And I Love You, So? (Compelling Love 2/3)
Message 2: And I love you, so?
Passage: Luke 10:25-37
Big idea: Loving God means loving one another. Unless we radically love one another, our love to God doesn't matter, we can't love God! It requires us to see differently, feel deeply, act concretely and follow-through sustainably.
1) {Introduction}
Good evening! Are you enjoying this camp so far? Let’s me gauge your reaction so far. Thumb up or thumb down: The food? The fun? The fellowship? In some youth group, food, fun and, fellowship could be used interchangeably. Our High School and College groups eat dinner together at the end of every weekly meeting, and the terms were fused together and confused many new believers. One of our new members went to visit another church, and when he came back I asked, “So how was the fellowship over there?” And he answered, “I don’t know, they feed us nothing afterward.”
What’s fellowship anyway? It’s a ship full of fellows, right? (Sorry for my corny joke. I couldn’t resist.) Anyway, it came from the word fellow.
But what is “fellow” mean? Why don’t you get together in group with people around you and write down your definition of the word “fellow”. I have a prize for the group with the best definition.
{Interaction}
Webster dictionary defined “fellow” as “a member of a group having common characteristics”. So, if I want you all to pair up with your “fellow”, do you know who would you pair up with? Yes? No? May be? If you have a few computer/engineering major like me around, chances are as we shuffle to pair up with one another, there will be a few people who come up here and ask, “Huh? Can you define exactly who is my fellow?”
Alright, let’s define “who is my fellow”, shall we?
On September 11th, a stock trader name David Lee was caught in the initial explosion of the World Trade Center and managed to crawl out onto the street before the north tower collapsed. He was lying there half dead. A fire marshal came along to meet up with the NYPD. He saw David lying there, but decided someone else can look after him, so he rushed on. Then an FBI agent came by. He too saw the man lying there, but looking up noticed that the south tower was starting to groan; so he hurried on to get clear. Finally, along came one of the Muslim fundamentalists to check out the results the attacks. He saw the man lying there and took pity on him. He helped him up, took him down the street, hailed a cab and brought him to the nearest doctor office where he paid for David’s treatment in advance, out of his own pocket. Then he went on to his business and David Lee has never seen him again since. [i]
Isn’t that unbelievable? Some of you sat there and shook your head, “Nah, it couldn’t have happened like that! The story just didn’t make sense!” How you feel was exactly how people would have felt when they heard the story of the Good Samaritan from Jesus. It’s exactly the sort of situation Jesus described. And the story was Jesus’ answer to our previous question, “Who is my fellow man?” (In the Jewish sense the word “neighbor” in “Who is my neighbor?” have less a sense of neighborhood, but more a sense of “fellow man”[ii]).
But what was the occasion for someone to ask Jesus about “Who is my fellow man?” Let’s turn our Bible to Luke 10, starting from verse 25:
“On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered: “‘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.’” “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers…” You know the rest of the story.
Let’s pray before we study the Word of God…
So, the occasion for the story of the Good Samaritan was the same Great Commandment we studied last night from Mark, this time from Luke. First, let’s compare this text with the one yesterday and see if we see how they are similar or different…
{Hand out paper with side-by-side text; Interact to compare the above text with Mark 12:28ff
“One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.”
End of interaction}
a) {Critical tangent} So, why did Luke record the same story differently than Mark?
Have you ever tried to read a 3D comic book or watch a 3D movie without the red-and-blue eyeglass? Without the glass, you might see the major similar patterns but with seemingly contradictory interferences. But with the glass, everything is harmonized; and you can examine, enjoy and experience in such a way that you could not before. Similarly when we read the Bible through the eyes of faith and the illumination of the Holy Spirit: the multiple angles of the same incidents in Scripture help us understand God more completely.
In this case, Mark was more interest in the “Loving God” aspect of the Great Commandment. He recorded the whole Jewish context of the Shema to establish the theological foundation of why we must love God. Luke on the other hand, is more interest in the “Loving your neighbor” aspect so he recorded the dialogues with the Lawyer in more details.
Notice the following emphasis Luke made: Luke used the agreement and repetition of the lawyer, and played that up to emphasize that he knew of the Great Commandment all along! So Luke had the Lawyer actively gave the answer, while Jesus was agreeing with him. Afterward Jesus simply told him, “OK, you know it, now go do it!”
At this point, the lawyer had the options of reexamine his life in the two aspects of loving God and loving his fellow human. Apparently he felt content with how he was loving God, so no further discussion there. But in the area of loving his fellow human, well, it’s still having a lot of room for improvement. So, that’s why Luke wrote, “But he wanted to justify himself” (making himself righteous), so he asked Jesus, “And who is my [fellow human]?”
Is that the same way we often feel today? Most of us will have little problem measure our love for God. It easier for us to love God: because He had loved us first; because He was good to us; because He is gracious to us, even when we raised our fists angry at Him.
