The text of a sermon given
at Northside Presbyterian Church, Chattanooga, TN, July 10, 2016
In the verses from Deuteronomy, Israel stands at the
doorstep of the Promised Land listening to Moses instructing them in the ways
of holiness and God’s covenant with them. In the first 10 verses of this Deuteronomy
passage, Moses four times emphasizes
the divine command to Israel that is the crux of the matter of the Lord’s
covenant with Israel is, “Love
the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul because the Lord loves you.” Israel only has to do this
one thing for salvation.
To really appreciate this Deuteronomy discourse of the Law you
should understand a Hebrew word for God’s eternal love for Israel: hesed. It underpins and is
the source of the Law. Hesed has no
direct English equivalent. It means a one-sided, and therefore unrequited,
eternal loving commitment by the Lord to Israel that surmounts every obstacle
between the righteous and God. Hesed is the essence of the love of God for
Israel that embodies the covenant the Lord made with Israel and the commandment
given Israel, “Love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul.”
Today we turn to Luke’s account of a conversation about this same
commandment between Jesus and a Jewish lawyer schooled in the Law. IOt would
serve appreciating this passage to recall that Jesus said in Matt.
5:17, that he did not
come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. (A detailed reading of the
first 25 verses of the
Sermon on the Mount might be illuminating.)
Today, in this interchange with the lawyer, we understand the essence
of the law is, “Love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul.”
An artistic structure with two painted panels hinged together
that enhance and mirror the meaning of each is called a diptych. The
Deuteronomy passage and this passage in Luke form a kind of “literary” diptych
on the essence of the Law. In this case one side of the hinge, the Hebrew
perspective, is the Hebrew word hesed,
and from the perspective of Jesus the other piece of the hinge is the Greek
word splagchnizomai commonly translated as compassion
This confrontation with the Jewish lawyer is “The crux of the matter” of what righteousness means
for a Christian. Have you ever wondered
what the word ”crux” means?
Let us step back and talk a little bit about language. Language is a fascinating
thing. Time and usage reduce the complexity of particular words to simpler, or
highly specific ideas, often transforming the powerful original meaning of old
words into something simple and even trivial.
Unfortunately translations more often than not often
obscure meaning because of this evolving nature of meaning. This problem is the
greatest challenge of a Biblical translator.
This is the essential challenge to understand what the
Lord requires of us is understanding what the words of Scripture meant when they
were used.
“Crux” is a good example. It now means the heart, the
core, or essential part of the matter, or the turning point. But the symbolic
power of “crux” in its original use far exceeds these modern definitions. I am
going to explain what “crux” means by
the time we get to the end of my sermon because it beautifully captures the
nature of the Law as expounded by Jesus in this reading in Luke.
I said passages in Deuteronomy and Luke are deeply
connected. Deuteronomy says, “(We must) love the Lord with all our heart and with all our soul
and the Lord will take delight in us.” Luke says, “Who is my neighbor?” Both
passages concern where the Law is found. They are a diptych, connected by hesed – loving kindness and compassion.
You know this story and parable by heart and you might say the message
is, “We are to love our neighbor.” Look at little closer.
The lawyer has done something unusual, and Jesus takes advantage of it.
He embellished Moses words and characterization of the law when he answered
Jesus’ question about what one must do gain eternal life. He says, “ Love the
Lord with all heart, soul, strength and mind…AND love neighbor as
self.
Perhaps the lawyer added “and love your neighbor as yourself” trying to trap
Jesus into saying the Romans were not neighbors?
The lawyer is justified in enlarging the command because he knows the
commandments of the “Holiness Code” written Leviticus 19:1-21 as if written
on the back of his hand.
He knows the commandments say, (Verse 1-2) “You shall be holy
because I the Lord your God am Holy…(verse 9-10) When you reap your
fields leave a border of crop behind, when you clean the harvest of your
fields, leave some on the ground, when you pick your grapes, do not pick the
vines bare, leave them for the alien and the poor. (Because) I am the Lord your
God….”
And then after the “Do not steal, lie to one another, take my name in
vain,” comes the command (in verse
33-34), “when an alien resides in your land he shall be to as a citizen
among you, love the alien as yourself for
you were an alien in the land of Egypt.”
By happenstance the lawyer has unwittingly turned this debate about the
Law and judgment into a parable about grace and loving kindness.
There is a lot of subtlety in this parable. We find a man maimed and
half-dead on the side of the dangerous road coming down from Jerusalem to
Jericho. We might compare walking down this road to walking down Dodds Avenue
between McCallie and Main Street Saturday night 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning,
or wandering around E. 28th St. in Alton Park in Chattanooga at
night.
