AtomFoolish and Reckless Love
Luke 10:25-37
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart…and your neighbor as yourself.”
My wife, Holly, and I have been attending the Luther Academy of the Rockies for 24 years and my children since before they were born. It is like family Bible camp. It is a time of learning from some of the best teachers our Church has to offer. Every year three lecturers bring us insight into God’s word and provoke us to faithful living. The young people follow their own faith growing program. We are refreshed by the study and by the setting in the magnificent Rocky Mountains and by our friendships with other families who attend the Academy. Two of our closest friends through the years have been Frank and Joyce Benz. Frank was one of my Old Testament professors in seminary and I was his student assistant. He was also my faculty advisor, so we were often in his home and with his family. Fifteen years ago, when Frank retired, he and Joyce moved to Colorado and ever since they have been the Wartburg faculty hosts for the gathering. We look forward to seeing them each year and spending some time with them, usually over a meal in our cabin. We did the same on Tuesday night, and were keenly aware that Joyce, now 82 years old, was declining in health. Several times during our meal she had to lay down to rest. Later when they had returned to their room, Holly and I talked of how fragile she was.
At 7:15 the next morning, a friend in another cabin knocked on the door. With a catch in her voice, she told me that Joyce had died in her sleep. We certainly were not surprised at this point, but were greatly grieved.
Now, because Joyce’s death was what is referred to as an “unattended death” – not in the hospital and not in a nursing facility – the sheriff and the coroner were called in. They are required by law to make sure everything was right. And the coroner was also required to transport Joyce’s body down the mountain to the medical examiner’s office before releasing her to the Funeral home. All of this took time, of course, which was a blessing to our grieving community. We were able to gather around Frank to offer comfort and to be with Joyce to say our farewells before she left the mountain. When the time finally came to move her, those gathered in her room began to sing “Amazing Grace as they walked with her to the vehicle. “When we’ve been here ten thousand years…we’ve no less time to sing God’s praise than when we’ve first begun.” And then, “Beautiful Savior, Lord of the nations, son of God and Son of Man…truly I’d love thee, truly I’d serve thee…” And the medical examiner – you know that medical examiners visit countless death scenes, many of them difficult – began to weep. After Joyce’s body was safely aboard, she came up to Frank and hugged him and said to those gathered, “In all my years of doing this, I’ve never had an experience like this…” Indeed…how the community of Jesus encounters death is not “normal.”
Really, how we do anything may not be completely “normal.” It made me think that as important as what we do here – in worship – in giving witness to what we believe about Jesus, that what we do at the side of the road…or in the hospital room…or at the food shelf…or in the aftermath of a tornado in response to the needs of the broken and hurting is just as important in giving witness.
And it is what I hear in the gospel reading this morning. A “lawyer” – an “expert on religious law,” is what this lawyer is, one who knows not the laws of the courtroom, but the laws of God. A “lawyer” comes up to Jesus and asks the religious question. “What must I do to be included in eternity? What are the requirements?” Jesus turns the question back on him: “You are an expert…you are a teacher, you are a worshipper…how do you understand God’s expectations?” And the lawyer recites the two words from the Old Testament that Jesus himself cites at another point when asked, “Which of the commandments is the greatest?” To that question, Jesus answers, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your mind and with all your strength …and…you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The answer of the lawyer here is nearly the same. If you want to get in good with God, what could be better than imitating God’s Son? Jesus smiles and nods: “You have given the right answer…do this and you will live.” Now why this guy didn’t leave well enough alone, I don’t know. But apparently he wanted to clarify in his own mind that he had done enough…particularly the “neighbor” stuff. The God stuff he understood…show up at the temple…say your prayers…give your offerings of thankfulness…but how was one to measure love of neighbor? Who should he include in his circle of love?
And Jesus tells a story of neighbor love that we know so well…perhaps as well as any story in the Bible, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell among thieves…” We call the story the story of the “Good Samaritan,” but I have been thinking that we might better call it the story of the “Foolish Samaritan.”
I mean, what was he thinking, this Samaritan? You might know that this road was a notoriously bad road travel. But not bad because of rocks or potholes…bad because it was a steep, twisting, remote road through a wilderness area – a road where thieves and bandits found it particularly easy to ambush travelers. It is not a road to travel alone. Well, you know how the story goes. Traveling that dangerous stretch of road between Jerusalem and Jericho, this Samaritan happens upon a fellow traveler who had also been traveling alone and had been beaten and stripped by a gang of robbers. He was lying, half dead, on the side of the road.
