It’s great to be back with you today, after what seemed to
be a very long trip for me – 8 weeks since I was last here with you in church.
Having missed so many of the messages in this series I am a little worried
about repeating what others have said, but I’m confident that you will bear
with me if I do. Our topic today, Helping and Seeking Help, is an appropriate
one, considering what I recently experienced concerning relief efforts in Nepal
in the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes on April 25th and
May 12th (I was in Nepal for the second one) that killed more than
8000 people and destroyed about half a million homes. One of the encouraging
things that I saw was an outpouring of love and compassion by Nepali Christians
who wanted to reach out to help the people in the most-affected areas. In many
cases, they were the “first responders,” and people did notice that they were
generally the most equitable and unselfish in providing food and other
necessities. We’ll see today how important this kind of “love in action” is in
our response to God’s call on our lives.
Let’s pray as we begin.
One of the amazing things about the Bible is that even the
most familiar parts of it always have something new to teach us, if we approach
them with an open heart and mind. That’s because God’s Word (with a capital W)
is more than just a book or even the words on each page. We know from John 1
that ultimately Jesus himself is the Word of God, the means by which everything
was created. The Word of God is therefore a living, personal, powerful force
(in one sense) that breaks into our physical world and changes things. The Holy
Spirit takes the words of God and makes them real and living and applicable to every
aspect of our lives: the problems we face, the questions that we have, and the
needs that we would like to fulfill. Without the Holy Spirit bringing it to
life, the Bible is just another book.
So today, as we look at the parable of the Good Samaritan,
don’t just think, ”I’ve known that story since I was a little kid.” Ask God
what he wants it to mean to you today and be open to how he wants his living
Word to change your life. We will read from Luke 10. In this chapter, Jesus has
just sent out the seventy-two, two by two – to every place where he was about
to go. They were to “prepare the way” before Jesus, much as John the Baptist
had done. In the first place, they were to pray – pray to the Lord of the
harvest to send out more workers. Then they were to go and heal the sick and
speak of the kingdom of God. Jesus gave them power over all the forces of Satan
and an understanding of what their own salvation meant. Verse 21 says
At that time Jesus,
full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of
heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and
learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is
what you were pleased to do.”—Luke 10:21
Why did Jesus refer to them as “little children”? They had
only recently come to know and follow Jesus. They were like baby Christians.
That could be part of it. But it was also probably because they had a simple,
childlike faith and acceptance of God and his ways. They didn’t think that they
knew it all or had it all figured out. They were willing to trust God with what
they knew and with what they didn’t know. And more importantly, they were
willing to act on what God had told them to do, without reservation.
This is in contrast then to the “expert in the law” in the
next section, that leads up to the story of the Good Samaritan:
On one occasion an
expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do
to inherit eternal life?”
“What is written in
the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
He answered, “‘Love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
“You have answered
correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
But he wanted to
justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”—Luke 10:25-29
This person asks his first question to test Jesus. So we
know right away that he is not seriously intending to follow what Jesus tells
him. It’s more of an intellectual exercise – or worse, it springs from a desire
to try to trip up Jesus and discredit him. You can probably imagine how Jesus
appeared to these leaders: Who was this country bumpkin who thought he knew
more than they did about the law and who had such scandalous ideas about God?
They had to show him up for what he was and try to discourage people from
following him.
So, what must I do to inherit eternal life? He makes it
sound like he is personally, genuinely seeking, but he is not. You may run into
people like this as you witness to people. They might sound like they are
interested in matters of faith, but they will keep you at arm’s length if you
get too personal. But Jesus plays along and, as he often does, responds with a
question of his own: You are the expert – what does the law say? Or, more
precisely, how do you read it? Jesus
addresses the man as a person. He is not going to just play an intellectual
game. The man does know his Bible, and he nails his answer, quoting from
Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19. Jesus himself uses these same verses, as
recorded in Matthew 22, when he is asked to identify the greatest commandment.
