I read Luke, chapter 23, for my quiet time this morning. There, Luke narrates Jesus' arrest, kangaroo trial, crucifixion, and death. (His resurrection comes in the next chapter.)
I was particularly struck today by the spinelessness of Pilate, the Roman governor who ended up giving the order to have Jesus crucified.
Three times, Pilate told the crowds crying for Jesus' death that he found the accused innocent of any crime. (Herod, the puppet king of Judea, agreed.)
"I have found in [Jesus] no grounds for the death penalty [Pilate says]. Therefore I will have him punished and then release him.” (Luke 23:22)
This is a strange thing for a man who claims to have the final say over the lives and destinies of a region, backed by the world's most powerful empire, to say: "He's not guilty. But since you don't like him, I'll rough him up and send him on his way." In a supposed show of strength, as is true of all thugs and would-be thugs in such circumstances, he lets everyone see what a wimp he truly is.
Like most people who think of themselves as powerful, confident, and self-sufficient, Pilate likes giving the appearance of power, confidence, and self-sufficiency without actually possessing these characteristic. When the comfort of such people is threatened, they will opt for their comfort for themselves. They'll brag while dispatching others to do their wimp-rooted dirty work.
And so, despite the facts, Pilate orders Jesus' crucifixion.
As I read about Pilate today, I couldn't help thinking of the character, Juror #7, played by Jack Warden in the classic jury room drama, Twelve Angry Men. The jury deliberates its verdict in a capital trial involving a defendant, a young man who is a member of an unidentified minority group. Juror #7, who apparently sees himself as a tough, no-nonsense guy, is anxious to get on with things because he has tickets to a baseball game. Initially, he insists on the defendant's guilt, until some begin raising doubts about the prosecution's case. (I also love George Voskovec's performance here.)
Pilate had had enough and so he caved in to "the room," sending Jesus off to His death.
Of course, Pilate was playing into God's hand: God the Father sent God the Son expressly into the world to become the sinless sacrifice--the spotless "Lamb of God"--for sinners like me, His atoning sacrifice making it possible for all who renounce sin and trust in Jesus as their God and Savior to have new, eternal life with God.
But Pilate didn't understand all that. He was Juror #7, weak at the knees over bucking the crowd and hellbent on using the tickets he had for whatever pleasure beckoned to him at that moment.
Pilate was like the priest and Levite in Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan, who, for whatever reason, didn't take the time to address a matter of life and death, justice and injustice for another human being, seriously.
"Tough guys" too busy to care. How often are we those guys or those women? Lord, have mercy, I confess to being Pilate or Juror #7. I confess to too often being so caught up in my own agenda and my own pursuit of pleasure to love You with my whole being and to love my neighbor as much as I love myself.
God, forgive me the indifference with which I view the lives of others. Out of the Christian compassion Your Holy Spirit makes possible for believers in Jesus, help me to share the saving good news of Jesus with someone who may need it today. Out of this same compassion, help me to show compassion for the victims of indifference and injustice today. Help me today to live as the loving person that Your grace in Christ has set me free to be! In Jesus' name I pray. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Showing posts with label The Good Samaritan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Good Samaritan. Show all posts
Monday, July 29, 2019
Sunday, July 14, 2019
God Says to Love Everyone...How Can We Do That?
[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio , his morning.]
Luke 10:25-37
One point of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, which makes up today’s gospel lesson, is that every person in the world is my neighbor. Whether that person lives in Centerville, Washington DC, Iran, Haiti, Guatemala, or South Africa, whatever religion or whether they have no religion, she or he is a human being made in the image of God. She or he is also someone for whom Jesus died and rose and to whom He makes the offer of new and everlasting life through faith in Him.
But if we view Jesus’ parable as a simple admonition to see every human being as a neighbor we are obligated to love, we will be getting only one point.
Since when has an admonition from God to we fallen human beings, ever been sufficient to change our behavior?
The God we know in Jesus Christ also admonishes us not to have other gods, but we still tend to worship all kinds of things.
God admonishes us not to take His name in vain, yet people do it all the time...even preachers teaching false gospels.
