Year C

Luke 10:25-37

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Simple Requirements of the Gospel

We humans have a tendency to make things sometimes much more difficult than needed for ourselves. We keep looking around for the catch, trying to work out what is missing or needs to be changed when the truth can be pretty simple. Even when it comes to our religious instincts, we tend to go for a lot of ritual, membership requirements and hierarchy. These instincts are not wrong or bad, they help shape our understanding of God and what God requires of us. What God requires of us the texts today suggest  is not something beyond our capabilities but actually pretty simple. God thankfully makes things easy for us even when we try to make things more difficult. God is not arbitrary and unrealistic in God’s expectations. God loves us and expects that we will respond in faithfulness and loving obedience.

In Deuteronomy we read that we are to “turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” “Then the Lord your God will delight in you….if you obey the Lord your God and keep God’s commands and degrees that are written in the book of the Law.” We are to return to God. The people in Deuteronomy had wandered in the wilderness for thirty-eight years because of their sin of unbelief. A new generation was ready to enter the promised land, but without their leader Moses, and without Moses to guide them, the people wondered how they should respond when God fulfills God’s promises? They wondered what it meant to be people of God’s covenant in the new land of Canaan?

The book of Deuteronomy defines the covenant relationship between God and God’s people. We learn what God is like, what God has done for God’s people, and what God requires of those who are God’s servants. This is a relationship that depends totally on God’s willingness to be their God, to give them a land, in the loving care that provides prosperity. This is God’s world and when we live in God’s world, we understand that God wants us to have a full and meaningful life and when we understand this, then we understand that God’s commands are not against our best interests. They help us to live with prosperity and love. As we turn back to God, we find already in ourselves the knowledge of God’s commandments. This is not hard for those who choose God in Jesus, it turns out its pretty simple.

Yet, we do like to make things more difficult. Like the lawyer, who comes to Jesus in the gospel with a question and expects a more complicated answer to his question of how to choose God and eternal life. He quotes to Jesus the simple answer, what is written in the law. But surely that can’t be all? There must be more to it than that? If choosing God is that easy, what excuse has anyone got for not loving God as written in the law. So he asks another question, “And who is my neighbor,” to justify himself. He did not ask how one is to be a loving neighbor, he asked how one is to recognize the neighbor. He probably hopes Jesus will give him a long and complicated formula with lots of boxes to tick. As a lawyer who knew the law, I’m sure he was quite confident that he has ticked off most of those boxes already.

But Jesus didn’t respond in a way the lawyer expected or in a way we might expect: but then he rarely does. This isn’t a question to which one can give a direct answer as there are many different types of neighbor.  So Jesus tells a story and the answer is clear. Choosing God means choosing people, choosing anyone who needs you. Each of the gospels present a version of the question of how to choose God and neighbor, although each does so somewhat differently. The basic message is the same: we are to love God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength; and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. The lawyer does not pretend to misunderstand, even though this story of the Good Samaritan would have had a shocking effect. it was saying that non-Jews who observe the law as did the Samaritan an enemy, will inherit eternal life.

We don’t hear the end of the story because writing the end of it is our part. We get the point. We recognize instinctively that the Samaritan in this story expressed the kind of love that the gospel sets before us as the ideal. We know as well as the lawyer did that we are to “go and do likewise.” The good Samaritan makes it all sound very simple and yet this expansive love without limit that Jesus calls us to, takes a lot of hard work and dedication to follow. And like the lawyer, we look for ways to let ourselves off the hook, or like the people in Deuteronomy, who would like to say “It’s all too difficult, we need Moses or someone from heaven to help, or at least explain it to us. It’s not our fault that we don’t know what to do. Fortunately, we have the witnesses of many generations of people including those today that made the choice to choose God and neighbor over and over again. And Jesus gives us guidelines.

We are to love not only our friends and our family but the marginalized, the oppressed, the poor, the alienated and all those who are at the center of our political, social and economic power structures even if we agree with them or not. Jesus says, neighborly love has no limits. Paul today, writes with great love, generosity and trust to the people of the Colossian church, an early church community of imperfect people who have, despite their imperfections, chosen God. They must have been greatly encouraged to read that Paul knew about their care for each other, and that they are seen as a community where the gospel is alive and well and bearing fruit.

The prayer from the heart that Paul prays for the Colossians is all encompassing and has keep them going and sustained them. It is also the key for the lawyer in Luke and for the people in Deuteronomy. We do not have to do this by ourselves. The strength to choose God and neighbor, and live rightly comes from God. God chooses us, as we are and helps us with the Holy Spirit. Author Henry Nouwen writes, this is a mystery for which words are inadequate, yet it is the very nature of God that in some wondrous way we are redeemed, strengthened, and joined together as the church. There is no huge decision with lots of boxes to tick off, we are already a part of the kingdom of Jesus. All we have to do is say yes, Lord and thank you. It really is that simple. So “Go and do likewise.”