Dedicate yourself to God, one hundred percent, and at the same time love your
neighbor as much as you love yourself. These form the foundation of all the
rest of the law. All the other commands must be fulfilled out of a heart of
love and complete devotion. If we are just going through the motions, it is a
waste of time. This “expert in the law” knew what the verses said, but he didn’t know what they meant. So we can imagine Jesus perhaps
pointing a finger as he responded, “Do this and you will live.”
It touches something in the man. It makes him feel a little
uncomfortable. He wanted to spar intellectually, and now Jesus has somehow
turned a spotlight onto his personal walk with God. He realizes he has failed.
How can anyone love God so unreservedly? Or even more daunting, perhaps, how
could he be expected to love someone else as much as he loves himself? Loving a
perfect God is one thing – but loving a weak and sinful human being to that
extent? Maybe he could get away with just loving the people who loved him. My
neighbors must just be those who love me the way I love them, right? He is
desperate to justify being selfish. What he fails to realize is that if we
truly love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, there is no room
for being selfish.
Adam and Eve fell into sin because they wanted to be like
God: they wanted to take his place, to have the focus on them. So selfishness
became an innate part of sinful human nature. You don’t have to teach a toddler
to be selfish. It is part of what we are born with. We don’t have it within
ourselves to truly give up being selfish. That is why Jesus kept confronting
people who thought they were “doing okay” in their spiritual life. Actually, we
can’t do this. We can’t love God
absolutely, always, through and through, and we can’t love other people the way
we should, completely without self-interest. Jesus does not let this man off
the hook. But he doesn’t answer his question directly; he tells a story.
In reply Jesus
said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was
attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away,
leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going
down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So
too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other
side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where
the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He
went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the
man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and
gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I
will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’—Luke 10:30-35
So we have these familiar characters: the man attacked by
robbers, the priest and the Levite (who should have been aware of the command to
love your neighbor as yourself), and the Samaritan, who went above and beyond
what could reasonably be expected, even giving the innkeeper a blank check to
take care of this stranger who might even disappear before he returned. He was
not counting on a reward of gratitude.
The man Jesus was talking to no doubt felt the double cut of
Jesus’s words. He had to compare his attitude with that of the priest and the
Levite, not wanting to defile themselves with such a messy situation. Secondly,
he was forced to admit that it was the Samaritan who was modeling what it meant
to be a good neighbor. He was no doubt hoping that Samaritans would not be
included as the neighbors that he was supposed to love as himself. They were
people to be looked down on and hated. They were heretics who followed a wrong
interpretation of the scriptures, mixing in idolatrous customs. Have you ever
wondered why this story has always been called the Parable of the Good Samaritan? Why not just the
Parable of the Samaritan? It’s because Samaritans were automatically thought of
as being evil and corrupt. I suppose the equivalent for us today would be the
Parable of the Good Jehovah’s Witness or the Parable of the Good Homosexual
Minister or something like that.
“Which of these three
do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
The expert in the law
replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told
him, “Go and do likewise.”—Luke 10:36-37
There is never an excuse to not love someone and act in
compassion toward them. You may recall studying this passage together, from 1
John 3:
“This is how we know
what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay
down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material
possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on
them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let
us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”—1 John 3:16-18
How do we fulfill the greatest commandment? Through self-sacrifice.
We show our love for God by laying down our lives for others. Love is not a
warm, fuzzy feeling. It involves action. It is very practical. It costs us
something. When we see someone in need, we don’t just feel pity for them, we
have pity on them – we do something to help them. This is not easy to do. I
have traveled in many desperately poor areas of the world, where the needs are
overwhelming. I have many times felt pity, but done nothing. And indeed,
sometimes a handout is not the most
helpful response. But love is. Love is always the best response. And we need
God’s help to love as we ought to – even to know how to love, in certain situations.
So Jesus holds up a Samaritan, a despicable outcast, as our
example of both how to help someone and the type of person we should be willing
to help. He upsets our comfortable default of helping those near and dear to us
or those who will thank us and make us feel good. The next section of our text
is also about helping: what is in our hearts as we help and what we expect from
others. It lends a certain balance to the story that we have just read.
