Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 2-021 (Sermon – topical)

THE CHURCH: A SERVING COMMUNITY (Luke 10:25-37)

by Rod Benson

Douglas Coupland, who coined the term ‘Generation X’, concludes in his book Life After God, “my secret is that I need God – that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem to be capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.”

Why is the ability to express love, and the ability to demonstrate compassion, sometimes beyond us? Why do people swerve to avoid a prostrate figure on a suburban Sydney street, and simply keep driving? Why do 34,000 children still die every day, and millions of children in the world fall asleep each night without having had enough to eat?

Is it the rapid social change that has characterised the 20th century? Is it the high fences we erect between ourselves and our neighbours? Is it fear of strangers, or the feeling of being overwhelmed with problems and needs, or a sense of personal inadequacy?

It is probably all these things and more. Yet God asks us not only to love him, but to love our neighbour as we love ourselves.

THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY

One day an expert lawyer challenged Jesus, hoping perhaps to trap him into saying something that would incriminate him with the Roman authorities or discredit him before his followers.

“Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10:25b). It was a trick question, but Jesus immediately turned the situation to his advantage by asking the lawyer’s opinion: “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” (v 26)

“He answered, ‘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’ ” (verse 27).

Like many evangelical Christians, the lawyer knew his Bible well. First, he quoted from Deuteronomy 6:5 – familiar words framing a Jewish prayer, the Shema, recited by pious Jews twice daily, teaching God’s people to love him with all their being.

Then he added a second commandment as a corollary, quoting Leviticus 19:18, indicating that genuine love for God involves seeing people as God sees them, and viewing all people, without exception, as objects of his unconditional love.

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live” (verse 28).

But that didn’t satisfy the lawyer. In Leviticus 19:18, the “neighbour” is defined as “one of your own people”; that is, a member of the covenant community of Israel. In attempting to justify himself, the lawyer asked, “And who is my neighbour?” (verse 29).

The only way he could justify himself in this context was to limit the extent of the Law’s demand and therefore limit his own neighbourly responsibility. But he had just asked the wrong question of the wrong person!

In reply, Jesus tells a story that the church has come to call the Parable of the Good Samaritan:

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

“But a Samaritan, as he travelled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have’ ” (verses 30-35).

Then Jesus asked the lawyer, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise” (verses 36-37).

Jesus thus answers both of the lawyer’s questions. To a Jew there was no such thing as a “good” Samaritan, but Jesus points out that just such a person is to be regarded as my neighbour, the one whom I should demonstrate love and compassion.

SELFLESS ACTS OF LOVE AND MERCY

Jesus challenged the lawyer – and challenges us – to radical acts of love that shake popular preconceptions and demonstrate God’s unconditional love in unmistakable ways.

The Samaritan is, of course, indicative of Jesus himself, who both demonstrated God’s unconditional love to us and shook popular perceptions of what God was like and how he would act.

In challenging the lawyer as he did, Jesus answers the lawyer’s question, “What must I do”: he must not only love God; he must act in love toward other people in the same way as the Samaritan acted in Jesus’ story, bringing hope and healing to people who are hurting and in need.

We too need to hear Jesus’ words, and respond in obedience, loving God with all our being and loving our neighbour as we love ourselves, enlightened by the love of God for us, and encouraged by the example of Christ to us, and empowered by the Spirit of Christ within us.

To open my heart to God will free my spirit to worship God, but I need also to open my heart to my neighbour.

As I said this morning in reference to Matthew 22:34-40, to keep the first half of the Great Commandment without keeping the second part is intrinsically impossible.

“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:20-21).

God requires heart religion as well as head religion. He desires his love to us to be conveyed through us to our neighbours. The essence of biblical Christianity, as I understand it, is expressed in that lawyer’s brilliant summary statement: love God, and love your neighbour.

LOVING OTHER PEOPLE

It follows, then, that loving other people, especially those less fortunate than ourselves and less able to reciprocate, will be one of the five purposes of a biblically functioning community.

And it is: the church is to be a serving community. In Luke 22:27 Jesus said to his disciples, “I am among you as one who serves,” and in Mark 10:45 he explains that he “did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Through his entire public ministry, Jesus demonstrated what it meant to fulfil the Great Commandment. He went about doing good, showing mercy, meeting people’s needs and healing their hurts.

As he prepared to share his last Passover meal with his disciples, and institute the Lord’s Supper in the Upper Room, Jesus took a towel, poured water into a basin, and washed his disciples’ feet, saying, “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you” (John 13:2-17).

In a similar vein, the Apostle John declares with characteristic simplicity: “if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus walked” (1 John 2:5-6).

WALKING AS JESUS WALKED

The command to love others is fundamental to our identification as a disciple of Jesus. The sign that you followed Abraham was circumcision. The sign that you followed Moses was keeping the Sabbath. The sign that you followed John the Baptist was baptism. The sign that you follow Jesus is that you love others.

Love is an action, not merely an attitude or aspiration. As C.S. Lewis once said, “Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.”

Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian-born novelist. One summer in the 1940s, he and his family stayed with James Laughlin at Alta, Utah, where Nabokov took the opportunity to enlarge his collection of butterflies and moths.

One evening he returned from his day’s excursion saying that during hot pursuit of a butterfly near Bear Gulch he had heard someone groaning most piteously down by the stream.

“Did you stop?” asked his host. “No,” he replied. “I had to get the butterfly.” The next day the corpse of an elderly prospector was discovered in the gully where Nabokov had been collecting his butterflies.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned, and many Christians are off chasing butterflies while people all around them are desperately crying out for help, or for bread, or for understanding.

As a biblically functioning community, let us follow the example of our Lord, the Servant King, in bringing hope and healing to people through our service.

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E069 Copyright (c) 2002 Rod Benson. Reproduction in any form is permitted with full copyright notice intact. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: New International Version (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980).

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