Trinity 13 – Luke 10:23-37 – September 2nd, 2012
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost +
There are two ways of trying
to live, of trying to deal with God. One
can try to approach God via the Law and obedience, or one can live under the
Gospel and Grace. One can stand before
God and point to one's works, or one can simply say, "God, be merciful to
me, a sinner." These are the two
paths, the two ways of life that are present, and sadly, most people opt for
the option of the Law. Most people wish
to stand before God with a laundry list of all that they have done for Him, how
good they have been. That's just how we
want our relationships on earth to work - we like being able to say, "you
owe me" - we like the idea of you wash my back, I'll wash yours. We try to make our relationship with God work
the same way. We want to be in charge, and
so, we flee to the Law. We cling to our
actions.
This is the approach of the
lawyer, the student of the Law, in our text today. "And behold, a lawyer stood up to
put Him to the test, saying, 'Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal
life?'" A few things to
note about this question. First, Luke
notes for us that this question is a test.
Consider - the man is a lawyer, a student of the law. He wants to see Jesus' bona fides, see if
Jesus is really up to snuff. It's the
feeling out of another -- seeing if this other fellow will be able to talk shop
with him. He's not really seeking to
learn - rather he's trying to find out of Jesus is his peer, is worth his time
in talking to. Do you get a sense of the
pride and ego involved -- and that's part and parcel of how sinful man likes to
operate. We like to rank ourselves, rate
ourselves compared to others, and if we are better, more knowledgeable, we can
enjoy putting another in "their place". That's just how human structures work - and
that's all this lawyer is expecting.
Something Law based, something earthy, something like what he might see
the rest of the time in this dog eat dog world.
Second, the focus on the
Law, on ego, on works comes out clearly in the question. "What must *I* do to inherit eternal
life." Again, it's all about me,
about my action. And in a twisted way --
because it's asking what I must to to... inherit. Let me ask a question - what must I, Eric
Brown, only child of Gregory and June Brown, do to inherit my parent's
stuff? Seriously - what do I have to
do? I really don't have to do anything -
it's not a competition or a game show. I
don't do anything. Yet, what is this
Lawyer's approach -- is eternal life a gift of a gracious God, the birthright
of those He has called to be His children?
Is it even something that he thinks should be his as a child of
Abraham... nope - what must I do? Such a
Law, such a works righteous focus.
So Jesus decides to address
these issues - Jesus shows who is boss by turning the question around, and He
also shows the foolishness of the question by asking one of His own. "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?" You say you are a master of the Law of Moses,
well, tell me what's in the Law. And the
Lawyer responds, "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 neighbor as yourself." Fair enough. Deuteronomy 6:5. Good answer - this is what God commands, this
is a fine summation of the Law... but was the promise of the Law "eternal
life" and how one inherits it?
Moses introduced the commands saying, "Hear therefore, O
Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you
may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you,
in a land flowing with milk and honey."
This was the instruction to Israel on how to dwell in the
promised land... but it says nothing of eternal life or forcing an
inheritance. In fact, the point is that
God has promised you the land - if you want to enjoy it, here's how you enjoy
it... but the land is promised to you by God because that is who God is. This lawyer misses the point - he tries to
point to his works as earning eternal life, when no, the passage isn't about
eternal life. And to seal the deal,
Jesus responds to him saying, "You have answered correctly; do this
and you will live." Oh, you
spoke correctly, straightly, said something true - something "orthos"
in the Greek - something straight and correct -- like in the word
"Orthodox" or "orthodontist". Do this and you will live. For this is the Law -- if you do the Law, you
will live. The only problem is this --
the cost of breaking the law is death.
Breaking the Law is sin, and sin is death. And as you have sinned... guess what you
aren't going to do.
The Lawyer tries to
recover. "Be he, desiring to
justify himself, said to Jesus, 'and who is my neighbor?'" Embarassment creeps in. He basically got to give a simple Sunday
School answer that any Jewish boy of 6 would be able to give -- love God, love
your neighbor. Simple. And so this Lawyer tries to turn things
around -- okay Jesus, tell me who my neighbor is. This shows another one of the things that
living under the Law does -- it drives people to hunt for loopholes. Sinful man will treat God's Law the same way
we do tax laws -- we will look for every deduction and write off that we can
find, all to lessen the burden. Alright,
tell me just who my neighbor is that I have to love... and more to the point,
who isn't my neighbor, whom can I ignore, whom can I hate?