But it’s not that easy to love people. People are selfish, some times you love them and they suck you dried. People are vicious, some times you love them and they bite you back. People are unlovable; some of them gross you out; some of them carry infectious disease; and worse some of them are just pure evil. So when God commanded us to love our fellow human, it is natural for us to want a clarification: “Yes Lord, but what kind of fellow? Can you define for me ‘Who is my fellow?’ Better yet, ‘Do I have to? Can I just love God without loving people? What if I just love God without loving people?’”
Here, you can see how Luke felt about this matter of loving people: In verse 25, Luke had the whole matter the Great Commandment is underneath the crucial question of “eternal life”. Mark indicated that knowing the Great Commandment will lead us to the point of “not far from the kingdom of God”. Luke emphasized that if we want to be IN the kingdom of God, if we want to have eternal life, then “Do this and you will live” (v.28) and “Go and do likewise” (v.37).
You cannot just say to God, “I love you”; that may be OK for a familiar song “And I love you so”; but when we expressed our love to God, ultimately it must become a question, “And I love God, so?” So what’s the implication/result of loving God lead to?
2) Loving God will RESULT in loving “BEYOND” our fellows
a) (Yesterday we saw in Mark) The Lawyer had asked for one “greatest” commandment, but in reply Jesus gave him two. The implication is that the love for God and the love for one’s neighbor cannot be separated.[iii] The Apostle John understood this implication clearly as he wrote in 1st John, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.” [1 John 4:20-21]
b) Why is it that the two components of loving God and loving others cannot be separated in the Great Commandment? It is because God is love, and the target of God’s love is people. He loved people to the point of sacrifice His own Son for them. And when His Son left the earth, He sent forth His Holy Spirit to dwell in His believers so that they continue to love people as He does. As the love of God draw us to Him, and transform us into the image of Himself, the essence of Love in God’s nature will increasingly become the essence of love in our nature.Once you understand this, you will understand that our love for God would be the source to love other people.
i) Without the source of love from God, we usually love people according to our human nature: love the people who is nice to us, love people who have some similarity to us, love our “fellowman” within the normal definition as you seen in Webster dictionary. That’s the way that the Jews understood back in that time: “neighbors” are people that of the same Jewish race, the same Jewish culture, or the same Jewish faith ii. So it’s completely understandable why the audience of Jesus would shake the heads in disbelief as Jesus cast a Samaritan as the hero in his story. Samaritans were despised at Jesus time. They were considered “half-breed” by the Jews. When a Jew needed to travel from Galilee down to Jerusalem, they would cross over the Jordan and take the long way instead of crossing over Samaria. When the Jews wanted to insult someone, they called him “Samaritan” [Jn.8:48]. And the Samaritans also hated the Jews back too; just in the previous chapter [of Luke 9:51-56], the Samaritans shooed Jesus out of their villages.
c) Jesus said that “Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them” [Luke 6:32]; so does it make sense to you that the transformation of God’s love in us would operate in the same way with what already operated in the world? No! God’s love would surely be the source for us to love “beyond” our fellowman![iv] I remember there was a certain bridge in Vietnam where I grew up. The bridge was pretty steep, that most of people had to get off their bicycle and walked it to the top of the bridge before they got back on and ride down. Once in a while you had a very athletic man who was able to ride the whole way over. But most of us walked. One day, I saw a special bicycle with a motor attached to it. A moped, as it was called. The engine would propel even a delicate lady over the top of the bridge like a breeze.Most of us only love people who love us, like gliding down the bridge. Once a while we see someone love “beyond” their fellowman. It’s not natural for us human to do so. But if we Christians claimed that we are transformed by utmost divine love of God, and we settle to love those who love us, and we don’t love “beyond” our fellowman; it would be like people walk their moped up the bridge! Either they were naïve and don’t let the engine do the work, or their moped has a fake engine or something.
{Transition} I am going to trust God that all Christians here had already received His love and live in His love already. We had already had the engine to propel us to love “beyond” our fellows, we just need to get a hang of how to do it more often. And Jesus gave us an example of how to love “beyond” in this illustration of the Good Samaritan.
3) How to Love “beyond” our fellows…
a) First, we need to see differently; in a different perspective.
In the story, did the priest see the man? Did the Levi see the man? Or only the Samaritan? All three saw the man, but how did the Samaritan see the man differently? Jesus gave us a subtle hint in the way He told the story.
If someone came to me and asked, “Who is my fellow?” I would have told the story in this way: “On September 11th you were driving your taxi down the street of New York and a fire marshal flagging you down to take him to the WTC to coordinate the problem there, then an FBI agent jumped in and want you to pursuit a getaway terrorist, and then there’s this bloody Muslim on the sidewalk. Who do you think is your fellow?”
But that’s not the way Jesus tells the story. I tell the story of one person who could help with three persons who need help. He tells the story of one person who needs help, out of three persons who could help. My story is told from the perspective of one who could help. Jesus story is told from the perspective of the one who requires help. Mine is from the vantage point above of giving grace; Jesus’ is from the ditch below of receiving grace. Mine is about playing God, Jesus’ is about bringing God.[v] You see, Jesus didn’t really answer the question of “Who is my neighbor?” to the Lawyer but He insisted that the Lawyer need to change his perspective by asking him, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell [and not to you, who could help]?”
