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The Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
O Lord, we beseech thee mercifully to receive the prayers of thy people who call upon thee, and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Proper 10)
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The Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
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Scripture citation(s): Luke 10:25-37
A Sermon by
Fr. Spurlock
on
Luke 10:25-37
✛
A Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
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When a lawyer asks a question, the best ones, so I am told, ask questions they already know the answers to. So, when a lawyer, in the midst of a crowd asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” We might presume that he’s asking not because he doesn’t know, but because he wants to draw Jesus out to see if he knows. It must have been unsettling then when Jesus makes him answer his own question by asking the lawyer, “What does the law say?” And the short answer given is its summary, to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, strength and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.” And as we know, on these two commandments hang all the LAW and the prophets.
It seems that’s a good answer because Jesus says, “You have answered right. Go do that and you will live forever.” So then, why does the lawyer ask another question seeking to justify the first? Maybe he wanted to try and regain the initiative after having his question turned back on himself. He is, after all, in a crowd and needs to save face. It has also been suggested he was only asking in an attempt to expose some heretical streak in Jesus and having failed in his first attempt tries another.
But think on this: Jesus says, “You have answered right.” Could the lawyer have felt a rebuke in those words, “You have answered right”? The Koine for “right” is orthos from which we get our word orthodox. Jesus has been given the orthodox, the textbook answer to his question. And yet, our counselor must feel that Jesus is not satisfied. Perhaps our Lord senses in this lawyer that though the answer is right, (and it is the classic summary of the law) in the hands of the lawyers and the scribes and the Pharisees it has lost something and has become little more than a tool for splitting hairs. So out of shame, our lawyer asks his next question, “Then who is my neighbor?”
Again, there is an orthos answer to this question. Obviously, it’s those people with whom one shares covenant, and in the case of Jesus and this lawyer and the surrounding crowd, their neighbors are their fellow Jews. The law seems to suggest that neighborliness is a quality to be found within those who profess the same creed. And that’s it.
Jesus knows this answer. He knows that fine edge that is the letter of the law as well as any scribe, Pharisee, priest, hair-splitter, etc. But he knows one thing more, that time and again he demonstrates, Jesus knows the law’s breadth and what’s more he knows the law’s breath; it’s spirit. If God had not breathed his spirit into Adam, he would have remained the dust that he was and so it is with the law. Without God’s breath, his spirit shot through, the law is ink on paper and dead.
And so Jesus tells the story of a Jewish man alone on a long and dangerous road who meets up with the worst kind of trouble and is left naked, beaten, and half dead. It’s from the perspective of the ditch that we best understand.
Your body is broken and as you lie there, you know that if help does not come soon you will die. But things are going to be all right because you see a priest on the road, ah, and it’s a Jewish priest. You could not have hoped for better. A priest will certainly stop and help one from his own flock. Oh, but then there’s the law. If you are dead, and perhaps you realize that from the road it’s not so obvious that you are not, the priest can’t touch you. The law says that if he touches a dead man the priest would be unclean and could not celebrate in the Temple. Temple service is an honor and, yes, a grave responsibility not to be threatened by the off-chance that you are dead. So when you see him pass by, you realize that the law is on his side. Put yourself in the place of the priest, the law all but compels him to pass you by and in doing so, he’s right. He’s orthos.
But shortly you see a Levite approach. And this is like a Deacon or the head of the altar guild coming along. Surely someone as dedicated to God’s service will care enough to stop for you. But, there’s the law again. The Levite, so the law says, has to maintain his own purity too in order to serve his creator. He can’t be defiled either, not on your account. You crave his help, but the law just doesn’t seem to allow for it. So when he passes you by, he’s orthos.
Now after another lonely interval, you lift your eyes to the road, and you behold the pariah. And you close your eyes with dashed hopes. A Samaritan would hate the likes of you and if truth be told, the feeling is mutual. You avoid their company, you spurn their religion, you scoff at their creed and you thank God that he did not make you one of them. And you expect nothing but the same in return; for only a fool would think otherwise.
The shock comes when you open your eyes to find him gazing into yours. And his are so full of your pain that he begins to act for your benefit, and you are saved and you marvel at how so very un-orthos this all seems, yet somehow, so much more right.
Our Lord Christ commands us to love God with all we have and to love neighbor as ourselves. He will not have closed lists, but asks whose neighbor you can become? Who among you will show love and mercy in Christ’s name to any and all who are in need of it. In the gospels we learn that Christ’s intentions are more expansive than the law might allow for and sometimes more than we might have wished for. But in any case, this parable of the Good Samaritan is the spirit of our law. Submit to it. Labor under it. Allow it to be written on your heart. “For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it too far off. But the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.” In the name of Christ, “Do this, and you will live.”