As Jesus and his
disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named
Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat
at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by
all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord,
don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell
her to help me!”
“Martha, Martha,” the
Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few
things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and
it will not be taken away from her.”—Luke 10:38-42
This is a story about Martha the dedicated helper and Mary,
apparently not a helper. It seems that Martha is a Good Samaritan kind of
person who would have reached out to a needy person who crossed her path. We
don’t know much about her, but she had some kind of heart for the Lord, in
opening her home to him. In the story of the raising of Lazarus, we see her
genuine faith as she confesses Jesus as the Messiah, the resurrection and the
life. It doesn’t say, but doesn’t it seem like she is the older sister –
responsible, taking charge, wanting everything to be just right? She has taken
on a big job in inviting Jesus in – all those disciples and probably a few
other hangers-on would need to be fed and put up somewhere. I have seen it many
times on arriving unexpectedly in a village home in Nepal: the wife or daughter-in-law
jumps into action to make sure that everyone will be fed and have a place to
sleep. In many cultures in the world, offering proper hospitality to visitors
is very important. To fail in this area is a shameful thing.
So Martha was trying to do a good thing, an appropriate expression
of love. However, even if she were initially motivated by love for Jesus rather
than just a sense of duty, she lost her perspective. She allowed her
performance to become a higher priority than her love. This is very easy to do.
I know I have done it myself at times. My desire to “do things right” leads me
to forget the feelings and concerns of others. But that is ultimately a selfish
position, springing from a desire to look good before others and feel good
about myself. The critical factor is our attitude. Our actions may be
completely correct, but inside, if we are trying to impress others, God will
not be honored – or pleased. Man looks on the outer appearance, but God looks
on the heart.
Martha was too concerned about her image as a good hostess.
She was worried that if the meal were late or not quite perfect in some way it
would reflect poorly on her as a person. She became so worried and distracted
that she forgot who was present in her home: Jesus the Messiah. And she
actually seems to blame him for her
problem! “Don’t you care?” she asks. Have you ever done that? Gotten upset with
a person whom you are trying to help? Take a deep breath, Martha. Listen to
what you are saying. Who are you doing all this for, anyway?
What would be the loving thing to do in this situation? It
wasn’t that Martha was doing the wrong thing. Someone does need to do the
cooking, otherwise people can’t eat! However, she could have accepted this
responsibility with humility and sacrificed for Mary’s benefit. She could have
decided: this is important for Mary. Maybe she can tell me afterward what Jesus
talked about. This is my gift of service to Jesus – and to my sister. But her
heart was not in the right place. She was distracted; she was worried and upset
about many things. She wanted Jesus to force Mary to help her. Jesus lovingly
confronts her selfish attitude and points out what is really important. Not
service. Not looking good. Not doing everything just right. Loving God.
Listening to him. Submitting to him. Living in a relationship that the worries
and cares of the world cannot touch. It will not be taken away. It is eternal.
It will remain after everything else passes away.
So this balances the previous story. After reading about the
Good Samaritan we might think that we need to be out there on the roadsides of
the world 24/7 helping people. That must be God’s will for everyone, right? Martha
may have thought, “Yes, I can be like that Samaritan. I can take care of
people.” But it’s not the helping that really matters. It is our love – our
love for them and our love for God. And we need to give freedom to others to do
what God has called them to do. If God has called you to serve, you need to be
willing to do it whether anyone else lifts a finger to help you or not.
There is one more passage that we need to look at today,
jumping ahead to the next chapter in Luke. This is also on this subject of
asking for help. Martha asked for help inappropriately: “Lord, don’t you care?
Can’t you see I need some help here? Can’t you force someone to come and help
me?” She was worried and upset, not humble and trusting. How should we ask the
Lord for help? Chapter 11 starts with Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus
was teaching his disciples how to communicate with their loving heavenly
Father, who wanted to help them. “Hallowed be your name; your kingdom come.” If
we seek God’s kingdom first, and his righteousness, everything else will be
added unto us, as it says in Matthew 6. If our primary concern is the glory of
his holy name – hallowed be thy name – we can ask confidently, assured that he
will hear us and provide for us: our daily bread and everything else we need.