I believe perspective is the main difference from what the Samaritan saw and what the other two religious people saw in the man. As a Samaritan, he knew about isolation and injustice, he saw himself not better than the victim, but in the same place of the victim.
Is this one of the reason why we could not love “beyond” our fellows today? Often we are seeing ourselves as better and way different than other people and therefore we couldn’t put ourselves in their place to love them?
At our church, we used to gripe about the Vietnamese style of worship. We thought they are so boring; they are so dead; they don’t know “the meaning of worship” (like we do)… And then it dawned on us that it was all about our pride! In reality, there is not much different between their worship and our worship, even though the musical style might be different, but as we struggle to worship God with our lives, we realized that our 1st generation struggled to worship God with their lives too. And as God accept our worship, God is also accepting their worship too.
b) Second, from seeing differently, we can feel deeply[vi]; with compassion
The text said that, “when he saw him, he took pity on him” (v.33) or “when he saw him, he felt compassion” [NASB version].
The word for compassion in the New Testament derived from splaxna, a Greek word from which we get the English word “spleen” or the equivalence of the word “guts” today. Splaxna is the shakiness we feel in our guts when moved by contact with suffering. Compassion happens as our body reacted in love-shock when God pour His disturbed love into our soul.[vii]
Have you ever caught the imageries of poverty and hungry children on TV? Don’t you feel a knot in your stomach when you see those hollow eyes on TV and you I just want to turn it off, or to flip to another channel? It’s painful to watch. That’s the deep feeling of compassion.
How do we have compassion? By embracing that guts-wrenching feeling God induced; don’t pass it by. The word compassion is the composite of Com=with/together; Passion=suffering. It means to actually enter into the suffering of others[viii]. Notice how the other two religious leaders reacted to what they saw: both “passed by on the other side”, while the Samaritan “went to him”.
One Easter I took my youth group to visit a convalescence home. At the end, one of the kids said, “It’s too creepy depressing. This is the last time I am going to go to a convalescence home!” No, don’t just brush off your emotion like that. Linger on and enter their suffering. Similarly, don’t just rush on with your life and go out and eat and drink like nothing had happened after you see “Hotel Rwanda”, or news report on the Tsunami, and other situations of painful suffering. Let your hearts be broken by the things that broke the heart of God!
Brushing it aside and rushing it off are the top two reasons why we don’t have compassion today. Even the doctors and nurses who work in health care everyday, even the police who face the outcome of crimes everyday, and yes even the pastors who deal with the sins of the people everyday. Slow down and enter into the suffering of others so that we can continue to be compassionate.
c) Third, we enter into the suffering of others by acting concretely.
The reason that God pour His disturbed love into our soul and cause our body to love-shock is for us to act and care for people concretely. The Bible said, “let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth” [1Jn.3:18] and gave us an example, “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?” [James 2:15-16]
The bible said that the Samaritan “went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine” (as a way to medicate his wound). Jesus wants us to act and address the need in a practical way, not just with well wishes.
When I was in college, I and my younger brother Lee rent a small apartment in a low-income neighborhood and we had all sorts of interesting people living there. My next door neighbor was an old Russian lady living with his 40 years old son, Mr. Miller. Mr. Miller didn’t have any job because most of the time he was drunk. Eventually, his mom passed away, and Mr. Miller was evicted from the property. One night not long after that, he was so drunk that he went back to his old apartment by mistake. He was just kept on pounding the locked door of the vacant unit and screaming, “Ma! Let me in. Ma!” My brother went out and let him in to crash on the couch for the night. I protested, “What are you doing, Lee! Don’t let him in my apartment!” He replied, “Hey, I pay for half the rent too, OK!” The next morning, my brother made breakfast for Mr. Miller, and since he was half naked, Lee took him into his closet and said, “Pick any shirt you like, it’s yours.” After that, Mr. Miller left. I was so mad at my brother and chew him up big time, “You are crazy! That drunk is going to coming back here, he’s going to bug us all the time!” And my brother was just shrugging coolly, “Hey, I follow Jesus, and that’s what Jesus would have me do.” Well, Mr. Miller didn’t come back after that. But I don’t think my brother helped Mr. Miller as much as he helped me to learn how to act out compassion concretely.
But acting concretely is not enough…
d) Fourth, we also need to follow-through sustainably.
The bible said that the Samaritan “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 (about $200 dollars today) 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.’” Apparently the Samaritan was on a business trip or something. He had to run. But he did the best he could, and he promised to check back in.
Acting is actually the easy part. I see two strangers at church, it’s not so hard to reach across the pew, introduce ourselves and welcome them. Acting with follow-through is the challenge. It is much harder to spend time with the strangers, getting to know them, find out where they are at and building up relationship with them. It costs time, sometimes money, and it interferes with our normal routines of life. But that’s the love God wants us to carry out, to follow-through even if it will cost us something. Someone had said this, “Love without cost is actually convenience, not love!”
