Sometimes Simple is Better
Deuteronomy 30: 2, 9-11; Luke 10:25-37
Joy Fallon, Pastoral Intern
July 11, 2010
Did you notice? Leave it to the lawyer to not let well enough alone: to try to push Jesus, to “test” him.
And leave it to Jesus to push right back, to the lawyer and to all of us, in love. Because Jesus refused to say that love is too complicated. When it comes to Love, sometimes simple is better.
A few weeks ago, I was in Chicago and shared a cab with another woman. Both of us were going from the same hotel to a college graduation across town. Apparently, our children were classmates, but we’d never met before. Trying to be friendly, I asked this woman the usual array of get-acquainted questions: where she was from, how she was enjoying the visit, what she thought of that morning’s news –and something she said, made me ask one other question, “Oh, are you an attorney?”
Now, as number of you know, I’m a “recovering lawyer” myself, but before I’d had a chance to “out” myself to her as a former colleague, the cab driver interrupted with this joke: “How can you tell when a lawyer is lying? Whenever he moves his lips!” Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Now, of course the whole cab got a good chuckle out of that one – including my son and husband who were with me -- but somehow, after that, I never did get around to identifying myself as a lawyer. I just let the conversation roll on to other topics. What a wimp!
Well, I recalled that wimp experience when I read today’s New Testament lesson again, the familiar one: Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. Because as you know, the story starts with these words: “Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus…..” For years I apparently always glanced right over that opening, moving on swiftly to the story Jesus tells, ignoring the the whole beginning exchange, between the lawyer and Jesus. It’s as if I’ve been in that taxi-cab, slinking down in my seat, and changing the topic.
So this time around, I thought I’d pay attention to the lawyer in the story, to see where I might have a tendency to act like him, even if I’ve given up my license to practice.
First, we do have to give the lawyer a little credit! I hope you’ll all notice that he asked a really good question: How do I inherit eternal life? Now, although we might not all phrase it this way today, I think it really is the key question on all of our minds. While some might talk in terms of what we need to do to get to heaven, another way to phrase this core question is to ask, How do we live as God wants us to? How do we live our lives meaningfully? How can we be in right relationship with God and with others? Jesus, what are the central things on which I need to ground my life so I feel whole? The lawyer asked the right question: What makes life worth living?
I also want to give the lawyer credit, because, according to Jesus, he also got the answer right to this question. The lawyer gave an answer that came from the Bible, and was an excellent summation of what the Jewish Bible taught. The lawyer essentially said, It’s all about love. To live fully, we are to Love God fully – with everything we have – heart, soul, mind. And we’re to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
Jesus is thrilled. Yes! You’re right! You know the Bible well enough to understand that these are the important things in life. It is the way I’ve been teaching, says Jesus, linking these: love of God, love of self, and love of others. You cannot have one without the other two; they’re all inextricably tied together. If you love God, you’ll love yourself and others, because God does – God loves us all. And if you love yourself and others, that’s how you show love to God.
Bingo! Love of God, self and others. Now, go and do these things, Jesus tells the lawyer. Follow this simple summary of what all my teachings boil down to. Sometimes simple is best!
Yay lawyer! A simple, profound question, and a simple, profound answer. One we can live by: It is all about love.
But. But. The lawyer can’t stay with the simple truth, the one Jesus taught, the one from the Bible, the one he already knew. This is where we lawyers get our bad reputation, for trying to needlessly complicate things that could be clear. In this case, the lawyer wants to define terms – who is my neighbor whom I need to love?
At best, the lawyer is concerned because the stakes are so high – and he wants clarity. If our relationship with God at stake, and our way to a meaningful life, he wants to make sure he gets it right. But at worst, the lawyer is trying to narrow his obligations: who, exactly, must I love?
At that time, this was a hot question, the kind debated in the law schools – or rabbinical schools – the kind we’d have written about on our editorial pages, or talked about on cable TV. One group of rabbis thought that the Biblical obligation to love a neighbor – or sometimes it was translated “friend,” or “companion” -- most likely meant to love one’s fellow fellow-countrymen, other Israelites; it did not include foreigners or immigrants who hadn’t converted fully to the Israelite way. Love your own. The Essenes, who lived in separate communities like monasteries in order to be pure, believed they were required to hate all “sons of darkness.” They were to love those who had right beliefs, they thought. Pharisees had the narrowest view of all – they were to love other Pharisees, ones who believed in God like they did. And not many were talking about loving sworn enemies. In fairness, remember, this was a people who’d been told, time and again, that they should not worship false idols or abide those who did.
We also think about limitations, don’t we? Clearly, none of us can be expected to help everyone: we’d exhaust ourselves. And it doesn’t seem reasonable to aid and abet enemies. We debate how far afield our love must go: to our local town or to an international mission? To the one next to me in pew or to one suffering in the Gulf of Mexico? Probably the deserving poor, who can’t help their situation, but the lazy ones who’ve brought their woes on themselves? It isn’t always so straight-forward. Maybe it is more complicated, like the lawyer said.
In fact, when we think of these obligations as a set of rules to be met, hoops to be jumped through, then maybe it does make sense to try to narrow them. Think of our tax laws: don’t we say, I will pay the income tax I legitimately owe, but not a penny more. I’ll pay what I must, but I won’t exceed it! Jesus, who exactly is my neighbor? A lawyer wanting to clarify things, er - complicate things, – er, to limit love. A lawyer pushing Jesus.
Jesus pushes back, doesn’t he? Like any excellent advocate, Jesus refuses to get cornered by the question the lawyer wants answered, and instead focuses on what the lawyer most needs to hear. Jesus is so smart – he completely ignores the complexities the lawyer wanted to layer on.
