“…Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’ (Luke 10:37)
(Year C:
The Fourth Sunday after Trinity, 14th July, 2019)
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AN OVERVIEW OF THIS SUNDAY’S READINGS
COI
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RC
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SERMON NOTES (1,090 words)
This week’s passage from Luke comes in three complementary
parts: a reaffirmation of rock solid Old Testament foundational teaching, (ii)
a story to explain the point, and (iii) a clear-cut command to each of us.
Rock solid OT teaching
A ‘lawyer’ (it is a ‘pharisee’ in Matthew and a ‘scribe’ in
Mark) tried to test Jesus by asking something along the lines of ‘how do I get
into a heaven?’ A not unreasonable
question and not unknown one among religiously inclined persons, even today.
As a good Teacher, Jesus got the learner to figure it out by
posing a question in response to the Learner’s question. Jesus draws on a key
passage from scripture – the basis of the daily Shema recited by devout Jews then and now (Deuteronomy
6:4-9):
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Jesus, however, goes further and draws on Leviticus
19:18:
you shall love your neighbour as yourself.
Loving God with all our being and loving our neighbour as
ourselves – are two sides of the one coin. In one way, Jesus was not saying or
doing anything new. It was all there in the sacred scriptures when God spoke to
his chosen people. In another way it was all new because Jesus was restating an
Old Commandment and making this very emphatically and very centrally the basis
of all other commandments.
It was a matter of radically simplified moral theology!
It might have seemed that these two commandments entailed
loving God first and then our neighbour as an afterthought. Not so. It means
loving God with all our being and loving our neighbour as ourselves at one and
the same time. Loving God comes first in
terms of the order of commandments
but loving our neighbour comes first in terms of action because it is in loving our neighbour that we know for sure
that we are loving God. God is in our neighbour – poor, excluded, lonely,
oppressed and hungry as well as in the next person beside you at this moment on
a bus, at a counter, in a queue, online ….
And who is my neighbour, again? Jesus as an excellent
Teacher spells it out by means of a story.
A story about love
There once were four persons somewhere on the way between
Jerusalem to Jericho …
One of them was lying on the side of the road critically
injured and possibly close to death.
With great irony, two religiously respectable persons – one a Levite (an
assistant in the Temple according to scripture scholars) and the other a priest
– made for the other side of the road. Perhaps they were in a rush somewhere (a
religious ceremony?). Or, perhaps they
were taking no chances because the scene might have been a trap to lure others
only to be robbed and attacked? Perhaps they were heading to report the
incident to someone else so that proper and timely help could be organised?
(somehow I think not but I am trying to be non-judgmental towards the priest
and the Levite in this story!).
Moreover – and this seems to be key point in this story – to
touch someone who is dead they would invite ritual defilement (from a distance
the Levite and priest might not have been able to tell if the person was dead). Mercy took second place to a cultic religious
observance. The fact is that it took a
foreigner and someone not of our tribe and religious practice to do the decent
thing and to save this victim’s life. Yes, it could have been a trap. How was
the Samaritan to know? But, she/he was moved by compassion and she/he did not
stop to weigh up the risks. Following emergency treatment the Samaritan took
the victim to a local inn and did the modern equivalent of leaving his/her
credit card details and PIN with the innkeeper. There were no questions of
private health insurance, a promissory note to repay or a contract with terms
and conditions. There was just compassion.
In this one gesture and story Jesus cuts through the
nonsense, hypocrisy and cruelty of what passes for religion then and now.
Translated into our times and context the story urges us to
put compassion first even if, sometimes, this entails some personal risk. Of
course, prudence is required. However, we can often cite prudence or the call
of other duties or cares to evade a duty of compassion towards the person right
in front of us right now.
But, we would be missing the point if we understood this
story to be about one person acting compassionately towards another. The truth
is that the Samaritan displayed a measureless love for another human being and
that measureless love was the love of God unleashed in a broken and divided
world. God’s love moved the Samaritan but the response of this foreigner and
outsider was one of love with all of heart, all of soul, all of strength and
all of mind.