But if true love has a cost, then we have to make sure that we can pay that cost. This is why God gave us an equilibrium mark to watch out for. Note that He didn’t command us to “Love your neighbor with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strengths.” No, it’s “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is why I use the word sustainably in describing follow-through.
The bible doesn’t say that we need to love ourselves first before we can love others. We all instinctively know how to care for ourselves, and we shouldn’t neglect that either. Without proper self-care, you will not be able to pay the cost for loving people in the long run. You will be bankrupted emotionally, physically, and even spiritually. It calls burn-out. In order for people to drink from your cup, first you need to make sure your cup is full. Even Jesus took frequent times out to rest and to pray.
Just a few weeks ago one a member of our English Congregation invited a homeless person over for dinner with our small group. Dr. Hai is a few years younger than me and just recently practicing medicine. He met a homeless person name Adam in the ER as he was taking care for his case. And after finding out that Adam hadn’t had a home-cooked meal for “a long time”, he invited Adam from the hospital to his house to have dinner and Bible Study with our career small group. All of our small group members (including me) were apprehensive a bit. But as it turns out, the whole thing was pretty pleasant. Adam mingled well with us. He even gave the opening prayer for our Bible Study.
That was a concrete and sustainable act of love. But sometimes we cannot always sustain in following-through:
Around Thanksgiving of 2003, a man with mental disorder problem came by our church. His name is George. We interacted with him, some even get to know his family, and he came back frequently for a few months before he disappeared. Last November he contacted one of the members in our group, asking if someone could house him so he could get off the mental ward. This member appealed to our group to do something to “the least of these”. After much heated discussion about what’s the “Christian thing” to do. We began to realize that we could not sustain in following-through with his request. None of us have the capability as well as the training required to care for a mental patient.[ix]
4) Conclusion
At the end of the parable, Jesus challenged the Lawyer, “Go and do likewise!” What does it take for people like us to be able to love “beyond” our fellow Christians?
I am dreaming of a day where we can follow-through sustainably with other Georges out there. They might be beat up by addictions, abuses, homosexuality, and all sort of evil of the world. And we will need trained ministers, counselors, and physicians to follow-through with them. I am dreaming of a day where we can tackle the negligence of the typical Vietnamese immigrant parents on their kids by having good Christian school for them. And we will need solid teachers who are grounded in Christian and Education for them. Be able to following-through sustainably is the sign of maturity for the people of God.
But you cannot follow-through if you don’t act concretely. Paul Tokunaga said, “What do you do now will be what you do later. The patterns you establish now when you are 20 and 30 will be the patterns of your life when you are 40, 50 and older. If you are cruising through life oblivious of the needs around you now, then you won’t be able to address the people needs for Christ later”[x].
But acting must come from allowing God to pour His compassion into your soul; don’t brush it off, don’t rush it on. But instead, open your eyes and see as God intended you to see. You are God’s children. He had started doing the work in you to make you more like Christ. So learn from Him and see like Him so that you can act like Him. Saturate yourselves in His love, because His love is the only way to love.
[Let me pray for us before we break into small group discussion time…]
END NOTES
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[i] This brilliant twist was originally from Chris Appleby http://sermoncentral.com/sermon.asp?SermonID=39862&ContributorID=13
[ii] πλησίον [plesion /play·see·on/] 1 a neighbour. 1a a friend. 1b any other person, and where two are concerned, the other (thy fellow man, thy neighbour), according to the Jews, any member of the Hebrew race and commonwealth. 1c according to Christ, any other man irrespective of race or religion with whom we live or whom we chance to meet. [Strong Exhaustive Concordance, electronic ed. (Ontario: Woodside Bible Fellowship., 1996), G4139.]
[iii]Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight and I. Howard Marshall, Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 134.
[iv] I cut out this part and replace it with the bicycle-crossing-bridge illustration…
…because after some thoughts, I don’t think that the concept is very accurate – there are a few non Christians demonstrated compassion in such way that would put Christians to shame. Besides, there was no reference in the parable describing the spiritual status of the Samaritan at all. That’s why I revised the paragraph the way it is.
[v] This keen observation about “perspective from the ditch” was original from Funk, (Parables and Presence, 32) as quoted by Nolland, J. 2002. Vol. 35B: Word Biblical Commentary: Luke 9:21-18:34. Word Biblical Commentary. Word, Dallas.
[vi] Splanchnizomai
[vii]David Hansen and David L. Goetz, vol. 1, The Power of Loving Your Church Leading Through Acceptance and Grace, The pastor's soul series; Library of leadership development (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House, 1998), 70.
[viii] MacArthur, J. 2001. Truth for today: A daily touch of God's grace. J. Countryman: Nashville, Tenn.
[ix] For the details of this discussion on this, see TNSA.net discussion page.
[x] As heard from Paul Tokunaga’s message at Urbana 1990 “Even My Gold Press Card” even though his manuscript is a bit difference at http://urbana.org/_articles.cfm?RecordId=858
Passage: Luke 10:25-37
Big idea: Loving God means loving one another. Unless we radically love one another, our love to God doesn't matter, we can't love God! It requires us to see differently, feel deeply, act concretely and follow-through sustainably.
