanised someone they go to a better place. They don’t know that for sure. There are people out there who are taking a bet with their life that there is nothing after this one, but they don’t know.Christians on the other hand know there is life after death, Jesus in particular knows all about this, and our hope rests in His teaching and experience of life after death. But do you note how Jesus answers this question? This might be because Jesus can read tone, as v25 says, the question was to test Jesus. This guy wants to see if Jesus knows what he knows, is Jesus right? Does He agree with him?
So Jesus engages by asking another question asking “what do you think?”. This is to a lawyer, someone who could read and study the old texts, surely he already has an idea on how to get eternal life. And he comes up with an answer, he says:
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 to also love your neighbour as yourself. (v27)Now, this is a good answer, and a biblical one too. In Mark 12[:30-31] Jesus would use this text to answer "what is the greatest commandment?". The first half about loving God comes from Deuteronomy 6:5. This was probably pretty familiar as it was recited twice a day by devoted Jews[2].
And Jesus says this answer is correct, perhaps also with a bit of tone himself. He says, “well done, give it a go. You try and do this. All the best with that”. This guy, who wanted to test Jesus, puts forward his answer for eternal life and Jesus says sure do that. As upon a little reflection, if this is what one believes, why doesn’t that answer crush the lawyer?
When you think about it, even this first bit about loving God is a really high ask. To love God with everything in your being. All your heart, soul, strength and mind. This is a crazy standard. Have you met that? Can you do what the Old Testament is asking? The lawyer’s framework is, if you do this you will get eternal life. I think Jesus has a different framework - because we must not forget that right now, Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem. Just last chapter Jesus has resolutely set out to Jerusalem (9:51) where He will make a way for us to have eternal life. He will achieve it on our behalf, because He will love and obey God with all that He has.
So with this lawyer, what blows my mind is his follow-up question. It isn’t about the first part of his answer, but about the second about loving your neighbour.
And Luke says he asks this question to justify himself. Has his answer already condemned him? Does he know that he actually doesn’t stand up to loving his neighbour? In one sense this focus on loving those around us is a valid focus, for God is altogether lovely, He is good and actually quite lovable. People however are fickle, and hard and demanding and different to us. Others can be harder to love. The lawyer might also have a touch of self-righteousness, assuming that he does in fact love God all the time.
So, he wants to know, technically, who is his neighbour. The struggle he identifies with himself is knowing who to actually love. It is a good technical question, for if answered how he wants, it narrows to a group of people, that might be more manageable. He is seeking a minimum obligation. There is an assumption that there are people out there who are non-neighbours[3], but Jesus will go on to refute this limited scope.
Who Is My Neighbour?
So in direct response to the question “who is my neighbour” we get a story. It is kind of set up like a joke with a Priest, a Levite and a Samaritan.A nondescript man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho. We aren’t told his race, maybe the Lawyer is meant to read himself into this. This trip was notorious for being dangerous. One commentator says this was a frequent trip for temple workers between Jerusalem and Jericho and so you would think the Jews or the Romans would have improved it, but this commentator pointy said I guess it is easier to maintain a religious system than to improve the neighbourhood[4].
This trip was 27 km long that wound its way through desert surrounded by caves, which was where robbers would hide[5]. There are writings spanning about 400 years describing how bad this road is[6]. A modern-day setting might be something like, a young woman in Sydney was walking through Kings Cross at 3 am in the morning.
The point of the story comes next. Enter a Samaritan. The Jewish listeners wouldn’t have thought much of a Samaritan. In the last chapter James and John wanted to call down fire on some Samaritans and have them destroyed. There had been historical bad blood between Jews and Samaritans for hundreds of years.
In the Mishnah, a document with lots of Jewish oral tradition written down, it says: "He that eats the bread of the Samaritans is like one that eats the flesh of swine." (Seb. 8:10)[8]. Jews and Samaritans were not friends.
Samaria was to the North of Israel. They intermarried and went to war against Israel. They had caused headaches for Ezra and Nehemiah when rebuilding the temple and Jerusalem walls. In the end, their religion was just the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. They didn’t hold to the prophets or the wisdom literature. They kinda weren’t pagans, but in the Jewish mind, they were still wrong. It might be like how we might consider the JWs. They kind of use our text, but they also have perverted it and modified it. They are still wrong.
And so this anti-hero, this heretic, this historical enemy to the Jews, stops on the road and does all the good things. He takes pity on the man, bandages his wounds, takes him to an inn and pays for his expenses at the cost of two days wages.
And so at the climax of Jesus point, after telling this almost one dimension story, Jesus asks the Lawyer his kicker of a question. Jesus asks in verse 36:
“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”And the expert, can’t even bring himself to say, “the Samaritan”. Just that “the one who had mercy” was the good neighbour.
And Jesus says to “Go and do likewise.”
Mercy
So I don’t know if you noticed, Jesus' story didn’t exactly answer the question “who is my neighbour”. Jesus reframed the question we should ask instead.Initially, before this story the question was “who is my neighbour”, and Jesus doesn’t say who is in and who is out. The point Jesus makes in saying “go and do likewise” is for you to ask, “am I a good neighbour?”[9]
He turns the question on its head. There are no dividing walls between people who we are to show mercy to and who we don’t. We don’t have any excuse. The question is will you help those in front of you, regardless of race, sexuality or whatever.
We may assume it is only natural for us to think this way towards our fellow human beings, but that is not the case. The premise of the Lawyers question is that some people aren’t our neighbours. That we aren’t responsible for caring for everyone around us.
