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Love
Teaching Text: Luke 10: 25–37
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 was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 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, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii 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.’
“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
Themes
Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:
The Parables of Jesus
Good Samaritan
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
We ask some big question in life and we ask some big questions of God:
Among all that’s important, what is the most important?
What matters most to God?
What should matter most to us?
In this story:
This lawyer asks Jesus what must I do to inherit eternal life?
It was actually a pretty common theme of question put to Rabbis - How can I be sure that I will have a share in the age to come?
That’s actually an important question at any time even if we may prefer to keep in out of our minds…
Kenneth Bailey who is an absolute Maestro on the Parables of Jesus - has a book called Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes and it’s a classic
Not every parable has all 4 levels, but many do and this one does.
Compelling Story
Instructive Example
Revelation of the Secrets of the Kingdom of God
Hints at the Nature of Jesus
Entertainment
Ethics
Theology
Christology
Jesus shocks them by making the despised enemy, the hero of this story.
The man is not recognizable - the two ways you could tell who someone was and where they were from was their clothes and their speech.
This guy is unconscious (that’s what half dead means here) and stripped.
These first two men cannot touch him without risking breaking the law
3 Groups served in the temple in Jerusalem…
Priests
Levites
The Delegation is Israel - laymen
Jesus has had a priest and a levite come by, so He is going to make the hero of His story a Jewish laymen.
He shocks them
He makes a despised enemy the hero - a Samaritan
The despised Samaritan makes up for the failures of the priest and the Levite and shows compassion at great personal cost.
He risks his safety, he gives his time, he gives his money.
Ethics - Here’s the shock of the story to the man …
Your neighbor includes your enemy - that is the widest possible reach
A fundamentalist is most worries about their own heart not the heart of the other
God does not see insider and outsider the way we do
He loves the world
Jesus says I can tell you the whole law while you stand on one foot.
It’s love.
Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength
And love your neighbor as yourself
Many of us have seen American expressions of faith that you can have a ornate systems of personal devotion, prayers, Bible readings, conferences, and not love your neighbor
We often measure our spiritual well-being in personal devotional terms, but God keeps putting the emphasis on how we love.
You can do a ton of religious activity and never confront the real Jesus here or never let Him confront you.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
– Matthew 7: 21
“For if the world could have been saved by providing good examples to which we could respond with appropriately good works, it would have been saved an hour and twenty minutes after Moses came down from Mt. Sinai.
Salvation is not some felicitous state to which we can lift ourselves by our own bootstraps after the contemplation of sufficiently good examples. It is an utterly new creation into which we are brought by our death in Jesus' death and our resurrection in his. It comes not out of our own efforts, however well-inspired or successfully pursued, but out of the shipwreck of all human effort whatsoever.”
– Robert Farrar Capon
You cannot reach eternal life (now or forever) without the rescuing love of Jesus, and that is all.
Once changed by that love we learn (with Jesus) to love our neighbor who includes our enemy.
The world is not renewed by people who only love the other people who like them and are like them.
The Kingdom of God looks like loving your enemy. At its heart is a man dying for his enemies
