If you’ve ever had to go to court and be sworn in and then had a rabid lawyer go after you, perhaps you sense the tension Jesus and the disciples feel as Jesus is “put to the test” by a lawyer in his own day.
In fact if you’ve had to deal with lawyers enough, you may even start to hate lawyers because they seem so adept at believing what you on the opposing side considers to be a lie – for a price. You wonder if some of them know what the truth is.
This lawyer asks an open ended question and wants to see if Jesus will incriminate Himself…
But Jesus turns the tables on this crafty fellow and says…
“Well Mr. Lawyer, what’s written in the law? The answer for those seeking eternal life is written there… it’s been there for thousands of years…”
Not to be shown up by a wandering prophet, the lawyer answers well:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
Good answer.
The best answer in fact.
And to this day, there is no better answer.
There is no other duty set before us than to love the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
But the lawyer had the RIGHT ANSWER but the WRONG LIFE.
We find that out when Jesus’ says implies “Good answer, now just go and DO IT!”
Hmmm. Now the lawyer is feeling uncomfortable.
He’s like us.
The lawyer thought he WAS doing what God required!
Jesus finds his answer correct, but his life incomplete.
The words sound good on the surface, but lots of us are like this lawyer.
In case you haven’t guessed already… in this story of Jesus’ we are the lawyers who are so proficient at bending the truth until it breaks.
We know the right things to say.
We can sound not only like Christians … we can sound like profound theologians… We know the Jesus lingo…
But underneath the fancy words, we are all too often hypocrites.
We act like we have all the pieces of the puzzle together but when we examine our lives, if we’re honest, some of the pieces aren’t together right.
If we hear stories about sinners and hypocrites and think of somebody else … it’s confirmed – we’re just like this lawyer!
The point of this story is that Jesus says to me and to you... “You, Chuck Huckaby, are this lawyer. You talk a good game but the words don’t go deep enough.”
And Jesus says to His Church and all who care to hear: “Yes, YOU are like this lawyer… full of fancy words, full of fine theories, busy setting our own agenda, busy building our own kingdoms…but you’re fooling yourself if you think you’re doing what God commands.”
And when we really think we’re doing ALL that God commands to the point where we are smug and self-satisfied, we’re fooling ourselves.
We try to justify ourselves and make ourselves look good by asking God … “Well really, how EXTREME are you going to be about this love thing anyway?”
Jesus in his mercy doesn’t make a fool of this lawyer when he tries to excuse himself.
And Jesus in his mercy doesn’t make a fool out of us when we kid ourselves.
When we try to justify ourselves… when we try to argue just how well we’re doing… when we stand up and shout just how much progress we’ve made… when we begin to talk about all we’re doing instead of all that God has done to deliver us… When we think we have all the pieces of the puzzle together… Jesus says… “Let me tell you a story…”
Before I talk about the story, I want you to think of the most hated kind of person you can think of. That’s what the Samaritan represented to the Jews.
A Samaritan was the half-breed of Jewish society.
They were part Jew and part pagan racially. Their ancestors had broken the command of God for Jews not to intermarry with other races and were a race of half breeds in Jewish eyes both racially and theologically. The Samaritans freely mixed their Jewish roots with pagan theories to rationalize their lack of obedience to the Word of God.
Filled with shame they hated anyone passing through their country who was headed to Jerusalem, especially people going there to celebrate the feasts of Israel. Rather than repent, they rationalized their lives instead of seeking to conform them to God’s will. The Jews assumed that there was nothing good that could come of a Samaritan. The Jews and this lawyer would have considered the Samaritan low down and dirty… certainly not someone who could ever be the hero in a story intended to teach about God.
Priests in Jesus day were commissioned to offer sacrifices to God and to bless the people in God’s name. Levites were the praise leaders, the choirs of the Temple. They praised God and taught the people. Both were men like this lawyer who knew all the right answers in their heads.
- They mouthed the right words.
- They held to the right theology.
- They LOOKED GOOD on the outside…
They probably stopped at the very same inn down the road where the Samaritan would take the injured man and there were greeted as holy men.
They probably sat down over a glass of beer at the inn and moaned in holy tones about their hard journey to do the Lord’s work and how hard it is avoid becoming unclean so they could keep working for the Lord.
But when the rubber hits the road and there’s one of their fellow Israelites who has been reduced to a bloody pulp on the side of the road, the words amount to absolutely nothing. They’re holiness is a sham … their trust in God does not even give them the courage or mercy to cross the road and render help… or even to see if the man is alive.
Some have tried to defend these men… saying “they didn’t want to be unclean when they entered Jerusalem… they needed to serve God.” Evidently Jesus doesn’t think that excuse passes muster. Because Jesus says that for people who supposedly want to be clean, they are committing the ultimately unclean act of failing to love their neighbor as themselves.
Did you notice that the lawyer was looking for a way to limit his love by asking Jesus “Who is my neighbor?”
Jesus fails to answer this lawyer because lawyers at heart like us are always looking for loopholes in the law of God so we can excuse our passing the bleeding on the side of the road by saying“Oops… sorry, God’s law doesn’t cover this situation. It only covers 27 categories of “neighbor” and you’re not one of them. It’s all right there in section 132, paragraph 8! Sorry you’re not covered! I don’t have to love you!”
Instead of answering WHO our neighbor IS, Jesus tells us HOW A NEIGHBOR ACTS and tells us lawyers “Go act like a neighbor!”
And Jesus puts it like this…
It’s better to be the lowest piece of slime on the face of the earth… it’s better to be a pervert who runs a pornographic book store, it’s better to be a mass murderer like Osama Bin Laden, it’s better to be a hairy, tattooed, cursing and drunken member of the Hell’s Angels, it’s better to be a member of some cult, or whatever else the lowest form of life on the face of the planet to you is.
It’s better to be the lowest, most disgusting person on earth and ACT LIKE A NEIGHBOR, than to MOUTH “GOD WORDS” and not LIVE THEM!
Ouch! Did that hurt you as much as that hurt me?
You see, disgusting evil people can repent, and believe in Jesus, and be forgiven, and act like neighbors and change. In fact, it’s often the most evil people who know they need to change and are sick at heart… they just don’t know there’s a way out. But when we think we’re OK because we know the God lingo, but never live it out… it’s so dangerous because we can be fooled by our own talk.
Jesus says though in Matthew 18:3… this is ‘Chuck’s fast and dirty translation’ using what little Greek I remember …
Truly I say to you…I’m not just flapping my gums to entertain you… IF YOU WILL NOT make a 180 degree turn… if you will not slam on the breaks and turn your life around and run in the opposite direction because you’re headed straight to hell… if you will not be transformed to become simple and trusting like little children instead of acting like teen ager know it alls and people who are too big for their britches, then there is NOT NO WAY EVER you are going to enter the Kingdom of Heaven!
It’s not enough to have the RIGHT ANSWER…
We’ve got to ask God to help us have the RIGHT LIFE!
It’s beyond our power.
It’s the work of God to give us a new heart, a heart of flesh with His Law written upon it.
We’ve got to stop kidding ourselves and begin HUMBLING OURSELVES!
It’s a matter of having not only the RIGHT ANSWERS, but the RIGHT LIFE.
It’s asking Jesus to give us an overflowing love that empowers us to move beyond the words that threaten to delude us into thinking we have all the pieces of the puzzle in order.
First preached by Father Dave Smith at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill.
Rev. David B. Smith
Parish priest, community worker,
martial arts master, pro boxer,
author, father of four.