And so Jesus tells the
familiar story - the story of the Good Samaritan. There's the man, traveling along the rocky
road between Jerusalem and Jericho.
It's a dangerous road, lots of hills and cliffs in which bandits could
hide - and this man runs afoul of some - and they rob him and beat him near to
death, leaving him for dead. And there
he lies. A priest comes by - high, holy,
respected... and the priest passes on by.
As does a Levite - another highly respected man, a good Jew. And let us be fair - this is understandable. I could take any of you here to parts of
Dallas or Chicago where you'd lock the doors and just want me to drive on
through as quickly as possible. A man
lying beaten and possibly dead means there's danger - hurry on your way. But then a third man comes by - a
Samaritan. Someone who would have been
despised and hated - looked down upon by Jesus' listeners, probably looked down
upon even by that beaten man. And what
does the Samaritan do? He rescues the
man, treats his wounds, even puts the man on his own donkey -- which is
incredibly brave. If the robbers come
again, the donkey might be able to flee to safety, carrying the beaten man...
the Samaritan would be left at the mercy of the robbers. And even when they both reach the safety of
the inn, this Samaritan opens up his pocket book, drops down good solid cash to
care for this stranger, with the promise of more. Consider - this Samaritan is someone
despised, he's far from home - that inn might be his only point of safety...
and what if the next time that inn keeper says, "Ah, you owe me another 20
denarii"? The Samaritan would have
to pay, or again, his life would be in danger as he is forced outdoors at night
amongst the robbers. Incredibly bold
love and care is shown. And so, telling
the story Jesus asks, "'Which of these, do you think, proved to be a
neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?' He said, 'The one who showed him mercy.' And Jesus said to him, 'You go and do
likewise.'"
Jesus teaches us about
love here - what love looks like. And
even as He instructs us to go and do likewise -- let's be honest. That's not often what our love looks like, is
it? Or even if we muster up enough
fortitude to go through the motions - how often is there grumbling or a bit of
disdain, disquiet in the back of our minds?
And here is the thing - if we try to live by the Law, try to show our
worth to God by the Law, what we end up doing is ignoring that disdain, or
overlooking the times when we don't show love - whitewashing our own actions,
puffing up the times where we do okay into something grandiose and sweeping the
dirt of our lives under the rug and pretending it's not there. Like the Priest and the Levite we simply skirt
by uncomfortable truths, difficult tasks, and go on our merry way. The
only problem is this -- the Law says "Do this and you will live" --
not pretend that you've done this and you will live. If we try to justify ourselves as the Lawyer
did, God's perfect Law will only show us how far short we fall. And even when we strive to go and do
likewise, if we look honestly, we will see that we have not done what we ought
- we will see that we do not deserve to live.
There are two ways that man
can try to live. The first is the way of
the Law, of works. Christ our Lord shows
us today that this is false, a pipe dream.
But do you remember what He had said to start off our Gospel
reading? "Then turning to the
disciples He said privately, 'Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings
desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and
did not hear it.'" That's
kind of cryptic, isn't it? But the point
is this -- there is a second way to live -- and that is to live under grace,
under mercy. Consider the man beaten by
robbers. How was he to live? Was he to pull himself up by his own
bootstraps and live? Was he to dust
himself off and just do better next time he travelled? Well, it would have been a bit late for that,
wouldn't it have? No, for him to live,
another had to rescue him, had to show him mercy. And that is what the prophets, that is what
the kings had longed to see - the Messiah who would once and for all accomplish
God's mercy, for even lawyer knew that God desires mercy. The love that sinful man does not show, the
Messiah would. Man had fallen amongst
sin and death, and so Christ Jesus would come and rescue us. He would deliver us from the valley of the
shadow of death - He would go to the Cross and there pour out mercy upon us all
by the shedding of His blood. He would
rise from the dead so that we too would rise, not by our strength but by
His.
My dear friends - you will
not live, you will not have eternal life if you seek it on your own terms or by
your own works. You simply won't - you
can't do enough to earn it. But God
knows that, and God is merciful, and so out of His love for you He has sent His
Son to win you life and salvation and to give it to you freely by His grace, to
preach it to you, to cover you with it in your baptism, to feed it to you in
His Supper. Live in His mercy, live a
life of repentance and forgiveness, and Christ who has died to see that you
inherit eternal life with the Will and Testament in His blood shall see that
you have it in full. In the Name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit + Amen.
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