A priest and a Levite, people preoccupied by the Law see the body but cross
to the other side to avoid the man. A despised Samaritan comes down the road.
You know about Samaritans. Most Jews hated Samaritans and most
Samaritans hated Jews. Dr. Paul
talked to us about Samaritans two weeks ago. Jesus wanted to go to a
Samaritan town as he started his journey to Jerusalem but the town rejected
him. The disciples wanted to rain down fire on them but Jesus rebuked them
refused to judge them and went on to the next town.
As our NRSV translates, the Samaritan sees this half dead man laying in
the ditch and is moved with pity.” “Moved with pity” towards the half-dead man.
“Moved with pity?” The translators should be embarrassed for their
effort.
What does “pity” mean to you? …Feeling sorry for someone? Feeling a pang of remorse or concern for some
one? Having a “pity party with a sense of condescension?” Other translations,
such as the King James Version and Common English Version say, the Samaritan “had
compassion,” or was “moved by compassion for him,” coming closer to the
original meaning.
This word for compassion is the crux of the matter in this
parable The Greek word is “splagchnizomai,”
poorly translated as pity or compassion.
At the time the gospels were written, this Greek word meant
a profoundly powerful compassion that strikes, and overwhelms the very core of
one’s being. It literally means, “to seize one’s gut or intestine,” - like
being punched in the stomach - because to the Greeks the seat of the most
powerful emotion of compassion lies in the gut. Rather than use “gut-wrenching”
compassion, I will use a more modern and polite “heart-wrenching compassion” to
convey the implication of this passage.
This unusual word gives this parable a special meaning. If, as good
translators, we want to understand what Jesus
means with this word translate as a heart-wrenching compassion, we ought to
look where else the word is used in the Gospels.
We find this is a very special word used only in 9 different instances
either involving an action of Jesus towards humanity or action requested of him
by humans, and in three great parables.
Here are the instances where it is used:
Event 1. Mark 1:38-41,
and Matthew 9:35-36 tell us
Jesus was going about the countryside of Galilee preaching and arguing with religious
leaders and a leper approaches and said, “If you choose, you can make me
clean.” Jesus was moved with heart
breaking compassion and said, “I do choose! Be made clean!” Of the same event,
Mathew 9:35-36 says when Jesus looked over these crowds, “He had heart breaking
compassion for them” because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep
without a shepherd. You know what happens to sheep without a shepherd when
there are wolves around.
Event 2.
Matt 14:10-14, and Mark 6:27-34: Jesus is on the way to
Jerusalem and had been working with large crowds of harassed and helpless, sick
and disabled people until he and the disciples were overwhelmed with the work.
Jesus tells his disciples, “Let’s go across the sea of Galilee in our boat to a
deserted place so we can rest for a while.” The crowd sees them get in the boat
and as Jesus crosses the sea, the crowd moves along the shore and arrives the
same time Jesus does. Jesus gets out of the boat and looks over the massive
crowd of 5,000 men plus women and children crying out for help in misery and had
heart-wrenching compassion for them
for they looked like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus and the disciples began to
minister to the crowd with so much intensity they didn’t even have time to stop
and eat. We begin to see this heart -wrenching compassion places the interests
of others above our own self-interest.
Event 3. Mark 9:14-25 The disciples are arguing among
themselves because they could not heal a man’s epileptic son. Jesus asks what’s
going on and the father says your disciples could not heal my son. Jesus asks
how long has the son been this way and the father says since childhood and
pleads, “If you can do anything, have
heart-wrenching compassion on us and help us. Jesus said to the father, “All
things can be done for those who believe,” and with compassion healed the son.
Event 4. Matt 15:30-32 and Mark 8:1-3 Jesus and the disciples encounter a crowd of 4000 hungry
people who were watching Jesus strengthen the week, heal the ill, causing the
mute to speak. The disciples want to send the crowd away because it is late,
but Jesus says, “I have heart-wrenching compassion
for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have
nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might
faint on the way” We must feed them - Heart wrenching compassion for
others above your own self-interest.
Event 5. Luke 7:11-16 Jesus approaches a town and
encounters a crowd carrying out the body of a man who had just died, a mother’s
only son, a widow. In those times, the death of husband and son of a widow was
a sentence of hardship and poverty, if not death. When Jesus saw her, he has heart-wrenching compassion for her, “Do
not weep.” He raised the dead man.
Event 6. Matt 20:30-34 In Matthew as Jesus is about to
enter Jerusalem two blind men on the side of the road calls out,” Lord have
mercy upon us, son of David!” Even though the crowd and disciples tried to
silence the men, Jesus asked them, “What do you want me to do for you?” “Let
our eyes be opened.” Moved with heart-breaking
compassion Jesus touched the eyes and they regained sight. The men followed
Jesus on the dangerous journey to Jerusalem. Again Jesus heals the blind men
out of divine heart-wrenching compassion, and the men risk their own
self-interest and follow Jesus to Jerusalem.