Others had already come by the same scene, Jesus tell us, including a priest and a Levite – two religious professionals…who very likely, since they were going “from” Jerusalem where the Temple was, were going home from worship. Their response to the man lying by the road is wise and reasonable. They understand the dangers (those robbers may have been lying in wait, just behind the bushes). They understand their responsibility to God’s people (nobody who comes in contact with a dead person can worship without first being ritually cleansed – and God’s people need them to lead worship at the Temple). They choose to pass by on the other side.
But not the Samaritan. What he does is dangerous, impractical, and even expensive. He approaches the injured traveler. He bandages him and pours
oil and wine on his wounds. He loads him up on his own animal, and checks into an inn with him. He cares for him through the night, and the next day entrusts him to the innkeeper (and promises to pay for whatever his care costs).
There are any number of reasons why this Samaritan should have passed by on the other side of the road, as the priest and Levite had done before him. But Jesus tells us the Samaritan has a “gut feeling” that he should do something. He is filled with compassion and follows his instinct – a work of God’s Holy Spirit, I believe – and giving into that instinct, shows mercy to him.
Sometimes in visiting with Confirmation Students we have a bit longer conversation about the work of the Holy Spirit than we do other persons of the Trinity. God the Creator we understand, the one who creates us and loves us and provides for us. Jesus the Son, we understand…the one who comes in person to show God to us, to give his life on the cross for us. But the work of the Holy Spirit is a bit more mysterious…sometimes we think of it as like our conscience keeping us from doing the wrong thing – that which God and our parents would not approve of. But the work of the Holy Spirit is also to move us to the right thing…the God like thing…the merciful thing…the Samaritan thing… where one shows mercy to one whom he does not know…or whom he may even dislike, but who has a need. This is God-like. This is extravagant mercy! This is eternal life already flowing through the veins of one who is God’s Child. And the lawyer knows it in his own gut, even though he would have considered the Samaritan foolish at best and an unbeliever at worst. “Which one shows love of neighbor?” “The one who shows mercy,” concedes the lawyer, “reckless, beyond what is prudent or wise mercy.” And here again I imagine Jesus smiling. “Yes…now…go and do likewise.” This is eternal life as God means it to be.
For most of us, our own acts of faithfulness are deliberate, disciplined and calculated. How much do I have to spare? What will my calendar allow me to do? How much energy do I have? What other obligations do I need to balance? When the lawyer asks his question it is a bit like that. “Who is my neighbor?” might rightly be heard as, “How much do I have to do to I know that I’ve done enough?”
Life, as God wants it to be, is not measured by the cautious, responsible nature of our actions. Life, as God wants it to be, is not at its richest when it is deliberate, disciplined and calculated. Instead, life is what God wants it to be when the deepest inclination of our hearts drives the character of our actions. Life is what God wants it to be it when Christ – who risked beating and death when we were dying by the side of the road – that Christ – is present in us, through us, and with us – shaping our experience of the world, and moving us to what may sometimes seem reckless and foolish compassion.
It wasn’t particularly reckless to sing songs and hymns by the side of the road as the coroner carried Joyce Benz’s body to the truck. It may have seemed foolish, however, to those who do not know the hope of the resurrection in Jesus. Just as your taking time out of a beautiful Sunday that you could be spending on the lake to give thanks to God might seem foolish. Don’t you have better things to do with your time? Probably not if eternal life flows through your veins.
It may seem a bit more reckless and foolish to take time from work to go to Wadena or to any neighbor’s place where disaster has struck to help clean up the brokenness. Don’t we have enough of our own work to do? And it certainly seems foolish to give money away to anyone – charity or church – when the stock market is falling and jobs are precarious. There are more important things to do with our time and money. But perhaps not if eternal life flows in our veins.
And sending our youth to Memphis? That seems reckless and foolish. It would seem better to keep them close to home and away from unknown places and unknown people and unknown danger. Yet again the love of Jesus flowing in our veins compels us.
I don’t know where the reckless love of Jesus will lead me or you this week…but I believe that here in the gospel Jesus reminds us that if his eternity flows in your veins it will lead you to some loving action that others might consider foolish. “When I am in you,” Jesus might say to us this morning, “what you know and what you say about me is only as true as what my life – my Spirit in you – moves you to do on behalf of those who need what you have to give.” “I loved you with a reckless, extravagant act of love, even before we were friends,” says Jesus. “Now, go and do likewise.”
Let’s pray…
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