Knowing is not enough

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Knowing is not enough

Luke 10:25-37

In these well known verses of the gospel of Luke, we find Jesus teaching the crowd. Like all the others before, this was a mixed group. There were sinners and the righteous, the sick and the just cured, the poor and the rich, the hopeful and the desperate. In the middle of his lesson an expert in the law stood up and asked a question. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” According to Luke he asked the question in order to test Jesus. He could have been testing Jesus in order to see what He knew, or maybe he was trying to show his own knowledge, or even trying to check his personal answer. This was a much discussed question in the expert circle. There was the liberal response, the conservative response and even the middle of the road response. Everyone in the crowd must have been silent, anxiously waiting for Jesus response to such an important question.

But Jesus did not answer the question; using a technique used by many of the teachers of his day, Jesus answers with a question: “What is written in the Law?” And then he added “what do you think, what is your interpretation?” The law expert did not hesitate, he knew the right answer: “‘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, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Jesus tells him that he got the right answer. If he was really interested in inheriting eternal life, all he had to do was to follow these two commandments, he just needed to live his answer daily and he will inherit eternal life.

The lawyer was put on the spot; he asked and answered his own question. Now he is without excuse before the people and before God. He should have known better than to ask Jesus that question. He has been hiding behind his knowledge of the Old Testament, hiding behind his religious practices, like him many of us know that the best place to hide from God is in plain sight, to hide in church. But now Jesus had made him take away all the interpretations he had added to the good news to hide in, and he was confronted with the simple word of God. The word, even as he spoke it, judge him and he found himself guilty.

Normally this would have been the end to the exchange between teacher and student, but Luke tell us that he wanted to justify himself, that he was looking for a loophole, he wanted to know if there were exception to the rules, so he asked what the experts would ask in a situation like this, he asked Jesus to define his terms. What did Jesus really meant by neighbor? So he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” In other words, who should I love?

Again Jesus did not answer the question but rather told him a story: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.” The story assumes that the man was a Jewish man. No one interrupts Jesus story because it is a familiar story. Too many people actually felt into the hands of robbers going from Jerusalem to Jericho. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho descends approximately 3000 feet in about 17 miles; robbers hid along it steep, winding way. So the story sounded natural, normal, and historical.

Jesus continued his story: “A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’”

Here the story turns insulting; not only it shows a priest and a Levite ignoring the man half dead on the road, but the hero of the story is a Samaritan! This is a story about a Samaritan helping a Jew that was ignored by his fellow Jews. This would have been offensive to all the Jews that were listening, including Jesus’ disciples. The law demanded action even in the event of an animal. In the book of Exodus it states:  “If you come across your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to take it back to him. If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help him with it.” And this is to the animal of your enemy; imagine a fellow believer in Jehovah God! But to add insult to injury a Samaritan not only helps but goes beyond the requirements of the law.

Samaritans were the descendants of Jews and Gentiles during the time of the exile. Because of the prohibition of inter-marriage they were seen by devout Jews as foreigners, just like any gentile. The book of Ezra and Nehemiah set the tone for all future generations, when Nehemiah went to fix the walls of Jerusalem and they offered to help, he told them they had nothing to do with the Jewish remnant. When Jesus claimed to have come from God the Father; and that the Jews were not listening to him because they were not children of God, the Jewish leaders respond by saying: “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?” For the Jewish people to be demon-possessed and being a Samaritan was one and the same thing.

Jesus did not consider the Samaritans to be as bad as a demon-possessed person, but neither did he consider them to be just like any Jew. When Jesus sends his disciples to preach two by two, he sent them out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.” And when we find him speaking with the Samaritan Woman he reminds her saying: “You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.”

For us this story is not insulting enough, most of us have never met a Samaritan, so we cannot imagine the level of anger that the story caused on those that were listening. We could get a glimpse of how offensive Jesus words were if the story said that two of the religious leaders that we must admire went by the other side of the man without offering any help, but that a terrorist, that someone like Osama Ben-Laden went by and he had compassion and help the suffering man. It was offensive to the extent of making the hearers sick to their stomach. If we can only imagine the level of anger, then we would know that the only end for Jesus ministry was the cross.

Most people know this story as the parable of the Good Samaritan; we even have some laws that are referred to as Good Samaritan laws. Yet the story never refers to the Samaritan in this parable as good, why do we place the adjective here?  One reason may be because we believe that Samaritans in general are not good and this particular Samarian was an exception, and thus we agree with the Jews of Jesus time. Another reason might be because we believe that for anyone whether a Samaritan or not, this extraordinary behavior in the story is not really expected of any normal human being. And thus we do not need to take the story seriously.

Jesus asked the expert: “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” In other words, to whom do you prove yourself a neighbor? The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” People struggle with their theology; they call themselves liberal, conservative, evangelical, or middle of the road. What is consistent across all these labels is the certainty that they all have about their theological understanding. We all look at the same text and yet come up with different interpretations. We argue with each other believing that the other do not agree with us because they do not know any better, so we hope that they will get it, that they will learn the correct interpretation. We tend to believe that there is salvation in knowledge.

Some time ago there was a television campaign about drugs; it showed a man holding an egg while telling the viewer: “This is your brain.” And then the man drops the egg in a frying pan with the words: “This is your brain on drugs, any questions?” this commercial along with many others intends to educate the public about the dangers of drugs. We have placed warnings on cigarette cases; we have placed warnings labels on coffee cups to let you know that the content is hot. We have HIV education, sex education, and so on; we believe that if people would only be educated about the issues they would decide to do the right thing.

It depends on who is talking as to whether all this education is making an impact or not. One thing I know is that it is not making a difference in our driving behavior. If you drive the parkway you know not to drive 65 miles an hour even thought every so many miles it tells you that that is the speed limit. You are going 75 miles an hour and the cars passing you make you feel that you are standing still. Knowing the speed limit is not enough, knowing that you should:  “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 that you must also, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself;’” is not enough.

The story is not about how good the Samaritan was, it is about how bad the religious people were. The story is about how we have made so many excuses and have developed so many different interpretations that we are not much different than a Samaritan or a non-Christian. It is about our hypocrisy; it is about how we have become experts in avoiding the call of the gospel in our life. Ultimately knowing is not enough. The writer of the book of James reminds the church: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a person, who looks at their face in a mirror and, after looking at themselves, goes away and immediately forgets what they looks like. But the person who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.” Our job is not only to teach about God, but to show people God. It is to be able to say be imitators of me as I am of Christ. It is to make disciples of Jesus Christ. My sisters and brothers knowing is not enough, “Go and do likewise.” Amen.

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