God admonishes us not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to covet what belongs to others, not to lie, not to sleep in when we should be worshiping God; yet people still ignore God’s admonitions.
Even the Christian who knows God’s Word inside out can say with the apostle Paul: “Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me...I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.” (Romans 7:21-23, 25b)
Our daughter has a dog, Peanut. He’s a loving and well-dispositioned animal who likes nothing better than being petted. But he’s still a dog. He still sniffs at the grass to find the right place to do his business, still barks at strangers, and still views anything within eyesight of our condo as part of the universe of his pack, which includes the three of us and him, and excludes anyone else. These are common dog behaviors. And no matter how compliant Peanut is to us, no amount of admonition will ever stop him from following his dog nature. I could tell Peanut, “Stop being a dog” until I’m blue in the face and it wouldn’t change him.
Admonitions from God, God’s Law, can’t change us either. We can be given God’s commands--including Jesus’ command that we see all people as neighbors to be loved--and remain unreconstructed sinners who never stop following our sinful human nature.
So, what good is it for Jesus to tell us to love our neighbor if, within ourselves, we have no capacity for loving our neighbor as we love ourselves?
Well, Paul says, also in Romans 7, that God’s Law does have an important function: “it was the Law that made me know what sin is…” (Romans 7:7) God’s admonitions--His Law--forces me to wrestle with the fact that I am a sinner. And sinners deserve death and condemnation. That, in turn, should cause us to take the wise step of looking for Someone Who can save me from my sins and from myself. But that’s not the only reason that Jesus tells the parable of the good Samaritan!
Remember how Jesus happens to tell the parable in the first place. An expert in Biblical law asks Jesus, “[W]hat must I do to receive eternal life?” (Luke 10:25) The guy is looking for some plan of performance by which he can earn eternal life from God.
We might paraphrase Jesus as asking the man, “Since you’re hung up on what you need to do, what does God’s Law in the Scriptures, say that you should do?” The man summarizes the Ten Commandments' admonition that we love God completely and to love our neighbors as ourselves. “Good answer,” Jesus basically tells the man. “Do those things and you’ll have life with God.”
Of course, if you and I could do those things on our own, we would have life with God...and there would be no reason for Jesus and His cross. The problem is that since Adam and Eve, the whole human race has inherited sin from them. We’re born sinners, separated from God.
But the teacher of the law isn’t thinking about any of that at all. Instead, he wants to find a loophole in the law. There are people he apparently doesn’t love and doesn’t think God should unreasonably expect him to love. (Like maybe Samaritans.) So, he asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” He would have been satisfied if Jesus had said, “Your neighbor is the good person you like.” But that’s not how Jesus answers the man.
Instead, He tells the parable of the good Samaritan that you know well. A man, presumably a Judean, is accosted by robbers on the road that descends north from Jerusalem to Jericho. Two religious figures, a priest and a Levite, respected Jewish persons pass by the man. But a hated Samaritan sees the wounded man, cares for him, takes him to a nearby inn, and foots the bill for the wounded man’s care.
So, Jesus asks the teacher of the law, who of the three who encountered the wounded Judean on the road was the man’s neighbor? Unable to even say “Samaritan” in a good light, the teacher of the law replies, “The one who was kind to him.” Verse 37: “Jesus replied, ‘You go, then, and do the same.’”
Honesty before the Lord should have compelled the teacher of the law to respond, “Lord, I don’t love my neighbor like that. Forgive me. Help me to love all my neighbors.”
Jesus is leaving the possibility of forgiveness and a new life born of complete dependence on Jesus for the man, it he will only repent and trust in Him. But he takes a pass. Uninterested in loving all people, certain that Jesus couldn’t possibly understand what it means to love the unlovable (like him, or you, or me), the teacher of the law asks nothing else of Jesus. He walks away, untouched, unchanged, unforgiven. Like most people in the world, including many in the Church, the man didn’t want to have anything to do with Jesus if following Jesus meant changing the way he wanted to live his life.
This encounter, by itself, would leave us only with God’s command that we love all people and that we, in fact, are incapable on our own of loving all people, if it weren’t for what happens next, in the verses just beyond our lesson, Luke 10:38-42.