When Princess Diana died, the paparazzi were faced with being charged with a French law for failure to assist a person in danger. They called this the Good Samaritan law, enforcing bystanders to act and come to the aid of people they do not know. The last episode of Seinfeld worked this law into their story. The characters all got locked up in jail for not helping a carjacking that was happening in front of them. Because when that was happening, they were all making jokes of the situation. They end up in prison for their criminal indifference. It’s interesting that some, mostly western societies, have a law like this, enforcing the idea that we should care for those around us.
On the 15th February 1942 John Curtin was at the re-dedicate St. Ninian church in Lyneham. Even though he was an agnostic Curtin said, “The fatherhood of God was closely related to the brotherhood of man”[10]. This sentiment of the “brotherhood of man” was pretty common in the late nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. It has an enlightenment feel to the idea that we are all comrades and equal and working towards some common goal. But I think in our passage Jesus is talking about the neighbourhood of people[11].
Even if we don’t have some common goal, even if we disagree politically, or religiously we are to care for the other. We are to be a good neighbour to others.
Richard Dawkins thinks all religions, including Christianity, only look after themselves and don’t really look outwards. I’ve read this quote in a sermon before, but In his God Delusion book he says:
Christians seldom realize that much of the moral consideration for others which is apparently promoted by both the Old and New Testaments was originally intended to apply only to a narrowly defined in-group. 'Love thy neighbour' didn't mean what we now think it means. It meant only 'Love another Jew.'Dawkins doesn’t get that the Good Samaritan was a Samaritan. That is someone from a different group other than the Jews. Dawkins misses the exact meaning of the story.
So where does this all lead us? The Good Samaritan encountered someone in need and help them, and Jesus encourages us to do likewise.
The Lawyer I think didn’t go away self-justified; I think the expansive model Jesus puts forward was too big for him. And it is huge, and it is the ideal, and it is what Jesus did. He rescued us all, regardless of who we are, and so now we can live our the ideal of being a good neighbour to others.
Not to earn salvation. It is not by our obedience that we are saved. But it is the gospel that transforms us, that we go and do likewise, as we follow in the feet of Jesus who shows mercy to those who are broken. Disciples, those who come to know Jesus, find their lives so transformed that they are asking how they can be a good neighbour. This is what Christians do and kind of even expected of us in society today.
It’s what James was saying to us in the passage last week. True religion cares for the vulnerable, and keeping ourselves uncontaminated from the world (James 1:27).
So how do we live? If we think about all the needs in the world it might paralyse us. There is so much need, and I only have so little. What do I do? Where do I start? And I think, start with those you come across, start where you are. The Good Samaritan didn’t go out looking for someone to help, they were just right where he was. I think that might be a good start.
One Biblical framework I once heard in thinking about who Christians are to do good to:
certainly to your family;
especially to believers,
always to the poor and needy and
at all times to everyone[12].
In your family, ask, Am I being a good husband or wife? Am I being a good parent? In your workplace, you might want to ask yourself two questions. Am I being a good employee, and Am I being a good workmate? Those two questions might have different answers. Am I being a good church member? When you are shopping or driving on the road, Am I being a good citizen? These questions get to the heart of real practical Christianity and considers your place in the immediate situation.
And these questions beg the question, what is "the good"? How do we know what is good we are to do? What is the standard? I think this is not about ability. The category isn’t about performance but about character. To just be very specific, in this passage it is the man who had mercy who was upheld. It was his mercy that led him to action. It was his mercy for someone in need that led him to stop and help, at his own expense and time.
As Christians, I hope you can say you have experienced the mercy of God, I hope you can say you know what is like, that you have seen what you once were, and what you are now, and how God has shown you mercy, or compassion, or forgiveness. That God hasn’t given us what we deserve. That God didn’t just think he was too busy to help or too indifferent to our plight. But instead, God saw us in our darkness, withheld his punishment to us and has given us eternal life. And this mercy, I hope you can say has changed you, and affected you, and so you can show this mercy to those around you who are in need.
I don’t know if we have enough time to press this point to the real specifics. Is there a work college you need to show mercy to? Is there a child you need to say sorry to for how you responded to them? When you walk past a guy with a sign asking for help, what does your heart feel for them? Do you need to change your attitude towards them?
The same guy that told this story about the Samaritan would go on and demonstrate His love and mercy towards us on the cross. Think back to God, who He is, and be motivated by His love and mercy that has been shown to you. So, as you see a need in front of you, think, am I a good neighbour and go and do likewise.
[1] Luke 9:51-24:53 (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament) by Darrell L. Bock
[2] Luke (Teach the Text Commentary Series) by R. T. France
[3] Luke 9:51-24:53 (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament) by Darrell L. Bock
[4] Be Compassionate (Luke 1-13) by Warren W Wiersbe
[5] Luke 9:51-24:53 (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament) by Darrell L. Bock
[6] Cite in Luke 9:51-24:53 (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament) by Darrell L. Bock,: “Josephus, Jewish War 4.8.3 §474, who describes the region’s barren character, and Jerome, who observes that Arab robbers were frequent on this route in his day some four centuries after Jesus.. Strabo 16.2.40–41 (c763), mentions Pompey’s problem with robbers and then describes the city
[7] The Gospel According to Luke (Pillar New Testament Commentary) by James R. Edwards
[8] Cited in Luke 9:21–18:34 (Word Biblical Commentary) by John Nolland
[9] Luke 9:51-24:53 (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament) by Darrell L. Bock
[10] The Brotherhood of Man
[11] I forget where I took this from
[12] Tim Blencowe, from a talk he gave at Engage 2010
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