How Do We Love?
Service link https://youtu.be/C7O-Yuvpu1U (sorry we had a few struggles with sound)
Readings: Luke 10:25-37, 38-42, Psalm 100
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+10%3A25-37%2C+38-42%2C+Psalm+100&version=NRSVA
There are two stories where Jesus commends loving God and loving our neighbor. First, when he is asked what the most important commandment is, and second when he is asked how to inherit eternal life, which only appears in Luke. If this love is so important our question should be, what does it mean to love God and love our neighbor?
If we were to ask the world how we can love one another, we would find many different answers to this question. I have heard many people say live your best life, or do whatever makes you happy, or as long as you don’t hurt anyone else. Jesus challenges all these notions of love and pushes us beyond our comforts to a love where we enter into the lives of others, where we enter into their hurt, where we help to change their lives and where ultimately, we bring them into the presence of God.
With love for God it is a little simpler to understand, but harder to live out. It is contained within the commandment itself. We are told to love God with all that we are, all of our heart, spirit, mind and strength. What would it look like to love someone with all of our strength? It would mean using all of our strength to reach out to them, lift them up and show them our love. This would include all aspects of our strength, physical, emotional and so on. For God we are told that we also need to dedicate every aspect of our mind, our heart, and our spirit to loving God. Psalm 100 and these acts of worship and remembrance are just a few ways this love is acted out as we reachout, lift up and show God our love. Ultimately, we are meant to use everything that we are to reach out to, lift up and show God our love.
We can understand this, but it seems monumental and almost impossible when we really think about it. How do we love someone that much who we still don’t completely know? How do we love someone that much without losing ourselves? How do we love that much and have anything left for ourself or others?
The reality is that the more we live out our love for God, the more we will come to know him. The more we love God, the more we will find ourselves in our creator. The more we love God the more we will have, to give to others and ourselves. That is why loving God is the priority and loving our neighbor follows after that.
Loving our neighbor as ourselves, becomes a natural response to loving God with all that we are. When we love God that much, we will see and care for what he loves, which is all of humanity. When we love God that much, we care for those he created and those he purposed for greatness, which is everyone. When we love God that much we will see the image of God in others and ourselves, and so we will show our love for him by caring for his image.
The interesting thing in today’s story is that this expert in the law doesn’t ask, what I find to be some of the most important and difficult questions, he asks, “Who is my neighbor?” Not because he really wants to know, but because he wants to justify himself. This already shows one of the problems of not prioritizing God, its that it becomes very easy to prioritize yourself or those closest to you. We can see this priority of closeness all around us and in our own lives.
I hope you have already seen me answer about who our neighbor is. Everyone is a way to love God. Everyone you come in contact with is your neighbor. Even those you have never met, or just pass by. The struggle is, if we really loved as if each person is an image of God, it would challenge everything: our whole economic structure, our whole society, our whole way of being. That is exactly what Jesus does in his story.
Here is this man robbed, stripped, beaten and left dead. No fault of his own, other than maybe he could have travelled a little safer. I could take some time to use this unfair situation and compare it with the situations of many other people in need, but I hope you can do that and see how others are just as diserving of our saving help.
It is surprising at first when we hear that people pass him by without stopping, but it shouldn’t be surprising. This priest and Levite pass him by not knowing who he is, what he did, or how he came to this situation. They might have had really important work to do, they might have been going to help someone else, they might have been worried that he was a robber himself. They might have had any number of good reasons to pass him by, but Jesus reminds us that none of these are good enough to pass up an opportunity to love and be a neighbor.
It is also interesting that Jesus chose a priest and a Levite to fail this test. It is meant to be a reminder to this law expert and to all of us, that just because we are Christian doesn’t mean that we will live out the love that we have met in Christ. It doesn’t mean we live in and out the love we were meant to. We have to chose everyday to follow these commandments.
Instead it was a Samaritan who showed himself to love this man more. It was a Samaritan who shows himself to see the dignity and image of God in another. Even though Israel was the chosen people of blessings, even though Levites were the chosen servants of God, even though the priests were meant to be the conduits of God’s salvation, it was a Samaritan who brought God’s salvation to life around them.
There is so much to dig into with Jesus’ choice of actors that I wish I had time for, but the Samaritan’s love points us forward to how God in Jesus was and is empowering and inviting other cultures and peoples to become his servants and sharing his blessing in the world.
Back to the story. Look at everything that the Samaritan man does to care for this person in need. He bandages and tends his wounds with wine and oil, he puts him on his donkey, brought him to an inn, took care of him and paid for him. It is hard to imagine more this Samaritan man could have done. He didn’t hold anything back. In fact, the Samaritan man even went beyond his own capacity as he brought others in, in this case paying them to participate in saving this man. It would appear that he gave sacrificially of his heart, spirit and strength as if he was serving God himself. This is how to be a neighbor and how to love.
Yet, I want to take just one moment to relate this now to the passages surrounding it and the passages we read the last two weeks, because Scripture always speaks into itself.