And that’s not all (Matthew
22:40):
All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.
In one swoop Jesus reduces the 613 commandments of the ‘Old
Law’ into two commandments not so much by abolishing them as by rooting them in
the essential. And his listeners were left speechless.
How we could simplify our lives and our laws and our canon
laws and our rules of community if we took to hear the simple truth that
underlying ‘all the law’ and the scriptures is the commandment to love God with
our all and to do so sincerely by loving the person next to us now.
A clear-cut command
The key thing to not about the lawyer who questioned Jesus
is that he knew his theology. In fact not only did he understand the
all-importance of these two great commandments but he got the message of the
story about the Samaritan. There was, however, one thing that he needed to do:
he needed to put into practice. And so do we.
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SOME IDEAS FOR INTERCESSIONS
Blessing and honour to God. We are, each, made in his image.
Let us love one another as he showed us how in his son, Jesus Christ. Together
with all peoples throughout the world we pray for:
Compassion in places and situations of war, hatred and
bitterness…..
Those who minister to the sick, the homeless, refugees and
others on the margins of our society…
The entire Christian church throughout the world as well as
every local church that we may be carriers of that faith, hope and love which
Paul urged the disciples in Colossae to have.
The Churches in Ireland that we may witness to the diversity
and unity in the Body of Christ on the island of Ireland….
Those in our community and parish who may feel alone, abandoned
or forgotten about. May we reach out in practical ways to each as a neighbour
One another….
Other named persons ….
Remembering with thanks those who have gone before us….
… praying in silence….
Loving God accept gather up our prayers – those spoken and
those unspoken in the depths of our hearts. In the places we live, work and
communicate, may we be channels of peace and reconciliation in a tormented
world.
Merciful
father: accept these prayers for the sake of your Son, our Saviour,
Jesus Christ. Amen
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A PRAYERFUL WALK THROUGH LUKE 10:25-37
Following the Gospel this passage comes after the hostile
encounter with the Samaritans in chapter 9. As if to prove a point, Luke
situates the dialogue somewhere in or near Jerusalem where Jesus tells a story
about a thief, an injured victim, a truly good and compassionate Samaritan and
a religiously upright Levite and Priest walked on the other side of the road.
This is a lesson in what true compassion and, therefore, true religion is
about. It starts in a conversation between a doctor of the law and Jesus and
ends with a parable or story that illustrates Jesus’ teaching.
v.25 A question to try Jesus
Just then a lawyer
stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit
eternal life?’
We may note two
things: (1) here in Luke the one who questions Jesus is a ‘lawyer’ while in the
corresponding passage from Mark it is a ‘scribe’ and in Matthew it is a
Pharisee, and (2) the focus of the question asked in Luke is on what one must
do to inherit eternal life while in the other two synoptic Gospels the focus is
on the matter of the ‘greatest commandment’. These differences in emphases and
detail are not crucial to the reader today but reflect somewhat different
audiences and contexts in which and for which the Gospel writers operated. A
religion of good works and reward sees in religion a means of individual
salvation and reward.
v.26-28 Quoting scriptures
He [Jesus] said to
him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ He answered,
‘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 neighbour as
yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this,
and you will live.’
The Lawyer got it
right citing Deuteronomy 6:4 and Leviticus 19:18. You can’t beat a lawyer when
it comes to quoting the Law!
V.29 still more ….
But wanting to justify
himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’
Religious neurosis demands precision. Jesus rises to the challenge in what follows.
V.30-35 the missing part
Jesus replied, ‘A man
was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers,
who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by
chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on
the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw
him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while travelling came
near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and
bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his
own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he
took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of
him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.”
Jesus had to spell
it out for the Lawyer by means of a story.
The example is one of compassion, decency and love. Ironically, it was
not the religiously undefiled (the Levite and the Priest who may have thought
the man left by the road as dead) or the learned scholar (the Lawyer) who needs
to be taught who feature in the example given by Jesus: it was someone from the
outside group from Samaria.
36 Which of these
three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the
robbers?’ 37 He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to
him, ‘Go and do likewise.’
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