Trinity 13

Luke 10:21-37 - Trinity Thirteen - September 14, 2014
Jesus Is The Neighbor We Need

Jesus thanks his Father that he has hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes.   This here requires two things to be clarified.  First of all, who are the wise and prudent and who are the babes?  And second of all, what are “these things” that are hidden to some and revealed to others? 

The wise and prudent are those who know the law, but who don’t know what it is for.  They think that the law is intended to help them become righteous on their own.  They are foolish.  The babes, or the little infants, on the other hand, are those who know that they are sinners.  They are those who are helpless to fulfill what the law requires, because the law demands that they love from pure hearts.  We do not love as God requires.  We cannot.  We have neither the will nor the way, because we are poor miserable sinners who have been lost and condemned since before we were infant babes.  We know the law.  The law works wrath.  It is good that we know this.  For what is hidden from the self-righteous wise and prudent is revealed to us who have been born from above by water and the Spirit.  And so in simple faith we receive what Christ freely gives, as little children who desire true spiritual milk. 

God did not give the law so that we might know what we can do to be saved. 
God gave the law so that we might know how much we need to be saved.  
The law demands love.  It requires what is not in us. 
But the love that the law requires is fulfilled by God himself who loves us. 

The law is our tutor, as St. Paul calls it, to bring us to Christ.   The law holds us in bondage until we see the freedom that Christ has won.  Jesus Christ obeyed in our place.  He loved his Father above all things, and in love for his neighbor, he gave his life for all sinners. 
If we think that we need to work with the law in such a way as to get it to describe us, and in this way find life, then these wonderful things will be hidden from us. 
But if we confess our sins, if we permit the law to expose our hearts as loveless and selfish, God who is faithful and just will forgive us and cleanse us and reveal to our longing eyes the salvation he promises. 

This is why Jesus turned to his disciples and blessed their eyes.  “Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see.”  It is as if he said, “Blessed are your eyes because they see Me.  They see the love that you cannot produce in yourselves.  Your eyes see Me.  They don’t see demands.  They see Me fulfill these demands.  They don’t see rewards that have to be earned.  They see full and free pardon that I have earned for you; they see eternal life that is already yours.  Your eyes see the God you could not love and the neighbor that you would not love.  It is true; the law reveals it.  But now your eyes see this same God and your neighbor together in one Person.  And he loves you.  I am he who covers all your sin and gives you eternal peace with God.  These things are what the gospel reveals.”  Jesus said as much as this when he blessed his disciples.  The law requires righteousness by requiring perfect love.  But the gospel declares us perfectly righteous by revealing the love of Christ for us.  

The lawyer who approached Jesus was wise and prudent.  He knew the law.  But he was blind.  He came to test Jesus.  This means that he came to prove to Jesus that he was righteous on his own and that he did not need what Jesus was offering.  What a great opportunity for Jesus to demonstrate with a story exactly what he had just told his disciples. 

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” he asked.  You can almost imagine Jesus glance at his disciples and say, “Let me now show you how blind he is.  Let me demonstrate how my Father has hidden from this wise lawyer the true purpose of the law.”  So he asked him, “What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?”  Naturally the lawyer answered correctly, since he quoted directly from Scripture: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself.’” 

Jesus commended his correct answer.  “You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.”  So what does this mean?  If you want to have eternal life, you have to live the perfect life, right?  The law teaches us how to live the perfect life.  Therefore, it is by keeping the law that one gains eternal life, right?  So it would seem.  It’s reasonable, yes.  But that doesn’t make it so.  The truth is hidden from reason. 

It almost looks as though Jesus is conceding that this lawyer can earn eternal life by obeying the law.  But he isn’t.  He is only repeating the promise of the law – just as we heard it this morning from Leviticus 18: “You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, which if a man does, he shall live by them.” 
But just because the law promises life to those who keep it does not mean that the law gives the ability to keep it.   The law gives no power.  It only demands.  It demands that we love God with every power we have and to love our neighbor as ourselves, but it does not make us able to do this.  In fact, the one who attempts to fulfill the law on his own only proves how little love he truly has for either God or his neighbor. 

The first table of the law, the first three commandments, requires love for God.  The lawyer had no true love for God.  He was seeking reward.  He had about as much love for God as a McDonald’s worker on strike has for his boss.  He’s only aiming to get what he thinks he’s worth. But the lawyer thinks that this is love.  He doesn’t even bother to investigate the first table of the law any further.  He’s got that covered.  He doesn’t worship idols.  He prays.  He goes to the synagogue to hear the Scriptures read and explained.  He doesn’t work on the Sabbath.   That’s easy, he supposes.  But the second table of the law, the last seven commandments that require love for the neighbor, well, this is a little trickier.  “It’s easy to love God,” he supposes.  “I know who he is.  But who is my neighbor?”  So he asks. 

