Scripture: Leviticus 19:9-18; Luke
10:25-37
An expert in the law, a scholar in
God’s way for Israel, as it was written in the Old Testament, came to Jesus
looking for an answer. I’m not sure that the expert knew what kind of answer he
was looking for.
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| Photos along the Columbia River/Priest Rapids Lake Mattawa/Desert Aire WA Late March 2016 |
He came with a question, but Luke
doesn’t say that he stood up to ask Jesus a question. He stood up to test Jesus.
He stood up to ask, while Jesus sat
and listened. Teachers always taught sitting down. Humble students always stood
to ask their questions. It was a good sign that the expert questioned Jesus
standing up.
He stood to test Jesus. That’s not
necessarily a bad thing. The word test and the word tempt are the same word in
the Greek language, but that doesn’t make testing bad.
Jesus sometimes tested his
disciples, as any good teacher would. (John 6:6) He tested them for good
reasons: to make them wise, to make them grow, to bring out their faith. Teachers
usually test their students for good reasons.
Students sometimes test their
teachers, in the same way that children test their parents, but not always for
the best of reasons. Some students do this because they want to prove that they
are smarter than their teacher.
Some students test their teacher to
see if the teacher is strong and stable. They may really want to know whether
their teacher can be counted on to know what is going on. Then they can settle
down to learn.
Teachers usually know why they test
their students. Students can’t always say why they test their teachers.
The expert gave the same kind of
answer to his question that Jesus would have given. Jesus was asked this, or
similar questions, more than once in the gospels. The people of Jesus’ day must
have talked a lot about this. What’s the most important thing in life? What’s
the mark of a life that is truly in a living relationship with God? “To love
the Lord with everything you have got, and your neighbor as yourself.” Good
answer! The expert seemed to know something worth knowing.
But the expert wasn’t happy; not
even with his own answer. He acted like an expert. He had the facts right. But
something in his heart was not right. Something about Jesus made him doubt
himself and feel that he needed to prove himself.
He dealt with God’s word as if it
were a textbook, or a manual, or an encyclopedia of information, not as the
place where the Lord himself would come to meet with him and deal with his
heart, his faith, and his life. This is what Jesus’ answer required of him. “Be
a neighbor, even when it is inconvenient.” “Show mercy, even to your enemies.”
“Be prepared to do the very thing you don’t think is required of you.”
Sometimes I’ve found that God
specifically required something from me that he didn’t require from anyone
else. He deals with me about this kind of thing by speaking to me by his Spirit
through his written word and in his Spirit’s speaking to me in prayer.
Well the expert who suddenly didn’t
feel like an expert came to test Jesus. He came prepared to use the scriptures themselves
to test Jesus. But Jesus used the scriptures to challenge him and test him.
The expert came to find out the
truth about Jesus. Was Jesus a fake, or was he for real? I have a strong
feeling that the expert didn’t want Jesus to be for real.
In spite of the expert’s half-heartedness,
Jesus led him in the right direction. Jesus used the scriptures the way they
were designed to be used in order to come to the truth. Jesus said, “What is
written in the law? How do you read it? (“How do you interpret it?)
Jesus said that if you want to know
the truth and talk about it in an intelligent, meaningful way, you have to get
your wisdom from the Scriptures. The first thing to know is that, if the truth
is written down someplace where we can go to see it together, then we can’t
babble among ourselves about what we would like the truth to be. Yet there is a
living word behind the written word that is waiting to test your heart when you
read the scriptures.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus is
introduced as the Word of God. Jesus is God expressing himself to us. The whole
Bible, from beginning to end, is not about the human quest to find God and to
find the truth.
The Bible is the story of this God
told from this God’s perspective. The Bible is about a creation, and a human
race that has been hiding from the truth and hiding from God, and a God who
does not let them go on hiding, but seeks them out. This God comes to express
himself, to speak his mind, to reveal his truth, because he is a God who
reveals himself. That is the nature of God. That is why God gives us a book.
In the Garden of Eden, the first
humans were tempted to put themselves in charge of their own knowledge of all
truth. That was the reason for the special temptation of the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil. It’s our nature to want things the same to this
day. We want to be in charge of the truth that rules our lives and our
thoughts.
To ask, “What does the whole story
of the scriptures actually say?” is the healthy antidote to our desire for a
truth that we can control.