The story directly following the Good Samaritan is the story about Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet and Martha busily serving. Jesus tells us that Mary chose the better way. This again reminds us of the priority of our love, but it also reminds us that our service and love will fall short. There will be a point when we have done everything we can, and even the help from friends, family or work isn’t enough. What we need and what others need and what is often the greatest act of love is to sit at Jesus’ feet and invite others to do the same.
All of the blessings that the Samaritan man shares is from God. All of the peace and miracles that the disciples acted out last Sunday were from God. The widow’s resurrected son and the sinful woman’s redeemed life from two weeks ago were from God. And these are only some of the most obvious ways that we and others need God. Serving and loving others means bring them to God.
It would seem that to love God, we also need to love our neighbor. To love our neighbor, we must lead them to the love of God. Then the presence and love of God, empowers us and them to love all the more. It is a beautiful cycle of expanding and the exponential growth of love.
Here is where we come to eternity. Since God is eternal and uncreated, by reaching for God in love we come closer to eternity. By seeing God in others, we come closer still. By joining others in God’s presence, we are living in the presence of eternity. Even better, as God’s love lives in us, that means that eternity lives in us and we already have life eternal. Eternity and a more loving life and world all pours out from a complete and utter love for God. AMEN
Note: There were two very different versions of this sermon. This is the second. If you would like to read the first, which goes more into the Samaritan, you will see that below the questions.
Questions:
Readings: Luke 10:25-37, 38-42, Psalm 100
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+10%3A25-37%2C+38-42%2C+Psalm+100&version=NRSVA
Luke 10:25-37
Vs. 25 What does it mean to be an expert in the law? How would it change your understanding of the law if you were told that the stories and the poetry were also considered God’s law?
How important is eternal life and why?
Vs. 26 Why is the law an important place to turn to for these questions?
Vs. 27-28 Why are these the ways to inherit eternal life? Look at both individually and together.
These commands are quotes from first five books of the bible (many bibles will show this in footnotes). Can you think of any biblical stories that also show these truths?
What question would you want to ask Jesus in this moment?
Vs. 29 What does it mean that he wanted to justify himself? Why does this very question show that he is not listening to either of those commandments?
Vs. 30 Why does Jesus give us this context for the man’s need? Would the three that passed by have this context? Do we know the context of people we pass? How does this challenge our response?
Vs. 31-32 What is a priest’s role? What is a Levite’s role? In the roles and closeness to God, how could they pass this man by?
Vs. 33 A Samaritan is a Jewish person from Samaria who has a different version of the Pentateuch and a different place of worship. They often were considered unclean by orthodox Jews. What does it mean that Jesus chooses him as an example of neighborly behavior?
What does it mean to have pity on someone? Is that a good thing?
Vs. 34-35 The Samaritan man travelling on this journey wouldn’t likely have had much, unless he was a merchant. Even if he was, what does it mean that he did all of this for the robbed man? Could he have done more?
Why does he bring him to an inn? What could the inn do that he couldn’t? What does this tell us about love?
Vs. 36-37 What does it mean to show mercy?
How is this a way of showing our love for God?
Luke 10:38-42
What does it mean for something to be better? Does this mean what Martha was doing was wrong?
Why was Mary’s the better way and Martha’s not as good?
How does this relate to the two most important commandments?
What does this tell you about the message in the good Samaritan?
Extra:
How do these passages relate to one another and the passages surrounding them? When you read them in context does it add anything to your understanding or perspective?
Psalm 100
How does coming before God relate to joy, gladness, thanksgiving, and praise? Why is this something we are meant to do?
How does this relate to our love for God and his love for us?
Why is being in God’s presence so important?
What does it mean to be God’s people or to have him as our shepherd?
First sermon:
What does it mean to love your neighbor? What does it mean to love God? As Jesus acknowledges the two most important commandments, these should be the questions on our hearts and minds. If we were to look at our world, we would find many different answers to these questions. I have heard many people say live your best life, or do whatever makes you happy, or as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. Jesus challenges all these notions of love and pushes us beyond our comforts to a love where we enter into the lives of others, where we enter into their hurt, where we help to change their lives and where ultimately, we bring them into the presence of God.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is a story that most of us have heard many times. It begins with a man who wants to inherit eternal life. This is, of course, a good desire, something that we should all long for as even with modern medicine and comforts, our lives are like grass that live and die all to quickly, or dust that gets blown away in any rising wind.
Jesus asks this man that already knows the law of God, what he reads in the law about how we inherit eternal life. The man replies correctly, saying, love the Lord your God, with all of your heart, soul, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.
As many people before me, even those in Jesus’ day would acknowledge this order or sequence of priority of love is important. We are first meant to love God with all that we are, which then naturally pours out into love for our neighbor as they are the image of God and created by God.
Now, I want to be practical, eternity and loving God are great ideas and of absolute importance, but they can be very easy to generalize and ignore as they can feel distant from us, especially if we only have a minimal relationship with God. It can also be very easy to limit or belittle them in importance because they can feel so distant or separate from us.
That is why many of us and the world around us think more about loving our neighbor and ourselves. Most would probably say that our neighbor is more important than loving God, but as I said the priority of God first is important and is the way we love one another.