1) {Introduction}
Good evening! Are you enjoying this camp so far? Let’s me gauge your reaction so far. Thumb up or thumb down: The food? The fun? The fellowship? In some youth group, food, fun and, fellowship could be used interchangeably. Our High School and College groups eat dinner together at the end of every weekly meeting, and the terms were fused together and confused many new believers. One of our new members went to visit another church, and when he came back I asked, “So how was the fellowship over there?” And he answered, “I don’t know, they feed us nothing afterward.”
What’s fellowship anyway? It’s a ship full of fellows, right? (Sorry for my corny joke. I couldn’t resist.) Anyway, it came from the word fellow.
But what is “fellow” mean? Why don’t you get together in group with people around you and write down your definition of the word “fellow”. I have a prize for the group with the best definition.
{Interaction}
Webster dictionary defined “fellow” as “a member of a group having common characteristics”. So, if I want you all to pair up with your “fellow”, do you know who would you pair up with? Yes? No? May be? If you have a few computer/engineering major like me around, chances are as we shuffle to pair up with one another, there will be a few people who come up here and ask, “Huh? Can you define exactly who is my fellow?”
Alright, let’s define “who is my fellow”, shall we?
On September 11th, a stock trader name David Lee was caught in the initial explosion of the World Trade Center and managed to crawl out onto the street before the north tower collapsed. He was lying there half dead. A fire marshal came along to meet up with the NYPD. He saw David lying there, but decided someone else can look after him, so he rushed on. Then an FBI agent came by. He too saw the man lying there, but looking up noticed that the south tower was starting to groan; so he hurried on to get clear. Finally, along came one of the Muslim fundamentalists to check out the results the attacks. He saw the man lying there and took pity on him. He helped him up, took him down the street, hailed a cab and brought him to the nearest doctor office where he paid for David’s treatment in advance, out of his own pocket. Then he went on to his business and David Lee has never seen him again since. [i]
Isn’t that unbelievable? Some of you sat there and shook your head, “Nah, it couldn’t have happened like that! The story just didn’t make sense!” How you feel was exactly how people would have felt when they heard the story of the Good Samaritan from Jesus. It’s exactly the sort of situation Jesus described. And the story was Jesus’ answer to our previous question, “Who is my fellow man?” (In the Jewish sense the word “neighbor” in “Who is my neighbor?” have less a sense of neighborhood, but more a sense of “fellow man”[ii]).
But what was the occasion for someone to ask Jesus about “Who is my fellow man?” Let’s turn our Bible to Luke 10, starting from verse 25:
“On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered: “‘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.’” “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers…” You know the rest of the story.
Let’s pray before we study the Word of God…
So, the occasion for the story of the Good Samaritan was the same Great Commandment we studied last night from Mark, this time from Luke. First, let’s compare this text with the one yesterday and see if we see how they are similar or different…
{Hand out paper with side-by-side text; Interact to compare the above text with Mark 12:28ff
“One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.”
End of interaction}
a) {Critical tangent} So, why did Luke record the same story differently than Mark?
Have you ever tried to read a 3D comic book or watch a 3D movie without the red-and-blue eyeglass? Without the glass, you might see the major similar patterns but with seemingly contradictory interferences. But with the glass, everything is harmonized; and you can examine, enjoy and experience in such a way that you could not before. Similarly when we read the Bible through the eyes of faith and the illumination of the Holy Spirit: the multiple angles of the same incidents in Scripture help us understand God more completely.
In this case, Mark was more interest in the “Loving God” aspect of the Great Commandment. He recorded the whole Jewish context of the Shema to establish the theological foundation of why we must love God. Luke on the other hand, is more interest in the “Loving your neighbor” aspect so he recorded the dialogues with the Lawyer in more details.
Notice the following emphasis Luke made: Luke used the agreement and repetition of the lawyer, and played that up to emphasize that he knew of the Great Commandment all along! So Luke had the Lawyer actively gave the answer, while Jesus was agreeing with him. Afterward Jesus simply told him, “OK, you know it, now go do it!”
At this point, the lawyer had the options of reexamine his life in the two aspects of loving God and loving his fellow human. Apparently he felt content with how he was loving God, so no further discussion there. But in the area of loving his fellow human, well, it’s still having a lot of room for improvement. So, that’s why Luke wrote, “But he wanted to justify himself” (making himself righteous), so he asked Jesus, “And who is my [fellow human]?”
Is that the same way we often feel today? Most of us will have little problem measure our love for God. It easier for us to love God: because He had loved us first; because He was good to us; because He is gracious to us, even when we raised our fists angry at Him.
But it’s not that easy to love people. People are selfish, some times you love them and they suck you dried. People are vicious, some times you love them and they bite you back. People are unlovable; some of them gross you out; some of them carry infectious disease; and worse some of them are just pure evil. So when God commanded us to love our fellow human, it is natural for us to want a clarification: “Yes Lord, but what kind of fellow? Can you define for me ‘Who is my fellow?’ Better yet, ‘Do I have to? Can I just love God without loving people? What if I just love God without loving people?’”