If we have not yet gotten to the message about the point of heart-wrenching
compassion in these 6 situations, then we haven’t gotten to the crux of the
matter.
Jesus expected we wouldn’t get it and gave us three great parables about
instances of humans exhibiting this special heart-wrenching compassion as the
path to holiness, or righteousness.
In one parable Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a king who wished
to settle the accounts of his slaves, the second is the parable of the prodigal
son, and the third is this parable today about the good Samaritan.
In The parable of the Kingdom
of Heaven Jesus described a king who wants to settle his accounts with his
slaves, but one slave came to him with a ridiculously immense debt of 10,000
talents –about $7-12 million today, or about 100,000 years’ wages for the slave
of the time. The point is you can’t get
there from here. The King said, “Since you can’t pay, I’ll sell you, your wife,
children and all your possessions to get what I can.” The slave fell his knees
begging the king, ”Have patience with me and I will pay you everything.” And
the king out of heart-breaking compassion
for him released him and forgave his debts. Heart wrenching compassion that
puts financial self-interest second.
In the parable of the
prodigal son, the son demanded his inheritance and then squandered it all on
wine, women and a good time leaving himself destitute feeding swine for a
living. He decided to come home with the hope of expecting nothing more than to
be treated as one of the slaves in his father’s household. The father sees his
son far away coming up the road towards home, not yet close enough even to say
“Father forgive me.” His father on seeing him far off
but coming home was filled with heart-wrenching compassion. He ran and put his
arms around him and kissed him.
We see this word, heart-wrenching
compassion has a more intense, unconditional meaning. It is a compassion that
strikes us so hard that it overcomes any sense of resentment or injustice and
has no regard for self-interest. It expresses
unconditional love.
The lawyer asks, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus turns the tables and asks
the lawyer, “Who was the neighbor of the half-dead man?”
The lawyer is obliged to answer, it was the
Samaritan who put self-interest in second place for the man’s well-being, Jesus
said, “Go and do likewise.”
Be a good neighbor!
We are sort of like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz when she
exclaimed to Toto, “Toto, I have a feeling we aren’t in Kansas anymore!”
Jesus calls us to live the law as he did, with a steadfast commitment
to compassion, not because of words on a tablet, or its logic. We live the Law when
heart-wrenching compassion is written in our hearts. Jesus turned this whole
idea of “neighbor” upside down with this word, heart-wrenching compassion and
his question, “Who was the neighbor?”
Be a neighbor. Love every enemy or alien we meet as friend
as God loves us, because we are good neighbors who love others as God loves us.
This is what it means to love one’s neighbor as one loves self.
In light of this passage three things come to mind. First, I
recall one friend I know who is too jaded for his own good and not very long
ago in a discussion over allowing Syrian refugees into our country told me the
good Samaritan might have worked in Jesus’ time but not in today’s time.
Second, I cannot help but thinking of the miserable Presidential campaign with
its deceit and all the opprobrious, harsh talk about how we should treat the
immigrating Syrians fleeing religious and political persecution – what kind of
neighbor does that make us? Third, and of
course, all how can we not think of all the violence around the African-American
community of the last week, violence of police against citizens and citizens
against police. Consider, if police and public approached each other as
neighbor, what a difference it might make…
Do you begin to get the idea about what Jesus is saying
about the place for heart-wrenching compassion? Do you think that this command
for having heart-wrenching compassion towards our neighbor is easy? Do you
think Jesus thought we’d consider it easy? Hardly considering this parable
about the good Samaritan.
As I promised when I began we come to the crux of the matter.
Crux has a sense of being the essential part,
or the heart of the matter. But its meaning is far more than just “essential.”
Crux
is an old Latin word that means ”cross” or “instrument of torture.” It refers
not to just any cross but to the cross of Jesus. Do you see in that sense of crux,
this parable calls us to the most difficult part of being a Christian. It calls
us to have that divine heart-wrenching compassion in our heart, even when judgment
and indifference might be preferred.
The crux of the matter is that Jesus taught this model of
compassion and service encapsulates the entire law - to love the Lord who has
unconditional compassion for us, hesed,
with every part of our being, and to be a neighbor who loves the way God loves
us.
The hard part of Christian Ethics is making it personal. It is hard for
each one of us to reveal to the world that we are Christians by our love and
compassion not by our judgment of and indifference to others. But, if we do
that, perhaps we single-handedly can be the instrument the Lord uses to heal
the violence in our world. Remember, the Kingdom of God is at hand.
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