Luke 10:25-37 – 15 July 2007 – 7 Pentecost (Proper 10)

What must I do to inherit eternal life?  That is the question by which this expert in the law wanted to test Jesus, to see whether this new Rabbi, Jesus, was fair dinkum about teaching according to the Torah, the Law.

Yet, rather than give a direct answer, Jesus responds to this expert in the law with a question of his own, ‘What is written in the Torah?’ Jesus asks the expert in the Law about his own field of expertise.

How to respond?  The expert in the Law gave what was probably a well-known summary of the Law: ‘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 ‘love your neighbour as yourself.’

Jesus replies, ‘You have answered correctly, do this and your will live.’  You can almost hear the expert in the law, probably a man of considerable age and standing exclaim in indignation.  ‘How can he, this amateur, tell me, the expert, that I am correct in my own field of expertise?’

On the one hand, all the people who were listening would have been taught that Jesus and the expert in the law were both in agreement on what God’s Law requires.  Jesus was not about to tell the expert in the Law he was wrong when he was not, even though many of the bystanders would have liked to see this expert taken down a peg or two by this clever Rabbi.

On the other hand, the expert in the law would feel humiliated at the way in which Jesus spoke to him.  And he didn’t want to lose face in front of the people who he normally would have authority over.  So the expression that Luke uses, ‘He wanted to justify himself,’ is easier to understand.  He wanted to continue to debate in legalities.

So this legal expert asks another question, ‘And who is my neighbour?’  It is another instance of him asking a question, not because he is ignorant of the legal opinions of Rabbis through the centuries on who is deemed a neighbour, but because he wants to show off his expert knowledge and win an ego war over Jesus.  ‘Just imagine, if Jesus responds as he did to my first question, I can parade my knowledge.’

Except Jesus doesn’t do this.  He doesn’t buy into the debate about whether someone three houses away is technically a neighbour or not.  The question is not about legalities but about actions.  So he tells the story about the man caught by robbers on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho.  At the end of this story, he tacks on his counter-question to the legal expert: ‘Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?’

There is only one possible reply:  Jesus has phrased the question in such a way that the teacher of the Law could only answer by naming either the priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan.  When he gives the obvious response, he was told by Jesus, ‘Go and do likewise.’

All the onlookers must have had a chuckle at the Law expert’s expense.  He may have got what he literally asked for, but is not what he wanted!  He had wanted to justify himself, but he was sent off and told what to do by Jesus!

At this juncture it is easy for us to assume that the last line of our text, ‘Go and do likewise’ is also the instruction that Jesus has for us.  But wait a moment.  This expert in the law asked what he had to do to inherit eternal life.  And Jesus told him, ‘Do this.’

If any of us were to utter that question, it would be the wrong question!  The right question is more along the lines of, ‘What has Jesus done for me so that I can inherit eternal life?’

This brings us to have a closer look at the story that Jesus told to illustrate being a neighbour.  If Jesus were to tell this story today, it would be somewhat different.  It would be the story of the ordinary, respectable member of the community, involved in a car-crash.  The passers-by would be pillars of the community.  The mayor, maybe; the pastor, maybe; the school principal, maybe.

Who would play the third person to come along and notice the half-dead man on the side of the road?  Maybe you or maybe me.  And yet the surprise is that the person who comes along and deals in compassion is the one we’re repulsed by.  Who are you repulsed by?  The openly homosexual, the drug addict, the AIDS sufferer?  That is the person who is the modern Good Samaritan.

So, where are we in the story?  The only place for us in this story is the ordinary member of the community, half-dead at the side of the road.  The only place for us is being helped by the side of the road by the person most repulsive to us.

The point is that when you’re mostly dead you don’t have a lot that you can do.  You are entirely dependent upon the mercy of someone else.  In this case, you are entirely dependent on the mercy of the person who is repulsive to you.

In the same way, in our state of being dead because of our sinfulness, there is nothing we can do.  The question that the expert in the Law asked: ‘What must I do?’ is the wrong question.  He was interested in debating legal technicalities, in self-justification.

Yet you and I know that the requirements of the Law: ‘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 ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ are too difficult for us to do.  We cannot, much as we strive to, live according to God’s Law.

In the Peanuts comic strip there’s this time that Charlie-Brown falls over on the ice, in winter.  He has so many layers of clothing on that it is impossible for him to get up.  Good old Snoopy comes along, and pushes Charlie Brown off the ice.  Charlie Brown has never felt more humiliated, yet is still glad to be rescued.

That’s the situation of you and me.  We are helpless.  There is absolutely nothing that we can do. It’s something that sticks in the craw for us human beings.  Our human nature will always quietly ask the question, ‘Yes, but what can I do?’  We want to do something.  Perhaps that is why Jesus told this story, to show the Legal Expert, his audience, and us that we are as totally helpless as that man who fell among robbers on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho.  Or as a Charlie Brown, unable to move, trapped on the ice.

What can we do?  Nothing.  But what has God done for us?  Everything! It is only after we reach this conclusion that we can then talk about what we can do.  Not because it is part of rescuing ourselves from our hopeless situation, but in joyful, glad response.

The Legal expert was told, ‘Go and do likewise,’ and so are we, but for a different reason.  The Legal expert was busy trying to earn his salvation – ours has been given to us as a free gift.  Having been given everything for our salvation, having been shown endless love and mercy, now, God says to us, ‘Go, and do likewise!’
Amen!