But by asking this question, he proved that he had no real concern for others.  He just wanted to know what he had to do and for whom he had to do it to earn his own reward.  He also proved that he didn’t know who God was.  He thought that God was the one who searched the world for righteous men to bring to heaven.  But he was wrong.  The only righteous Man to ever live came down from heaven.  And as true God and true Man, he came to search out and save that which was lost and defiled by sin – the very type of person that this self-righteous lawyer had no desire to love. 

“And who is my neighbor?”  “Who do I have to love?  Who do I need to care about to get what God owes me?  Who can I get away with ignoring and leaving half dead on the side of the road? Who is my neighbor?” 

What a question.  It’s a wise and prudent question I suppose.  If loving your neighbor gets you into heaven, you had better find out who your neighbor is.  Just like if changing a tire or fixing an alternator is going to earn you a paycheck, you had better find out which car needs servicing.  Wise and prudent, sure.  But this lawyer clearly had no real concern for others, did he?  No more concern than your mechanic has for my car. 
He didn’t want to know who his neighbor was so that his neighbor might be loved.  He wanted to know who his neighbor was so that he could make God owe him something.  But that is not why we love each other.  We love because God has first loved us. 

We often hear this parable explained in such a way as to expose and condemn how unwilling religious hypocrites are to aid and assist the poor and lowly who are beaten up by life.  And that’s perfectly true.  If the shoe fits, we should wear it.  St. John writes in his first epistle, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” (1 John 4:20).  This parable makes the same point.  The priest and the Levite were too busy pretending to serve God on their way to the temple that they ignored the need of their neighbor.  And this lawyer likewise stood condemned.  He regarded his neighbor the same way he regarded God: as a means to an end.  He should have loved as the law truly required.  But he didn’t. 

But the story that Jesus tells reveals more than just how unwilling this man was to help his neighbor; and it reveals more than just our own selfishness too.  It reveals how little he desired to be helped by God; and so it warns us to see our need for mercy ourselves.  The lawyer is the one who needed service.  He is the one who needed God’s love.  He is the helpless one.  He is the one who needed a neighbor to have compassion on him.  And so are we. 
If we are to know how to love our neighbor with a willing heart, we must first know our own need for God to become a neighbor to us and have compassion.  Only then do our eyes see what Christ wants us to see. 

In order to see what Jesus wants us to see, let’s consider more closely his final question.  It is often overlooked.  After telling this wonderful story, he doesn’t ask, “Which one treated this poor man like a neighbor – which one loved his neighbor as himself?”  No, instead he asks, “Which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?”   The lawyer asked, “Who do I have to love?”  But Jesus responded with the question, “Who showed love?” 

So in other words, he doesn’t really answer the lawyer’s question the way he expected.  The lawyer wanted to know who was his neighbor so that he might know whom he had to serve.  But Jesus doesn’t ask whether the poor beaten man was the neighbor of the priest or Levite.  Of course he was.  They could have helped him but they didn’t love him.  No, but Jesus asks who the poor, beat-up man’s neighbor was.  It is a much more pressing question, because the poor beaten man is every sinner who has been assaulted by the devil, whose sin has left him dying and helpless.  The priest and the Levite represent the law.  The law won’t help.  The law passes by.  The law tells us to love, but we are bleeding on the side of the road and have no power to help ourselves let alone help others. 

But the Good Samaritan, as we call him, he is Jesus.  He loves God with a pure heart.  He does not need to rush off to the temple, because he is the Temple.  He has compassion for sinners who have been mugged by the devil and left dying in sin.  He bears his neighbor up and places him on his own beast of burden.  This means that Jesus carries us by placing us in the care of his humble servants on earth, his ministers who are directed by Jesus to bring you to where all your needs will be met.  And he brings you here.  He brings you to where he binds your wounds.  He pours on wine and oil.  That is, he applies both the law that stings and the gospel that sooths.  The wine disinfects by killing the germs just as the law disinfects by killing us.  The oil brings healing just as the gospel brings life and salvation from all sin and death. 

Jesus is the neighbor we need.  The wise and prudent won’t stop asking who their neighbor is so that they can earn something from God by helping him. 
But as helpless babes who cannot live one moment on our own, we always ask first, “Who is my neighbor who helps me?”  And he keeps helping.  He who binds our wounds today will return tomorrow.  He will not demand from you to pay for his kindness.  He will provide whatever more we need no matter how little we deserve it.

And dear Christians, it is only by identifying as the man who is robbed of all his goods that we receive the highest Good.  We receive Christ.  We receive his cloak of righteousness.  We receive his help in every need.  We know who our neighbor is.  He is the one who saves us at no cost.  And so we see in every neighbor we have the same Christ.  We serve one another because by doing so we serve Christ.  We do likewise as our Savior has done for us.  He was despised.  He identified as a Samaritan.  And so we also identify as lowly sinners washed in the blood of Christ.  We help one another.  We love one another, because we have first been loved by God who came down from heaven to be our Brother.  Jesus is the neighbor we need. 

Amen.