Here, you can see how Luke felt about this matter of loving people: In verse 25, Luke had the whole matter the Great Commandment is underneath the crucial question of “eternal life”. Mark indicated that knowing the Great Commandment will lead us to the point of “not far from the kingdom of God”. Luke emphasized that if we want to be IN the kingdom of God, if we want to have eternal life, then “Do this and you will live” (v.28) and “Go and do likewise” (v.37).
You cannot just say to God, “I love you”; that may be OK for a familiar song “And I love you so”; but when we expressed our love to God, ultimately it must become a question, “And I love God, so?” So what’s the implication/result of loving God lead to?
2) Loving God will RESULT in loving “BEYOND” our fellows
a) (Yesterday we saw in Mark) The Lawyer had asked for one “greatest” commandment, but in reply Jesus gave him two. The implication is that the love for God and the love for one’s neighbor cannot be separated.[iii] The Apostle John understood this implication clearly as he wrote in 1st John, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.” [1 John 4:20-21]
b) Why is it that the two components of loving God and loving others cannot be separated in the Great Commandment? It is because God is love, and the target of God’s love is people. He loved people to the point of sacrifice His own Son for them. And when His Son left the earth, He sent forth His Holy Spirit to dwell in His believers so that they continue to love people as He does. As the love of God draw us to Him, and transform us into the image of Himself, the essence of Love in God’s nature will increasingly become the essence of love in our nature.Once you understand this, you will understand that our love for God would be the source to love other people.
i) Without the source of love from God, we usually love people according to our human nature: love the people who is nice to us, love people who have some similarity to us, love our “fellowman” within the normal definition as you seen in Webster dictionary. That’s the way that the Jews understood back in that time: “neighbors” are people that of the same Jewish race, the same Jewish culture, or the same Jewish faith ii. So it’s completely understandable why the audience of Jesus would shake the heads in disbelief as Jesus cast a Samaritan as the hero in his story. Samaritans were despised at Jesus time. They were considered “half-breed” by the Jews. When a Jew needed to travel from Galilee down to Jerusalem, they would cross over the Jordan and take the long way instead of crossing over Samaria. When the Jews wanted to insult someone, they called him “Samaritan” [Jn.8:48]. And the Samaritans also hated the Jews back too; just in the previous chapter [of Luke 9:51-56], the Samaritans shooed Jesus out of their villages.
c) Jesus said that “Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them” [Luke 6:32]; so does it make sense to you that the transformation of God’s love in us would operate in the same way with what already operated in the world? No! God’s love would surely be the source for us to love “beyond” our fellowman![iv] I remember there was a certain bridge in Vietnam where I grew up. The bridge was pretty steep, that most of people had to get off their bicycle and walked it to the top of the bridge before they got back on and ride down. Once in a while you had a very athletic man who was able to ride the whole way over. But most of us walked. One day, I saw a special bicycle with a motor attached to it. A moped, as it was called. The engine would propel even a delicate lady over the top of the bridge like a breeze.Most of us only love people who love us, like gliding down the bridge. Once a while we see someone love “beyond” their fellowman. It’s not natural for us human to do so. But if we Christians claimed that we are transformed by utmost divine love of God, and we settle to love those who love us, and we don’t love “beyond” our fellowman; it would be like people walk their moped up the bridge! Either they were naïve and don’t let the engine do the work, or their moped has a fake engine or something.
{Transition} I am going to trust God that all Christians here had already received His love and live in His love already. We had already had the engine to propel us to love “beyond” our fellows, we just need to get a hang of how to do it more often. And Jesus gave us an example of how to love “beyond” in this illustration of the Good Samaritan.
3) How to Love “beyond” our fellows…
a) First, we need to see differently; in a different perspective.
In the story, did the priest see the man? Did the Levi see the man? Or only the Samaritan? All three saw the man, but how did the Samaritan see the man differently? Jesus gave us a subtle hint in the way He told the story.
If someone came to me and asked, “Who is my fellow?” I would have told the story in this way: “On September 11th you were driving your taxi down the street of New York and a fire marshal flagging you down to take him to the WTC to coordinate the problem there, then an FBI agent jumped in and want you to pursuit a getaway terrorist, and then there’s this bloody Muslim on the sidewalk. Who do you think is your fellow?”
But that’s not the way Jesus tells the story. I tell the story of one person who could help with three persons who need help. He tells the story of one person who needs help, out of three persons who could help. My story is told from the perspective of one who could help. Jesus story is told from the perspective of the one who requires help. Mine is from the vantage point above of giving grace; Jesus’ is from the ditch below of receiving grace. Mine is about playing God, Jesus’ is about bringing God.[v] You see, Jesus didn’t really answer the question of “Who is my neighbor?” to the Lawyer but He insisted that the Lawyer need to change his perspective by asking him, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell [and not to you, who could help]?”
I believe perspective is the main difference from what the Samaritan saw and what the other two religious people saw in the man. As a Samaritan, he knew about isolation and injustice, he saw himself not better than the victim, but in the same place of the victim.
