Love that Lives: A Meditation on Luke 10 for the 5th Sunday after Pentecost

And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying,

Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?

And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,

 and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind;

and thy neighbour as thyself.

And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right:

this do, and thou shalt live.

 

The opening verses to the parable of the Good Samaritan help set the stage for why Jesus offered it.  Confronted by a lawyer (a religious scholar who worked with the Pharisees, basing their studies on 1500 years of Torah and Traditions at the time,) Jesus was being tested by the academics of His day.  And far from being just an academic debate, the Pharisees and Lawyers were trying to discredit Jesus in the eyes of both the common people, and the Roman authorities.  Their game was to ask questions in such a way that any normal answer would create division and animosity, which they could then use to accuse Jesus of something that one faction or another would use against Him.  Jesus turned their game back around on them in this instance by suggesting the Lawyer give his reading from the Law of Moses, which would have been in his proverbial wheel house.  When Jesus affirmed the Lawyer’s answer that full and total love of God and neighbor were sufficient for eternal life, the Lawyer immediately recognized his jeopardy.  The love of God might be hard to pin down practically, or obscured by philosophical arguments, but the love of neighbor was practical and visible, and he needed a way out—so he asked Jesus who qualified as his neighbor that he must love.

 

Once again, Jesus set the Lawyer up to answer his own question from the perspective of the Law.  The story of the Good Samaritan is less about the characters described (an unlucky traveler, murderous thieves, unmoved priests and Levites, the compassionate foreigner from Samaria, etc.,) and more about showing the Lawyer the answer to his question, “Who is my neighbor?”  Having squirmed when Jesus told him do this, and you will live, the Lawyer was then presented with the clear principle of action:  his neighbor was anyone in need, who he had power, resources, and opportunity to aid.  Even the Lawyer had to admit that the Samaritan traveler was the one who loved his neighbor, because he tended to the wounded man’s need from his own resources and opportunity.  The Levite and the priest, perhaps consumed with the idea that their religious service was a higher priority than physical tending of a wounded man on the side of the road, showed their failure to keep the Mosaic Law.  Only the Samaritan demonstrated love for their neighbor, because he rightly perceived the duty of love in the need of those around him.  Jesus left the Lawyer exposed and judged by his own words when He commanded the Lawyer to go and do likewise.  Whatever linguistic trap the Lawyer had devised for Jesus was now snapped shut on himself, as the demands of the Law showed him just how far from eternal life he really was.

 

This is instructive for us today, both for the purpose of revealing the true nature of the Law’s demands upon us, and our miserable failure to keep it.  Love demands of us everything, from the deepest recesses of our minds and souls, to every word and deed we either do or refrain from doing.  The totality of love we are called to have for God, that it is our duty as His creatures to love Him with all the strength of our every faculty at all times and all places, is something we are incapable of doing in our fallen state.  We might deceive ourselves into thinking we’ve done this well enough, perhaps loving God with most of our minds some of the time, and who can climb into our minds to know the difference?  If we just make the right social media posts, say the right things and wear the right clothes, go to the right places at the right times, people will just assume we’re holy on the inside—or maybe we’ll just fool those around us into thinking we’re holier than they are.  Since only God can truly see our hearts and minds, our self-delusion seems safe from outside critique, at least until Judgment Day—but our duty to love our neighbors is much more difficult to hide.  The practical wounds of people around us need practical bandaging, just as real thirst and hunger and exposure to the elements need real water, food, and shelter.  Broken consciences need real forgiveness and wounded spirits need real healing.  Our neighbors around us have real and present needs that call us to actually do something to help them.  Love is not a passive or purely philosophical concept, but a living, breathing, moving, acting thing in those who posses it, and this is the demand of the Law to love our neighbors as ourselves.

 

Like the Lawyer, we must find ourselves stripped bare by the Law if we attempt to justify ourselves with it.  There is no fallen man, woman, or child who has perfectly loved God and their neighbor, and thus fulfilled the Law.  And what is more, our failures to physically manifest love toward our neighbors according to their needs is just a dim reflection of our much greater failure to love God above all things with all the powers of our being.  Jesus’ Word is absolutely true:  if we perfectly love, we will live.  But we do not do these things, and thus we find ourselves in confession and contrition each day before the holy Law of God, begging of Him to have mercy on us.  And thanks be to God, that Jesus becomes this mercy toward us.  Where our love is broken, selfish, and failing, Jesus’ love is total, complete, and selfless.  Jesus’ love is not just a philosophical idea or mushy sentiment, but true love in action which comes to meet our most desperate need.  Jesus’ love moved Him to take our flesh upon Himself, that He might live, die, and rise again for us.  Jesus’ love was one of action, placing Himself under the wrath we deserve, so that we might receive the grace we need.  Jesus’ love cost Him everything, so that He might offer to us the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation from every evil both inside and outside of us.

 

What the Law commands of us is good, and we are right to strive for it with all the powers we are given.  We are right to work in every moment of our lives to love God above all things, and to find love’s duty in the needs of our neighbors.  Yet we are not called to find our justification there, as we know that only Jesus’ love given to us can rescue us from this body of sin and death.  While the Law is always good, it cannot save sinful creatures who are unable to keep it perfectly.  It is our Savior alone who has done all things well, who has accomplished what we cannot, and gives His gifts to us by grace that we might live in Him by faith.  Hear Him as He calls to you today, His love reaching across the chasm of your sin to reconcile you to the Father, and enliven you with His Holy Spirit, that you might live forever in Him.  Then lift your eyes to see your neighbors who need Jesus just as much as you do, and share with them the medicine of immortality which alone saves us all.  Amen.