Then Jesus said to
them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say,
‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; a friend of mine
on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ And suppose the
one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my
children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you,
even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship,
yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you
as much as you need.”—Luke 11:5-8
This is another reminder of the importance of hospitality in
that culture. If a guest arrives, even in the middle of the night, it would be
very disrespectful to not offer him something to eat. If you have nothing in
the house, what do you do? You knock on the door of a friend and ask for help.
If it’s not convenient – perhaps they are already in bed – they may be
reluctant to help you. However, Jesus suggests that if you keep asking they
will finally relent and give you what you need. We might think that if someone
keeps bugging us that we will become even firmer in our resistance (and this is
the way I get with pushy salesmen, do you?), but in an honor-shame oriented
culture, the persistent requests eventually risk bringing shame to the person
being asked and so they give in to avoid that.
I would like to say a little more about honor-shame
cultures, because they are actually more common in the world than our
guilt-forgiveness oriented worldview. The Bible says a lot about honor and
shame, but we don’t relate to those statements as much as the ones about sin
and forgiveness. But if we are talking to someone from, say, an East Asian or
Middle Eastern culture who naturally feels that their main problem is shame,
and we say that Jesus wants to forgive their sins, that may not sound like
especially good news to them. On the other hand, if we say that Jesus wants to
restore their honor because he bore all their shame on the cross, and when God
honors them they don’t have to keep looking for honor from other people –
that’s great news! “Those who honor me, I will honor,” God says in 1 Samuel 2.
Certain things in the Bible make a lot more sense when read from this
perspective.
Anyway, back to the pushy salesmen for a moment. If you ever
travel to India, one of the things you will be overwhelmed by in any popular
tourist spot is people hawking handicrafts or trying to sell you other small
items. They will likely come across as extremely pushy and obnoxious. I have
even tried to persuade them that the more they keep bugging me the less likely I am to buy whatever it is
they are selling. But that never seems to put them off. I realized only
recently that they are operating on from an honor-shame perspective, while I
think in terms of guilt and justice. I feel no guilt about not buying their
wares. I never asked them to sell me something or even acted like I was
interested. The injustice is their trying to sell me something I don’t want! But
their tactic is to try to shame me into buying something. They think that if
they can embarrass me with their persistence (shameless audacity) that I will
be more likely to buy something. It is a cultural disconnect.
So the people Jesus was talking to at this point would have
easily understood how persistence with the reluctant friend would finally get
him out of bed. This is very similar to another story that Jesus tells later on
in Luke 18 of a widow appealing to an unjust judge and finally being granted justice
because of her persistence. In that parable, Jesus makes it clear that God is
not to be compared to the judge, who (it says) “neither feared God nor cared
what people thought.” God will be quick to provide justice to his chosen ones.
In the same way, God is not like the friend reluctant to get out of bed to
help. He is eager to provide what we need. So we are to be persistent in
prayer, not trying to wear God out, but to show our commitment to what we are
asking for. The shameless audacity mentioned here seems to apply more to the
circumstances of the request rather than the content. We could ask God for a
billion dollars, which may seem to be shamelessly audacious, but we are not
likely to get it. However, if we pray for something worthwhile and, for
example, do it boldly, in public, not to show off but to be a witness, that is
a different kind of shameless audacity, one that relates to circumstances
rather than content.
Speaking of shameless audacity, how many of you have heard
of Blimey Cow? It is a YouTube channel started by an edgy group of Christian
home-schoolers to address current issues, mainly for teenagers. Their style may
not appeal to everyone, but they have some good, thought-provoking things to
say along the way. As I was thinking about this topic of helping others, making
love practical, and examining our core attitudes, Emma showed me this clip,
which I thought was very fitting.
Let’s pray.
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