Even this expert in the law, after he speaks the priority of God, asks not about how to love God, or even how to love his neighbor but rather who is his neighbor. The expert does this because he wants to justify himself. He doesn’t want to justify God, or serve, or to be made righteous by God, he cares about how he looks. That is one of the sad realities of if we prioritize loving our neighbor over God. Our love can become about how we want to be appreciated, how we want to be recognized, or for how we think the world should be ordered. The expert in the law wanted to be able to say, I am righteous because I have been loving those closest to me, but the love of God pushes us far further than that.
The Good Samaritan shows us the breadth of who our neighbor is and how far love goes, and the story of Mary and Martha, helps to balance that out as it shows us how being in and sharing in the presence of God is far better than much work.
So, Jesus uses a good Samaritan. Samaritans were a Jewish people in Samaria that had separated from Jesus’ Israel because of their particular sect of Judaism with a different Scripture and place of worship. They would have probably been as different as Christians are to Jews. They had historic and familial ties, but they had become very divided. On top of that Samaritans were considered unclean by many orthodox Jews, and they probably treated many Israelites the same way. That is the context for this story.
It is this difference, distance and division that Jesus speaks into, but Jesus doesn’t just say that Samaritans are our neighbors, Jesus shows that Samaritan’s can act more neighborly than those that should be closest to God. A priest, who was someone ordained to be a conduit for God and a Levite who was born into serving God, both fall short in their love.
This poses a difficult quest, but obvious reality we see. Levites and priests were meant to know God better and since he is love, why don’t they love more than others? Christians too are meant to be more loving, but this isn’t always the case. Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well that Samaritans worship God, yet they do not know him. So, even though their connection with God is restricted and ours should be an open door, it does not guarantee a deeper relationship with God and his love. Like all relationships it needs to be worked on. It needs to be cared for. It needs to be given priority.
Why did the priest and Levite just pass this man in need? It is hard to say, but we could relate it to our own lives. The priest and Levite probably had very important work or thought this man might have been a robber, or maybe they were rushing to take care of someone else but as good as their excuse may be, what we can say is that the priest and Levite prioritized something else before this man. They did not look at him as someone who was important or as family or their neighbor, they did not see him as someone made in the image of God, they did not love him with God’s love. The Bible’s story and law was meant to point them to this need to love like God, but again it is easy to ignore God and even others need when we do not give God priority over ourselves and even those closest to us.
But was this what the Samaritan was doing? Was he thinking about God? Possibly but not necessarily. Either way, he was serving God in that person and God’s love was working through him. God has planted in everyone of us his love just as he has imprinted us with his image, so just being alive we can experience him and share him, but there is a difference between being in the presence of a loving person and knowing them personally and so there is a difference between experiencing vs. knowing God. By knowing and building a relationship with God, we are drawn deeper into his love and peace as we know it better. As Jesus reminds us in the story of Mary and Martha there is a better way of living.
The Samaritan man does everything he can to care for this man. He dresses him with his own clothing, he uses wine and oil to clean and dress his wounds, he puts him on his animal. He uses everything he has to lift up and care for the man, but the Samaritan man still knows there is more need for love. There are some things the Samaritan man cannot do. So, he brings him to a place that can care for him better. He brought him to an inn, a place where he could eat and rest until he feels better. The Samaritan still had to sacrifice to make this happen, but love and neighbor pushed him on.
There are many ways that we can and should physically care for someone to live out God’s love. All of us have been blessed with this capacity. We can serve, we can give from what God has given us, we can be present, God’s love is continuously pointing us towards this, but we usually fall below our capacity. That being said, even if we are living up to our full potential of love, we will still not be enough. We cannot do everything. This should be obvious, but it calls us to a kind of love that we don’t often live into and ultimately points us to our need to work with God. When we have done everything we can, we need to include others in the work that we can’t do, even if that means paying them for it. Most importantly, all people fall short of a person’s needs, so we need to bring them into God’s presence, who can care for them. He has already been feeding and housing them through us, but now God can care for their hearts, minds, and souls in ways that we can’t.
In a strange and beautiful way, our love for God leads us to love our neighbors, which then leads us back to the love of God, which then leads us back to loving our neighbor. The stories surrounding the good Samaritan is the sending out of the 70 we heard about last week and Mary and Martha. Mary finds a kind of peace in the presence of Christ, while Martha is worriedly rushing around at a physical and spiritual distance. As the disciples are sent out they bring peace to all those families they stay with. These show us what our service is meant for. Our love is meant to share God’s love and meant to bring people to him. Simply we are trying to instill a peace that is found through knowing and dwelling with God.
Our call as humans is to love our neighbor, but ultimately that can and will fall short, unless we first love God. All people are worthy of our greatest love as they are imprinted with the image of God. This challenges us to a powerful love even beyond our own capacity, which again is ultimately found in God. We love one another to lead them to the love of God, where we might dwell together. It becomes a beautiful cycle, whereby loving God, leads us to loving one another, which leads us back to the love of God and into further love for our neighbor.