To say, “What is written…and how do
you read it?” requires us to admit that there is a difference between what is
written and how we read or interpret it. It reminds us that we can still do a
lot of wishful thinking in the way we interpret the Bible.
The Protestant Reformation was a
return to the early church, which got its teachings from the Bible and didn’t
force the Bible into its mold. But Protestants have sometimes created their own
molds to make the Bible say what it doesn’t say. So we must first ask, “What is
written?” What does it actually say, and how does our truth stand up to what
the words plainly say or what they plainly don’t say?
The expert, who knew in his heart
that he was no expert, had planned to use the Scriptures to test Jesus. But
Jesus had hardly to say anything at all, when suddenly the expert found himself
tested by the scriptures.
He suddenly saw that the Scriptures,
which he knew by heart, didn’t define his faith; rather, they judged his faith.
The fact that all the religious people hated some of their neighbors made it
hard for them to see this challenge. When they claimed to love their neighbors
as themselves, it was a lie. After all, God could surely not expect them to
treat THOSE PEOPLE as their neighbors. Not THOSE PEOPLE!
In later years, the Apostle John
would write, “If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a
liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love
God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God
must also love his brother.” (1 John 4:20-21)
But Jesus is even clearer. Jesus
said, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse
you, pray for those who mistreat you.” (Luke 6:27-28)
I don’t know if the whole message of
the Bible could say it any clearer: “If you love your brothers, and your
sisters, and your enemies, and those who mistreat you, then you have to
absolutely love everyone.”
The expert knew very well what was
written. Now he was hearing what was written in the living presence of the
Lord. The Bible is like holy ground where we can’t spread ourselves out and be
at home unless we deal with the living presence of the living God, who insists
on being our God.
God (and God as we meet him in Jesus)
is a living, moving word. And this God lives in his written word, as ready to
challenge us as to bless us.
This is why all cults, and some real,
serious Christians, deal with one verse here and another verse there, and stack
them together in order to come up with a message that isn’t written anywhere in
the real Bible as it is written. They can’t just take the whole thing without
the risk of bumping into the real truth of God: The God of truth.
It’s not a matter of exactly what
was written in one verse over here and another verse over there, but exactly
the whole story as it all holds together. In understanding the truth revealed
in the Bible, the one thing that is needed is exactly everything.
Then it needs to be seen that where
the expert sought the truth about the way to everlasting life, and the truth
about who Jesus is, the answer was in a story about an outcast who brought
healing to his enemies: The Good Samaritan who saved his bleeding enemy on a
dangerous road.
In Jesus God reveals himself as the
outcast who heals his enemies. If we want the life that comes from God, in
Christ, then our lives have to receive the imprint of that life. We need to be
willing to become just like the outcast who heals enemies.
Whatever kind of truth the expert
wanted, it wouldn’t be the whole truth without the story of grace. None of us
can know much about the truth that really matters, if we don’t know the good
news of the gospel; the story of Jesus who found us when we were down, and
wounded, and robbed, and lost, and who died for us on the cross.
We cannot know the meaning of our
own lives, or of anything that happens in this world. We cannot know how to
respond to anything in this world until we see it in light of the cross, and in
the story of a God who came in the flesh to die for his enemies.
The expert wanted to find an answer.
There was something he needed to know. He came in search, and it might have
been hard for him to understand what he was really looking for. In the end he
didn’t merely find the truth, but the truth found him.
The light of the truth showed where
he was empty. It showed what was lacking in him. It showed him why he needed
Jesus, and the gifts that only Jesus can give.
This wasn’t what he thought he was
looking for. And we don’t know where he went from there.
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| Desert Aire, WA, Looking toward Umtanum Ridge Crest (?) April 14, 2016 |
A lot of what goes on in our lives
is explained by a search for a truth that we lack, and we are not quite sure
what we lack. And we don’t want to admit that we’re lacking anything at all. We
are lost, and we may not want to be found. We are wounded, and we may not want
to listen to the answer that will heal us.
Jesus is the face of the God of
Truth who is on the loose in this world. Jesus is God who is on a search to
make himself known to us, and to claim us for his own, and change us in the way
that he chooses to change us. Jesus is God searching for us to make us like
himself. Perhaps that means that he wants to make us like himself. Jesus wants
to make us like outcasts in his world going in search of people who don’t know
their own great need.
nice post
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