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July 11, 2010, MLC – Ocean View, NJ. Hartmut Fege, D.Min.

Luke 10.25-28, Deut. 6.5, Lev. 9.18. Rom. 13.8f. Gal. 5.14

 

I have never been very good at taking tests. I recently tried to upgrade to Amateur Extra. I have taken the test two times and missed passing by four questions the last time. In 1969 I stood before the examining committee of the SE Synod of the LCA.

Callaway Gardens is a beautiful resort just south of Atlanta, known for its golf and blooming azaleas in the spring.

“Mr. Fege, how do you reconcile the Decalogue with the Gospel” John Brockoff a Lutheran Prof. at Emory U. asked? “The same way you reconcile teaching in a Methodist School”… I wanted to say.

Again, it helps to read what is happening, only a few verses before the Gospel for today, where Jesus tells his disciples “God has hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to infants” vs. 23.

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. The lawyer was the opposite of “infants”, to put this exchange into an even wider context…

Jesus was on the road to Jerusalem and has just completed his revival meeting where he sent out 70 to the surrounding country and they came back with glowing reports of mass conversions from the populations of the Samaritans…

The Lawyer was not just any lawyer but an expert on Jewish Religious Law…

And like the examining committee I faced in Callaway Gardens 41 years ago, it was his job to make sure that this wandering self-proclaimed Rabbi was kosher.

So he asked “The Question”, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus was not put on the spot. He answered “The Question” with another question, quoting Deut. 6.5 and Lev. 9.18 gave Jesus the equivalent of our Apostle’s Creed… The Shema.

That you love the Lord with all your passion, and prayer, and muscle, and intelligence and that you love your neighbor as well as yourself. (Eugene Peterson’s translation)

Jesus congratulates the man. For all practical purposes it could have all ended there.

If you want to live forever do what your Bible says…

Having served as a pastor in the Bible belt, I know that things concerning the Bible never end right there. Did you notice how Jesus has the Bible thumper answer his own question?

Now it was a draw. Jesus one, Lawyer one…

But having the right answer and living it is not the same thing… are they?

Elie Wiesel, the Jewish survivor of Auschwitz, turned poet and writer was once asked “why is it that you Jews always answer a question by asking another question?” Wiesel was reported to have said “why not?”

So the Lawyer asked another question. The Greek word translated “Justify” in the NRSV is a legal term and would have been understood that way…

In other words in legal matters one defines one's usage of words…

So Jesus moves from the catechetical to the metaphorical way of debate and tells the first parable, found only in Luke’s Gospel… and what a parable it is.

Here it is helpful to again review the plot and characters in this lesson.

Characters:

Jesus, Bible Scholar… the story set on a road between Jerusalem and Jericho. People who have been there tell us it is a road that winds down from Jerusalem some 2,000 feet… with steep cliffs on either side, easy for bad people to hide.

The victim’s identity is not known… but he was probably Jewish – as a matter of fact each is known only by their vocation or their ethnicity…

A Samaritan traveling on Israelite territory

A Priest, a Levite and a man from Samaria… and the Innkeeper

The Lawyer, the Priest, and Levite – all good respectable religious folk who knew their Bible…

The Samaritan – not good, not religious, not respectable, not known for his biblical acumen…

Samaritans came into being, when Jews returning from Exile got back, they found that many of those who where not deported had intermarried and had set up worship at a mountain far away from the temple in Jerusalem.

They also interpreted the Bible differently… so they were heretics…the least likely to help anyone…

He was a non-religious, no good, questionable character known only by his ethnicity… Talk about profiling.

He spent two days' wages, risked his life by stopping to help… and promised to pay the innkeeper whatever else might be due… when he came that way again.

The story ends…

Jesus does not define neighbor, he only asks which of those who came down the road was the neighbor?

It all began with a theological question “what must I do to inherit eternal life?

The questioner answered with a quote which came right out of his Bible – the word translated love is agape; it is – a verb not a noun. 

Verbs are action words and don’t do well standing alone…

In the light of today’s world, who are the Samaritans?

Who are the Bible thumpers?

Who are those who pass by on the other side?

Who do you identify with in the story?

                                                                                    Ready for a test?