Let me explain why I take you there.
In his gospel, Luke often pairs incidents. He'll have one incident involving a man followed by another one involving a woman. Sometimes he does it to create comparisons. Other times he creates contrasts.
For example, Luke tells us first that Zechariah was told by the angel that he would become father of John the Baptist and he greeted the news with skepticism. But immediately after that, the angel tells Mary that she will give birth to Jesus and she receives the news with faith.
When Jesus was taken to the temple in Jerusalem to be dedicated to God and circumcised at eight days old, His identity as the Messiah was affirmed first by a man, Zechariah, then by a woman, Anna.
At Easter, the women were told that Jesus was raised from the dead and believed it while the male disciples greeted this news with faith.
With the incident of Mary and Martha, we see this same male/female pattern, and in it, Jesus makes an important point.
There we encounter two sisters, Martha and Mary. Martha is a kindred spirit to the teacher of the law, certain of her own righteousness. Martha is also hung up on doing, playing the hostess with the mostest. Mary, meanwhile, “sat down at the feet of the Lord and listened to his teaching.” (Luke 10:39) Martha resented Mary’s apparent laziness. But when she bellyaches about things to Jesus, He tells her, “Martha, Martha! You are worried and troubled over so many things, but just one is needed. Mary has chosen the right thing, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:41-42)
Now, we’ll look at this incident involving Martha and Mary in more detail next Sunday. But surely, Luke meant it to be the exclamation point to the parable of the Good Samaritan.
It’s not enough to be told that God wants us to love our neighbor. Because, deep down, I have neither the inclination nor the capacity to love others as I love myself, the God we can only know through Jesus Christ needs to give us both the ability and the desire to love others.
How does that happen?
It happens when we submit ourselves, day in and day out, to Jesus. This happens through the gifts of regular worship, the Sacrament, quiet time in God’s Word and prayer in Jesus’ name, and study of God’s Word with others that Jesus comes to us and God changes us.
Jesus has perfectly fulfilled the Law of God for us and to those who trustingly surrender to Him, like Mary, He creates a new way to be human, He makes us new people who cease to look for loopholes in the Law and instead look for new ways to live in His grace while loving others in that grace.
Who’s the neighbor I am to love? Everyone.
How am I to do that? By relying on only Christ, Who forgives our sins and empowers us to love others with the same patience and charity He gives to us. And that, surely, is the second point of the parable. “This is love,” we’re told in 1 John 4:10, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
Live in, daily absorb, and totally depend on God’s love given to you in Christ and He will not only give you eternity, He will also change the way you view others, He will also love them through you.
Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Luke 10:25-37
One point of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, which makes up today’s gospel lesson, is that every person in the world is my neighbor. Whether that person lives in Centerville, Washington DC, Iran, Haiti, Guatemala, or South Africa, whatever religion or whether they have no religion, she or he is a human being made in the image of God. She or he is also someone for whom Jesus died and rose and to whom He makes the offer of new and everlasting life through faith in Him.
But if we view Jesus’ parable as a simple admonition to see every human being as a neighbor we are obligated to love, we will be getting only one point.
Since when has an admonition from God to we fallen human beings, ever been sufficient to change our behavior?
The God we know in Jesus Christ also admonishes us not to have other gods, but we still tend to worship all kinds of things.
God admonishes us not to take His name in vain, yet people do it all the time...even preachers teaching false gospels.
God admonishes us not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to covet what belongs to others, not to lie, not to sleep in when we should be worshiping God; yet people still ignore God’s admonitions.
Even the Christian who knows God’s Word inside out can say with the apostle Paul: “Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me...I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.” (Romans 7:21-23, 25b)
Our daughter has a dog, Peanut. He’s a loving and well-dispositioned animal who likes nothing better than being petted. But he’s still a dog. He still sniffs at the grass to find the right place to do his business, still barks at strangers, and still views anything within eyesight of our condo as part of the universe of his pack, which includes the three of us and him, and excludes anyone else. These are common dog behaviors. And no matter how compliant Peanut is to us, no amount of admonition will ever stop him from following his dog nature. I could tell Peanut, “Stop being a dog” until I’m blue in the face and it wouldn’t change him.
