One
day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this
question: “Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus replied, “What
does the law of Moses say? How do you
read it?” The man answered,
“‘You must love the Lord your God with all
your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” “Right!” Jesus told him. “Do
this and you will live!” The man wanted to justify his
actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Luke 10:25-29 (NLT)
The parable of The Good Samaritan was spawned by
this question; the lawyer (or Pharisee) cross-examining Jesus wanted
clarification on the Great Commandment’s twin brother, loving your neighbor as
yourself.
The Pharisee wanted Jesus to declare just how far we
are to go with that; so the story is born with good guys behaving badly, and
the supposed bad guy doing the good stuff.
Many a ministry has been founded upon this tenet of self-sacrificial
service to the beaten and bruised members of society who’ve been left by the
wayside.
And rightly so.
But we shouldn’t forget the catalyst for the story
Jesus told. When the Pharisee asked the
question, and who is my neighbor, he was getting ready in his heart to
justify the way he lived.
What the Pharisee was demanding was comparison – a
form of relativism. He was looking
forward to Jesus saying you must do this, this, that, and don’t
forget this too. And then the
lawyer could say I live like that, better than that; I’m a really good person. He was getting ready for a pat on the back.
That’s the way he expected the conversation to go
because Pharisees led a strong moral lifestyle, keeping the law. It was a full-time job when you consider they
had taken the ten commands of Exodus and built a whole system of stuff NOT
to do in your daily life; there were over 600 supplements to the original
ten. It had to be exhausting just
keeping track of what NOT to do in life.
But Jesus wasn’t necessarily interested in hearing
what the Pharisee didn’t do…or what he did do….he was interested in holding the
lawyer’s heart up to the light to see if there was any compassion in there.
What surprised the Pharisee so much about Jesus’ story
was that the heathen Samaritan (heathen according to residents of Jerusalem who
hated their Samaritan neighbors) was the hero, and the religious leaders of
Jerusalem (Pharisees, Priests, Sadducees), were the bad guys…and that made our
Pharisee who asked the question the villain.
This put our lawyer right in the center of crunch
time. His heart was resentful
and crooked and Jesus had just put that heart to the test.
And so the Pharisee’s question was parried by Jesus’
sword that always calls for a response of commitment to God’s compelling
question; in this case God’s question is:
Are you willing to change your heart?
Are you willing to be like Jesus, like
your Samaritan enemy?
Are you willing to begin…..right now?
For You Today
Wow!
What else can we say with a question that turns our
whole day upside down?
But isn’t that the question we always need to ask at
the beginning of a day?
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