Intro Artists have sometimes taken the most-terrifying parts Scripture, prettied them up, and made them safe. Think of paintings you’ve seen of Noah’s Ark. You see the attractive animals ambling up the gangway, two by two, into Papa Noah’s big boat. Yet, if you remember, the animals are going into the ark because God is unleashing His righteous wrath on an unrighteous humanity.
Then there are angels, powerful beings whom God created to serve as He saw fit. In the Scriptures, the first statement an angel says is “Be not afraid.” Their mere appearance instills fear in us fallen beings. Yet we make angels to be oh-so-cute, painting them to look like chubby, harmless, happy children with wings. But some events we just can’t cutesy up. I have yet to see a charming picture of Moses on Mount Sinai holding the tablets of the Ten Commandments. No, Moses is always standing there solemnly, not smiling. He holds the Law of God while the darkened sky rumbles, cracking out thunderbolts all around him. Try as we might, we can’t even cutesy up the content of the Ten Commandments. Oh, we can carve them in stone-cold marble or write them in elegant calligraphy, but they are still there. They are what they are. We cannot get around them--the Law says what the Law says! Main Body And today, we heard the Law sharpened down to a razor’s edge, the Law made too severe to cutesy up. “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. And you must love your neighbor as yourself.” “Do this, and you will live.” Ouch! The lawyer, an expert in the Law, asked Jesus a law question--and Jesus gave him a law answer! This lawyer was looking for loopholes in God’s Law. He wanted to know how he could justify himself, climb his way up to God. Jesus replied that all he had to do was obey God’s Law in all its fullness. Jesus then told the lawyer the Parable of the Good Samaritan to drive the point home. Well, how do we understand, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. And you must love your neighbor as yourself”? We aren’t experts, but there is a little lawyer in us all. Most of us know what Jesus says. We even try to put Jesus’ Word into action, but we mess up. We carry out Jesus’ Word on our terms, when it suits us, and only toward those whom we consider worthy of our love. Our Lord’s great commandments touch us on the outside, but they don’t reach down into the core of our being. We don’t let them cause us to know His true will in our lives, and so we don’t lament when and where we fail. God’s Law, His Word, lingers in our mind, in our intellect. We accept, at least superficially, that it’s supposed to be the standard for our lives. But His Word does not live and move and have its being in our hearts. God’s Word lives as fleeting thoughts, but not through our hands and mouths. We size up His Word as abstract guidelines, not as action plans to put into effect every day. Because we fail, that which is to leap with life from God’s Word within us--our Christian love, our passion for true communion, and our longing to press on in the faith, no matter what--grows faint and feeble. When our love grows faint and feeble toward God and one another, other things begin to occupy the desolate void. We lose our focus on the eternal. The life of this world, not the life of the world to come, fills our hearts and minds. The enthusiasm for earthly gain seizes our hearts, and the wish to feed the yearnings of our sinful flesh occupies our every fiber. If you’ve lived long enough, you may have learned that unbridled ambition and chasing after fleshly pleasures leaves one hollow and empty. Feeling hollow and empty, anxiety, despondency, and hopelessness then take root and remain in our inmost being, while we try to put on our happy face. We try to beat back those lingering yearnings and aches. But they never, never fully leave. How can they go away when we ignore the root of the matter? And the root of the matter, the heart of life, is to love the Lord, our God, by loving every person we meet: our spouse, our children, our parents, our relatives, our neighbors, our friends--even our enemies and strangers! This love is not the cutesy, clingy, and worldly love that our society fawns over. No, this love is a quiet caring and true respect for the dignity of the whole person. In a word, this love is “mercy.” That’s why it goes way beyond what we call “affection.” This love, this “mercy,” truly yearns and works for each person’s well-being. That’s why mercy is long-suffering and kind. It is not boastful or conceited. It does not dishonor others, seek its own advantage, or advance its own agenda. This love, this “mercy,” is not easily angered, it thinks no evil; it rejoices, not in iniquity, but in the truth. And above all, this true love, this true mercy, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Yet, as you know, as your own experience has taught you, this love does not come easily. If it did, living the Christian life would not be the daily struggle that it is--of returning to your baptism and drowning the old sinful self within you. You cannot will this love into being. For such love does not originate from within you. That’s because this love does not arise from your own love, nor is it from you. This love IS the love of God, the love FROM God, the love that IS God. It comes from Him and is rooted in Him. It begins in His love for us. Now it should be clear to all that our Lord does, indeed, love us. That we are alive, even as unholy people living in the face of a holy God, shows He must love us in some way! We cannot even take a breath unless our Lord has mercy and allows it. Who can stand here before our God unless our Lord has mercy? Who can call God “our Father,” and Christ “our Brother,” and