Admonitions from God, God’s Law, can’t change us either. We can be given God’s commands--including Jesus’ command that we see all people as neighbors to be loved--and remain unreconstructed sinners who never stop following our sinful human nature.
So, what good is it for Jesus to tell us to love our neighbor if, within ourselves, we have no capacity for loving our neighbor as we love ourselves?
Well, Paul says, also in Romans 7, that God’s Law does have an important function: “it was the Law that made me know what sin is…” (Romans 7:7) God’s admonitions--His Law--forces me to wrestle with the fact that I am a sinner. And sinners deserve death and condemnation. That, in turn, should cause us to take the wise step of looking for Someone Who can save me from my sins and from myself. But that’s not the only reason that Jesus tells the parable of the good Samaritan!
Remember how Jesus happens to tell the parable in the first place. An expert in Biblical law asks Jesus, “[W]hat must I do to receive eternal life?” (Luke 10:25) The guy is looking for some plan of performance by which he can earn eternal life from God.
We might paraphrase Jesus as asking the man, “Since you’re hung up on what you need to do, what does God’s Law in the Scriptures, say that you should do?” The man summarizes the Ten Commandments' admonition that we love God completely and to love our neighbors as ourselves. “Good answer,” Jesus basically tells the man. “Do those things and you’ll have life with God.”
Of course, if you and I could do those things on our own, we would have life with God...and there would be no reason for Jesus and His cross. The problem is that since Adam and Eve, the whole human race has inherited sin from them. We’re born sinners, separated from God.
But the teacher of the law isn’t thinking about any of that at all. Instead, he wants to find a loophole in the law. There are people he apparently doesn’t love and doesn’t think God should unreasonably expect him to love. (Like maybe Samaritans.) So, he asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” He would have been satisfied if Jesus had said, “Your neighbor is the good person you like.” But that’s not how Jesus answers the man.
Instead, He tells the parable of the good Samaritan that you know well. A man, presumably a Judean, is accosted by robbers on the road that descends north from Jerusalem to Jericho. Two religious figures, a priest and a Levite, respected Jewish persons pass by the man. But a hated Samaritan sees the wounded man, cares for him, takes him to a nearby inn, and foots the bill for the wounded man’s care.
So, Jesus asks the teacher of the law, who of the three who encountered the wounded Judean on the road was the man’s neighbor? Unable to even say “Samaritan” in a good light, the teacher of the law replies, “The one who was kind to him.” Verse 37: “Jesus replied, ‘You go, then, and do the same.’”
Honesty before the Lord should have compelled the teacher of the law to respond, “Lord, I don’t love my neighbor like that. Forgive me. Help me to love all my neighbors.”
Jesus is leaving the possibility of forgiveness and a new life born of complete dependence on Jesus for the man, it he will only repent and trust in Him. But he takes a pass. Uninterested in loving all people, certain that Jesus couldn’t possibly understand what it means to love the unlovable (like him, or you, or me), the teacher of the law asks nothing else of Jesus. He walks away, untouched, unchanged, unforgiven. Like most people in the world, including many in the Church, the man didn’t want to have anything to do with Jesus if following Jesus meant changing the way he wanted to live his life.
This encounter, by itself, would leave us only with God’s command that we love all people and that we, in fact, are incapable on our own of loving all people, if it weren’t for what happens next, in the verses just beyond our lesson, Luke 10:38-42.
Let me explain why I take you there.
In his gospel, Luke often pairs incidents. He'll have one incident involving a man followed by another one involving a woman. Sometimes he does it to create comparisons. Other times he creates contrasts.
For example, Luke tells us first that Zechariah was told by the angel that he would become father of John the Baptist and he greeted the news with skepticism. But immediately after that, the angel tells Mary that she will give birth to Jesus and she receives the news with faith.
When Jesus was taken to the temple in Jerusalem to be dedicated to God and circumcised at eight days old, His identity as the Messiah was affirmed first by a man, Zechariah, then by a woman, Anna.
At Easter, the women were told that Jesus was raised from the dead and believed it while the male disciples greeted this news with faith.
