"The Wrong Question" Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity Holy Cross Day September 14, 2014 Luke 10:23–37
How do you answer a question? There’s the direct approach. Someone asks you a question and you get right to the point, you answer their question. If you don’t want to answer the question there’s the evasive approach. You beat around the bush, you explain why you really can’t answer the question simply. One of my favorites is answering a question with a question. Instead of simply answering the person’s question you might want them to come to the answer on their own, which can’t happen if you just answer the question. This is the method Jesus uses in the Gospel reading today. This man who is an expert in the Law of the Old Testament comes to Jesus with a question: “What must I do to obtain eternal life?” Jesus knows the state of this man spiritually. We are even let in on how the man is approaching Jesus. He is trying to test Him. The man knows the laws laid down in the Old Testament inside and out. He knows they are distilled in the two greatest commandments: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your strength, your mind, and your soul and love your neighbor as yourself. He sees that the Law calls for a life in which your being is entrusted to God and your whole life is in service to your neighbor. So what is the answer to the question? Jesus gives the answer, but not quite in the way the lawyer would have liked it. He answers the question with a question. Jesus sees right through this man. What must I do? This is what he wants to know from Jesus. Giving a straightforward answer, Jesus would have said, “What must you do? Nothing. You can’t do anything and you haven’t done anything.” As the Scriptures clearly teach, “it is by grace we are saved, not by works.” You gain eternal life by God saving you, not by you doing something to be saved. Jesus doesn’t take this approach. How could He get this man to see himself for what he really was, one who knew God’s Law inside and out but believing he could stand before God because he saw himself as keeping that Law sufficiently? He could answer the question with a question: “What is written in the Law?” The man answered correctly, of course. He knew the Law. He very likely conformed his life admirably according to God’s Law. He very likely was a man you would love to have as your neighbor, one who loved God and his neighbor as himself. He answered Jesus’ question correctly and this time Jesus responded not with a question but an answer: “Do this and you shall live.” There was the answer to the man’s question. The man had in fact answered his own question himself, hadn’t he? But he wasn’t seeking the will of God, he was seeking to test Jesus. Hearing Jesus’ answer, he was now trying to get Jesus to unpack this Law of God. “Okay, Jesus, you say I have answered correctly. Who then, is my neighbor? If I am to love my neighbor as myself and then I will gain eternal life, tell me who my neighbor is and I’ll get right to it.” It’s always sad when someone is such a good person and yet completely deluded. Not that we can stand in judgment on others. But when we see someone who doesn’t see that they are on the wrong track shouldn’t we try to get them to see it? This is what Jesus does. The man may be trying to get the best of Jesus but Jesus is trying to get him to see that he in fact has not obtained eternal life because he is trying to attain it by his own work. So Jesus goes back to answering a question with a question. The man asks, “Who is my neighbor.” Jesus responds with a question, but first He tells a story. We know the story well. The parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates to the man what he is not seeing. He is seeing God showing favor to those like him who know the Law of God and who conform their lives to it. What he is not seeing is that no matter how well you know God’s Law and how well you conform your life to it, you are seeking to obtain salvation by what you do, not by what God does. God’s Law is not His final word. His Gospel is. There’s no doubt God lays down His Law. There’s no question He wills for us to keep it. The problem, which the man did not see, is that we fail. In thinking that we can do something to gain salvation we lose it. We are sinners and sinners do not love God with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind. Sinners do not love their neighbor as themselves. If you could, and if you did, as Jesus says, well, then, yes, you would have eternal life. Wouldn’t God love it if we did? Yes, if we did, that would be great. But we are deluding ourselves if we think we can. This man thought he could. Who is my neighbor, he asks Jesus. Jesus tells him of a man who was robbed, beaten, and left for dead. Who is going to help this man? Will it be the priest who walks by? The priest knows about the Law of God, certainly he would love that man in the ditch as he loves himself. But for him the Law of God actually restricts him from helping the unclean man. If the priest gets his hands dirty with such a man he will defile