Is this one of the reason why we could not love “beyond” our fellows today? Often we are seeing ourselves as better and way different than other people and therefore we couldn’t put ourselves in their place to love them?
At our church, we used to gripe about the Vietnamese style of worship. We thought they are so boring; they are so dead; they don’t know “the meaning of worship” (like we do)… And then it dawned on us that it was all about our pride! In reality, there is not much different between their worship and our worship, even though the musical style might be different, but as we struggle to worship God with our lives, we realized that our 1st generation struggled to worship God with their lives too. And as God accept our worship, God is also accepting their worship too.
b) Second, from seeing differently, we can feel deeply[vi]; with compassion
The text said that, “when he saw him, he took pity on him” (v.33) or “when he saw him, he felt compassion” [NASB version].
The word for compassion in the New Testament derived from splaxna, a Greek word from which we get the English word “spleen” or the equivalence of the word “guts” today. Splaxna is the shakiness we feel in our guts when moved by contact with suffering. Compassion happens as our body reacted in love-shock when God pour His disturbed love into our soul.[vii]
Have you ever caught the imageries of poverty and hungry children on TV? Don’t you feel a knot in your stomach when you see those hollow eyes on TV and you I just want to turn it off, or to flip to another channel? It’s painful to watch. That’s the deep feeling of compassion.
How do we have compassion? By embracing that guts-wrenching feeling God induced; don’t pass it by. The word compassion is the composite of Com=with/together; Passion=suffering. It means to actually enter into the suffering of others[viii]. Notice how the other two religious leaders reacted to what they saw: both “passed by on the other side”, while the Samaritan “went to him”.
One Easter I took my youth group to visit a convalescence home. At the end, one of the kids said, “It’s too creepy depressing. This is the last time I am going to go to a convalescence home!” No, don’t just brush off your emotion like that. Linger on and enter their suffering. Similarly, don’t just rush on with your life and go out and eat and drink like nothing had happened after you see “Hotel Rwanda”, or news report on the Tsunami, and other situations of painful suffering. Let your hearts be broken by the things that broke the heart of God!
Brushing it aside and rushing it off are the top two reasons why we don’t have compassion today. Even the doctors and nurses who work in health care everyday, even the police who face the outcome of crimes everyday, and yes even the pastors who deal with the sins of the people everyday. Slow down and enter into the suffering of others so that we can continue to be compassionate.
c) Third, we enter into the suffering of others by acting concretely.
The reason that God pour His disturbed love into our soul and cause our body to love-shock is for us to act and care for people concretely. The Bible said, “let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth” [1Jn.3:18] and gave us an example, “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?” [James 2:15-16]
The bible said that the Samaritan “went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine” (as a way to medicate his wound). Jesus wants us to act and address the need in a practical way, not just with well wishes.
When I was in college, I and my younger brother Lee rent a small apartment in a low-income neighborhood and we had all sorts of interesting people living there. My next door neighbor was an old Russian lady living with his 40 years old son, Mr. Miller. Mr. Miller didn’t have any job because most of the time he was drunk. Eventually, his mom passed away, and Mr. Miller was evicted from the property. One night not long after that, he was so drunk that he went back to his old apartment by mistake. He was just kept on pounding the locked door of the vacant unit and screaming, “Ma! Let me in. Ma!” My brother went out and let him in to crash on the couch for the night. I protested, “What are you doing, Lee! Don’t let him in my apartment!” He replied, “Hey, I pay for half the rent too, OK!” The next morning, my brother made breakfast for Mr. Miller, and since he was half naked, Lee took him into his closet and said, “Pick any shirt you like, it’s yours.” After that, Mr. Miller left. I was so mad at my brother and chew him up big time, “You are crazy! That drunk is going to coming back here, he’s going to bug us all the time!” And my brother was just shrugging coolly, “Hey, I follow Jesus, and that’s what Jesus would have me do.” Well, Mr. Miller didn’t come back after that. But I don’t think my brother helped Mr. Miller as much as he helped me to learn how to act out compassion concretely.
But acting concretely is not enough…
d) Fourth, we also need to follow-through sustainably.
The bible said that the Samaritan “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 (about $200 dollars today) 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.’” Apparently the Samaritan was on a business trip or something. He had to run. But he did the best he could, and he promised to check back in.
Acting is actually the easy part. I see two strangers at church, it’s not so hard to reach across the pew, introduce ourselves and welcome them. Acting with follow-through is the challenge. It is much harder to spend time with the strangers, getting to know them, find out where they are at and building up relationship with them. It costs time, sometimes money, and it interferes with our normal routines of life. But that’s the love God wants us to carry out, to follow-through even if it will cost us something. Someone had said this, “Love without cost is actually convenience, not love!”
But if true love has a cost, then we have to make sure that we can pay that cost. This is why God gave us an equilibrium mark to watch out for. Note that He didn’t command us to “Love your neighbor with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strengths.” No, it’s “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is why I use the word sustainably in describing follow-through.