Think about it. The lawyer asked about the helpEE -- the one being helped -- and wanted to limit to whom we need give help. But Jesus turns the whole thing 180 degrees around, and focuses on who the helpER is.
In fact, in his story Jesus tells us absolutely nothing about the man who was hurt, the one we’re supposed to help. Not a word. We only hear this: “a man” went out on the road and fell in with robbers. “A man,” that’s it. We don’t’ know his nationality, his age, his skin color, his religion. He’d been in Jerusalem, but that was a cosmopolitan city – anyone could be there, even foreigners like Samaritans. No, we don’t know about the demographic info – the age, rank or serial number – of the one who is hurt and needs help.
In fact, we don’t even know that the man was an innocent victim. We tend to assume that, but we really don’t know, do we? We don’t know if the man was travelling at night in a dangerous place by himself –in which case, what was he thinking? We don’t know if the man had taunted the robbers -- today’s equivalent of road rage – perhaps egging on his beating. In fact, even to say that this man “fell into the hands of robbers” doesn’t assure us of his innocence. In today’s parlance, this could be a drug deal gone bad, where one “bad guy” robs another “bad guy.”
No, what we find is that Jesus refuses to set limits on who our neighbor is. He never qualifies who it is we are called to help. There is no one – no one- beyond the text of this story. Jesus won’t add complexity here – he’ll use only two words to describe the person needing help: “a man.” No limiting adjectives at all. He could be a punk. A creep. An immigrant. A criminal.
And of course, as we most often notice in this tale, Jesus won’t limit who the helper might be, either – in fact, here Jesus radically expands the definition of helpER expected by the Jews of that day. Even the most unlikely person, the Samaritan, might be the person God will use to help us, when we feel beaten up, the person who offers us far more help than we can ever imagine might come our way.
So as a bottom line, Jesus sets no limits at all on the “who” questions – either on (1) who is worthy to receive our love, or on (2) who might be our helper, the one who shows us God’s love. Jesus may well show us different ways of HOW to love: he gave different people different kinds of love -- tough love or gentle mercy, --depending on what they needed. HOW we are to love is another whole set of sermons, which today I’ll spare you. But Jesus set no limits on WHO to love or be loved by. Sometimes simple is better. Love God, self and all others.
The Old Testament passage we read from Deuteronomy says the same thing, doesn’t it? This was undoubtedly one of the passages that the smart lawyer was referencing when he gave his great answer.
What we read said, Love God with all your heart and soul:
Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard, too complex, for you, nor is it too far away. It is not unattainable up in in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us….Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us.
No, says the Old Testament reading, “my word is very near to you!” It is in your mouth and in your heart. That close, part of us, within us!
Imagine! On my very heart. On yours.
To the people of that day, the heart was considered the center of a person’s life. Today we might say, put these understandings about Love at your very core. Make them what centers you, each morning as you rise, and each evening when you rest. Have this simple truth about Love be what roots you. What is your firm foundation, the thing upon which you stand, the thing upon which all else in your life is built. Put this right within your heart, my lessons on Love.
Where does this bring us today?
Many of us today could easily say: The Bible is so complex. I’ve never learned it. I can never find things in it. I have only heard snippets of it, read from the lectern here and there. The Bible is intimidating, so – complex.
Or we might say, we don’t understand all the scholarship – the historical context, the places where our understanding might be wrong because we don’t know the setting – it’s so complex.
Or in this age of expertise, we might say, I’ll just let experts opine. We don’t try to be doctors if we’re not medically trained. It’s all so complex.
But today’s lesson says that God’s Word is very near you. That there are ways to know the core lessons from the Bible, like today’s. That we learn best when we all come together. So, I invite you to understand the Bible in a few ways I’ve found helpful, over a meal, in two Wednesdays ahead. Come, if this idea makes your heart sing! Sometimes simple is best.
How are we called to be compassionate? As an attorney, I might seek one answer. But as a Christian, I am asked to listen to the answer Jesus gave: to respond first with compassion. To choose the simple, straight forward way. Not to complicate the path, but to love. To love generously and abundantly,.
Because ultimately, that is what this story is about: how God first loves us, without limit. Because it is Jesus who sees us when we are by the side of our life’s road, and is moved with pity. No matter who we are, he stops all he is doing, and comes to us, tending our wounds, carrying us to a safe place, promising to provide for all we need to be made whole, assuring us he will return.
That’s where the cycle begins. By our first realizing how much we are loved by God. From that love, we have the strength to respond with love: to love God, to love ourselves, and to love our neighbors.
Let me end with one more story, this one from early in my marriage. I can see the scene as if it were yesterday, with my husband and I fighting, right before bed. I don’t even remember what the argument was about. But I remember very clearly one thing: that I was right! I was right, and he was wrong. In a huff, both of us lay on our bed, and turned our backs to one another, furious.
I know I lay there for awhile, wide awake, when suddenly I heard a voice. It was my own voice, inside my head, but I knew it was my grandmother talking to me, a woman with whom I’d been close, who had died about 10 years before. I’d never before heard a voice like hers, and never have since. But it was very clear. She said these words: “Love generously and abundantly, because you can.” That was it.
I guarantee you that I had not wanted to hear from my grandmother that night. And I did not welcome the message. Love generously and abundantly! Hrrrumph! But because I could?
What dawned on me that night, as I very slowly unclenched my jaw and unknotted my angry stomach, was that this message – from my grandmother, or my past family teachings, or maybe even from God - was right. I had the ability, as one alive in this world, to love generously and abundantly. I could do that. As I came to rephrase it to myself later: “Life is the gift of time enough to love.” Day by day, we are asked only this: to give and receive love. Nothing more and nothing less.
Sometimes simple is better. Love and receive love. Love God, ourselves and all others. Love because first God loves us, and yearns for our wholeness. Love generously and abundantly.
Because we can.
May it be so.