the Spirit “our Spirit,” unless our Lord God has mercy on us, cleanses us from all sin, and restores us to life in Him? All this our Lord has done, not by compulsion, not unwillingly, and not grudgingly, but fully and deliberately. Our Lord God has loved, still loves, and will continue to love you, and me, with all that He is and all that He has. The cross proves His love for you and me. Now we are brought back to the Parable Jesus told the lawyer: the Parable of the Good Samaritan. You are that beaten man lying on the side of the road. You are a beaten, bloodied mess for all to see. You might as well be dead. Do the Priest and the Levite--filled to the brim with knowing God’s Laws, who believe that such Laws make them holy--do they help you? No, for the Law cannot fill someone with love! For what can the Law do for a dying man who has broken the Law? What benefit does it do to say to a man condemned to death for a crime, “You should know better; you shouldn’t have done that.” That’s true, but such truth cannot save--it only lets you know that you messed up. And that is all the Law can do. It offers you only the cutting bite of icy comfort, reminding you that you are only getting what you deserve. It fills you with regret. Yet, you are still there, a bloodied pulp along the road. But then a Samaritan comes along. A Samaritan is a descendant of Jews and other occupied peoples of the Assyrian Empire, who had interbred. The Jews considered them impure, half-breeds--and they hated them for it. Yet, the Samaritan goes beyond what the Law can do. There is a reason Jesus has a Samaritan act with mercy in His parable. The Samaritan, the half-breed, represents the teller of the parable, Jesus. Jesus is the divine “half-breed,” who’s fully God and fully human. He is a half-breed because He brings healing to both the ethnic Jew and Gentile. Only Jesus loves with divine love, with divine “mercy,” which bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. And so the Good Samaritan, Jesus, binds up your wounds. He pours into them the oil of the Spirit, who was lavished on you in your baptism. He pours on the wine, which He makes to be His own blood, the blood that brought you His forgiveness. He picks you up and lays you on His own donkey, for He is the One who will carry you and your weight of sin as He rides to His death on Palm Sunday, also on a donkey. And Jesus carries you here, to the Inn, the Church. For this where He sees to it that you will be healed and restored to life. Are you now beginning to understand the source of the love you are to live out in the world? It doesn’t emerge from the Law, of trying to be good enough to please God. No, such love grows forth from the Good Samaritan’s love for you. But if you think your behavior, instead of Jesus’ behavior, puts you in good standing with God, then Jesus’ words to the lawyer are for you. Jesus asked the lawyer, “Who was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the thieves?” The lawyer then told Him, “The one who showed mercy to him.” The lawyer was right. Jesus’ response was most telling. Jesus gave the lawyer an answer that was all Law: “Go and do likewise.” So if you want to try to earn God’s favor, “Go and do likewise.” Keep doing it until you are exhausted and broken. Keep doing it until you realize that you never can love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. Oh, and you must also love your neighbor as yourself. And after you are broken and spent, then cry out to God, to Jesus, that only what He did is good enough. You see, there’s always more to learn of Jesus’ love. In His love, only He did what is good enough. He has already raised you up off the road, the road where the devil left you for dead. Jesus did this when He gave you new life in holy Baptism, washing you clean from the sinful wounds of spiritual death. Conclusion So who is your truest neighbor? It’s Jesus. He’s your brother in the flesh. To save you, He took your sin into Himself, bore it in His body on the cross, and rose from the dead. He has bound up your wounds. Jesus continues to heal you and give you life. Dearly beloved, cling to this Good Samaritan, who loves you and fills you with His love. Learn of His love. Let it inspire, fill, and move you. For it is as Scripture says, “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). It is Christ’s love that moves us to love others. So let His love fill you until it overflows and cannot be contained. Feast on His love in His feast for you. Drink in the wine of heaven, the Blood of Christ, as often as your Lord wants to pour His love into you. For it’s only then that you can live from such love, and live out such love toward others. Amen. -- Rich Futrell, Pastor Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, Kimberling City, MO Where we are to receive and confess the faith of the Church (in and with the Augsburg Confession): The faith once delivered to the saints, the faith of Christ Jesus, His Word of the Gospel, His full forgiveness of sins, His flesh and blood given and poured out for us, and His gracious gift of life for body, soul, and spirit. ___________________________________________________________________ 'CAT 41 Sermons & Devotions' consists of works that are, unless otherwise noted, the copyrighted property of the various authors; posting of such gives members of this list implied consent for redistribution _with_attribution_ unless otherwise specified by the author (as long as no charge is made for the work and it is not made part of a compilation), as well as for quoting or use in a congregational setting _with_or_without_attribution_. Note: This list's default reply is to the *poster*, NOT the list. 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