The bible doesn’t say that we need to love ourselves first before we can love others. We all instinctively know how to care for ourselves, and we shouldn’t neglect that either. Without proper self-care, you will not be able to pay the cost for loving people in the long run. You will be bankrupted emotionally, physically, and even spiritually. It calls burn-out. In order for people to drink from your cup, first you need to make sure your cup is full. Even Jesus took frequent times out to rest and to pray.
Just a few weeks ago one a member of our English Congregation invited a homeless person over for dinner with our small group. Dr. Hai is a few years younger than me and just recently practicing medicine. He met a homeless person name Adam in the ER as he was taking care for his case. And after finding out that Adam hadn’t had a home-cooked meal for “a long time”, he invited Adam from the hospital to his house to have dinner and Bible Study with our career small group. All of our small group members (including me) were apprehensive a bit. But as it turns out, the whole thing was pretty pleasant. Adam mingled well with us. He even gave the opening prayer for our Bible Study.
That was a concrete and sustainable act of love. But sometimes we cannot always sustain in following-through:
Around Thanksgiving of 2003, a man with mental disorder problem came by our church. His name is George. We interacted with him, some even get to know his family, and he came back frequently for a few months before he disappeared. Last November he contacted one of the members in our group, asking if someone could house him so he could get off the mental ward. This member appealed to our group to do something to “the least of these”. After much heated discussion about what’s the “Christian thing” to do. We began to realize that we could not sustain in following-through with his request. None of us have the capability as well as the training required to care for a mental patient.[ix]
4) Conclusion
At the end of the parable, Jesus challenged the Lawyer, “Go and do likewise!” What does it take for people like us to be able to love “beyond” our fellow Christians?
I am dreaming of a day where we can follow-through sustainably with other Georges out there. They might be beat up by addictions, abuses, homosexuality, and all sort of evil of the world. And we will need trained ministers, counselors, and physicians to follow-through with them. I am dreaming of a day where we can tackle the negligence of the typical Vietnamese immigrant parents on their kids by having good Christian school for them. And we will need solid teachers who are grounded in Christian and Education for them. Be able to following-through sustainably is the sign of maturity for the people of God.
But you cannot follow-through if you don’t act concretely. Paul Tokunaga said, “What do you do now will be what you do later. The patterns you establish now when you are 20 and 30 will be the patterns of your life when you are 40, 50 and older. If you are cruising through life oblivious of the needs around you now, then you won’t be able to address the people needs for Christ later”[x].
But acting must come from allowing God to pour His compassion into your soul; don’t brush it off, don’t rush it on. But instead, open your eyes and see as God intended you to see. You are God’s children. He had started doing the work in you to make you more like Christ. So learn from Him and see like Him so that you can act like Him. Saturate yourselves in His love, because His love is the only way to love.
[Let me pray for us before we break into small group discussion time…]
END NOTES
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[i] This brilliant twist was originally from Chris Appleby http://sermoncentral.com/sermon.asp?SermonID=39862&ContributorID=13
[ii] πλησίον [plesion /play·see·on/] 1 a neighbour. 1a a friend. 1b any other person, and where two are concerned, the other (thy fellow man, thy neighbour), according to the Jews, any member of the Hebrew race and commonwealth. 1c according to Christ, any other man irrespective of race or religion with whom we live or whom we chance to meet. [Strong Exhaustive Concordance, electronic ed. (Ontario: Woodside Bible Fellowship., 1996), G4139.]
[iii]Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight and I. Howard Marshall, Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 134.
[iv] I cut out this part and replace it with the bicycle-crossing-bridge illustration…
It also means that for us to love like Jesus loved, the only way is to be the carrier of God’s love in us. Only God could help you love “beyond” your fellowman.
I want to make this truth as clear as possible; otherwise, you could feel guilty for your lack of love, and start walking out of here, trying to love like Jesus, but with only the feeble effort of your own strength. Doing so will only make you feel miserable, like a penguin trying to fly. If you want to fly, make sure that you are bird for real and not just a bird by name. Similarly, make sure you are God’s children before you attempt any God’s command.
…because after some thoughts, I don’t think that the concept is very accurate – there are a few non Christians demonstrated compassion in such way that would put Christians to shame. Besides, there was no reference in the parable describing the spiritual status of the Samaritan at all. That’s why I revised the paragraph the way it is.
[v] This keen observation about “perspective from the ditch” was original from Funk, (Parables and Presence, 32) as quoted by Nolland, J. 2002. Vol. 35B: Word Biblical Commentary: Luke 9:21-18:34. Word Biblical Commentary. Word, Dallas.
[vi] Splanchnizomai
[vii]David Hansen and David L. Goetz, vol. 1, The Power of Loving Your Church Leading Through Acceptance and Grace, The pastor's soul series; Library of leadership development (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House, 1998), 70.
[viii] MacArthur, J. 2001. Truth for today: A daily touch of God's grace. J. Countryman: Nashville, Tenn.
[ix] For the details of this discussion on this, see TNSA.net discussion page.
[x] As heard from Paul Tokunaga’s message at Urbana 1990 “Even My Gold Press Card” even though his manuscript is a bit difference at http://urbana.org/_articles.cfm?RecordId=858
posted by mar13 at
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