With the incident of Mary and Martha, we see this same male/female pattern, and in it, Jesus makes an important point.
There we encounter two sisters, Martha and Mary. Martha is a kindred spirit to the teacher of the law, certain of her own righteousness. Martha is also hung up on doing, playing the hostess with the mostest. Mary, meanwhile, “sat down at the feet of the Lord and listened to his teaching.” (Luke 10:39) Martha resented Mary’s apparent laziness. But when she bellyaches about things to Jesus, He tells her, “Martha, Martha! You are worried and troubled over so many things, but just one is needed. Mary has chosen the right thing, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:41-42)
Now, we’ll look at this incident involving Martha and Mary in more detail next Sunday. But surely, Luke meant it to be the exclamation point to the parable of the Good Samaritan.
It’s not enough to be told that God wants us to love our neighbor. Because, deep down, I have neither the inclination nor the capacity to love others as I love myself, the God we can only know through Jesus Christ needs to give us both the ability and the desire to love others.
How does that happen?
It happens when we submit ourselves, day in and day out, to Jesus. This happens through the gifts of regular worship, the Sacrament, quiet time in God’s Word and prayer in Jesus’ name, and study of God’s Word with others that Jesus comes to us and God changes us.
Jesus has perfectly fulfilled the Law of God for us and to those who trustingly surrender to Him, like Mary, He creates a new way to be human, He makes us new people who cease to look for loopholes in the Law and instead look for new ways to live in His grace while loving others in that grace.
Who’s the neighbor I am to love? Everyone.
How am I to do that? By relying on only Christ, Who forgives our sins and empowers us to love others with the same patience and charity He gives to us. And that, surely, is the second point of the parable. “This is love,” we’re told in 1 John 4:10, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
Live in, daily absorb, and totally depend on God’s love given to you in Christ and He will not only give you eternity, He will also change the way you view others, He will also love them through you.
Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Thursday, December 08, 2011
What's the Difference Between Helping and Enabling?
During adult Sunday School class this past week, someone asked, "What's the difference between helping people and enabling them?"
Christians aren't the only ones for whom this question is important, of course. But it's especially critical for us.
Why? Because Jesus' great commandment, a summation of the two sections of the Ten Commandments in which Jesus cited passages from the Old Testament books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, says that we are to love God completely and love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
The love Jesus commands is not about sentiment. It's a command to actively and practically help others. In His parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus says that a man who provided assistance to a stranger, was the truest neighbor, the one fulfilling the great commandment.
But there are some people who count on Christian compassion to incite Christians to provide assistance that doesn't really help, instead enabling their destructive habits and behaviors. Help is something we're called to provide others; enabling isn't. Compassion may be the primary motive for both helper and enabler, but helping is constructive and enabling is destructive.
How can we tell the difference? Here are a few observations based on my reading of Scripture and my twenty-seven years as a pastor:
Christians aren't the only ones for whom this question is important, of course. But it's especially critical for us.
Why? Because Jesus' great commandment, a summation of the two sections of the Ten Commandments in which Jesus cited passages from the Old Testament books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, says that we are to love God completely and love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
The love Jesus commands is not about sentiment. It's a command to actively and practically help others. In His parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus says that a man who provided assistance to a stranger, was the truest neighbor, the one fulfilling the great commandment.
But there are some people who count on Christian compassion to incite Christians to provide assistance that doesn't really help, instead enabling their destructive habits and behaviors. Help is something we're called to provide others; enabling isn't. Compassion may be the primary motive for both helper and enabler, but helping is constructive and enabling is destructive.
How can we tell the difference? Here are a few observations based on my reading of Scripture and my twenty-seven years as a pastor:
- Helping meets a need. Enabling addresses wants.
- Helping lifts people toward maturity. Enabling encourages ongoing immaturity.
- Helping is a bridge to the other person's self-sufficiency. Enabling is an open-ended commitment to co-dependence.
- Helping eliminates the other's distress. Enabling can be as much about eliminating our own distress as that of the other person. Enabling can be a selfish, rather than a selfless, act.
- Helping is always about the other person. Enabling can be about massaging one's own ego or self-righteousness.
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