himself ritually, and then how will he be able to serve God in the important role of priest? What about the next man who comes along, will he help the guy who is dying in the ditch? The Levite didn’t have the same level of importance as the priest, so perhaps he could risk the defilement and just help the poor guy out. But no, he walks on by too. Is there anyone who will help this guy, or will he die a pitiful death because there was no one who would get their hands dirty and help him? Jesus shows the lawyer how his trust was in his own self-righteousness when He gives as the savior of this man left for dead a Samaritan. The lawyer might have thought that Jesus might just use some regular old person to help the guy out, but he used one who was despised, a Samaritan. The Samaritans, in the eyes of the Jews, had rejected the true God because they rejected the place where God had directed them to worship Him, at the temple in Jerusalem. That the Samaritans believed that they were true recipients of God’s promise to Abraham of being His holy people showed the Jews just how heretical the Samaritans were. But here Jesus makes the Samaritan the hero. He shows the lawyer that the way God works in giving you salvation is not by laying down a list of rules for you to follow and then He will accept you. It’s rather the pure, selfless compassion that is shown in a hated Samaritan who goes down into the ditch where the bleeding and nearly unconscious man is and places him on his own donkey and binds up his wounds and takes him to an inn where he can rest and get healed. It’s limitless love that gives money to the innkeeper that will take care of all the costs, no matter how much it costs. The lawyer knows what is coming, of course. Jesus has just laid out a story to convict him, put him in his place, and help him see plainly that the man’s neighbor is the one in the ditch. If you see someone in need, help him, he is your neighbor. This is how Jesus will answer his question, Who is my neighbor? But the lawyer actually has no idea what is coming. The lawyer is met with his question with yet another question from Jesus: “Who was the neighbor to the man in the ditch?” The lawyer knows yet again the correct answer. It’s the one who showed mercy on the man in need. And that brings Jesus right back to where He was before, with the same answer He gave to the lawyer after he got the first question right: “You go and do likewise.” You want to earn salvation? Be that Samaritan. Be the one who has mercy on such a one who is in need. Do this and you will live. We’re not told how the man responds. We don’t know if he finally got the point and repented of his self-righteousness. We are left only with Jesus’ answer to the man: You go and do likewise. It might sound like this is an exhortation to the man, You go and do likewise. But it’s not. It’s His answer to the man’s question. When he first came to Jesus with his question Jesus saw that it was the wrong question. How do you answer the wrong question? You get the person to see that it’s the wrong question. You want to know what you must do? You must love God completely. You must love your neighbor completely. You must love as the Samaritan loved, in complete compassion in which he put the man’s needs before himself in order to save him. There is only one love like this and there is only one who loves in this way. It is the one the man came to with his question. It is Jesus. Jesus is the one who loves in this way. He and the Father are one. He loves us as Himself, even laying down His life for us. In compassion He stepped down into the ditch to get us out and brought us to the place of rest and healing, where we are Baptized and then given the Medicine of Immortality, the medicine of eternal life: the Lord’s Supper. If you seek to know what you must do to obtain eternal life Jesus will show you there is nothing you can do. He shows you that it is what He has done. He is the one who Himself was beaten and whose life left Him on the cross. He in compassion gave His life for us. We obtain eternal life by what He has done. Eternal life is given to us and it includes the opportunity to ask the right questions, such as: How can I be a neighbor to others? Having received mercy, how can I show mercy? Being forgiven of my sins, how may I forgive those who sin against me? You ask the wrong question, you won’t get the answer you were looking for. You ask the right question and Jesus will give you answer. If you seek to know what you must do to be saved, you will be left for dead. If you seek to know what God has done for you to save you, He will give you His answer. It is Jesus. Amen. SDG -- Pastor Paul L. Willweber Prince of Peace Lutheran Church [LCMS] 6801 Easton Ct., San Diego, California 92120 619.583.1436 princeofpeacesd.net three-taverns.net It is the spirit and genius of Lutheranism to be liberal in everything except where the marks of the Church are concerned. [Henry Hamann, On Being a Christian] _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list Sermons@cat41.org http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
