Tasting the Gruel of Love

A Creed for Others

Dr. Larry Thorson
March 28, 2010

Introduction – Holy Week

Today is the start of what has come to be known as “Holy Week”. It was a week that began with Jesus riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey to the palm waving cheers of the multitude who saw in him hope for their nation's future. It was sort of like the night of an American presidential election or a congregational meeting to call a new pastor. Hope for the future was definitely in the air.

But before the week was over, the national mood would change. Jesus would gather with his disciples for one last meal together and would give them a Maundy which means mandate. His maundy was to love one another as he would love them. This Thursday night we will gather in the Fellowship Hall and remember that last meal and that mandate at 7:00.

Later that night, Jesus would go out into a garden to pray where he'd be arrested, betrayed by even his closest friends, given a mock trial, falsely convicted as a criminal for crimes he didn't do and hung like a sinner on a cross. It was a dark time. The Bible says even the sun went dark. This Friday night at 7:00 our service will conclude in darkness as the story of that dark night is retold in song and narration by our choir. The cross will be draped in black.

Think about the pattern of Holy Week and how similar it is to our flow of life. A few weeks ago when I got sick I would go to bed at night expecting to wake up well the next day. That's how it's been for me for at least the last 45 years. I would wake up feeling better than the night before so that gave me hope. But every afternoon would always turn into a sort of Good Friday for my body, a time when the disappointment of the sickness would begin to show itself again. Late evenings and nights were always the worst and I was left to hope for health in a new day. Eventually the hope begins to wear off.

Holy Week is a reminder to us to celebrate the highs like the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem or the waking up feeling fresh in the morning even if there's a possibility that before the day or the week is over the lows of Good Friday will take over. Celebrate because we know that no matter how low we go, Easter Sunday is coming. Every Sunday, 52 weeks of the year we celebrate Easter Sunday, the resurrection of our Lord and the conquering of our problems. Enjoy the victories when you get them. Look for God in your down times knowing that the ultimate victory for us is coming.

An Expert in the Law: Luke 10:25-37

This season we've been studying the creed that drove everything Jesus did in his lifetime; the Jesus Creed. Every decision he made, every action he took, every motivation that drove him was based on the Jesus Creed. It became so much a part of who he was that even people who weren't one of his fans could quickly recite it back to him. That's the case in our story today in Luke 10:25-37.

Luke 10:25-37

25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

26 "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"

27 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.' "

28 "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."

29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

30 In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 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. 35 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.'

36 "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

37 The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."
Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

Doing What We Were Told – the Priest and the Levite

We usually like to throw stones here. Our two favorite targets in this story are a priest and a Levite. The priest was responsible for offering the sacrifice in the temple and the Levite was probably a young temple assistant. We usually think “what religious hypocrites those men were for not stopping to help the man in need.” I've heard sermons comparing them to pastors or elders racing to get to a Session meeting so they can run God's church. I've heard them compared to church going people too busy trying to get to worship on time for the announcements or the praise music that they can't bother stopping to help someone in need. “Those hypocrites” I've heard them called.

But that's not fair and I don't think it's what Jesus intended to convey. The priest would have read his Bible carefully everyday. He would have read as I did recently Numbers 19:11 “Whoever touches a human corpse will be unclean for seven days. They must purify themselves with the water on the third day and on the seventh day; then they will be clean. But if they do not purify themselves on the third and seventh days, they will not be clean. If they fail to purify themselves after touching a human corpse, they defile the Lord's tabernacle. They must be cut off from Israel. Because the water of cleansing has not been sprinkled on them, they are unclean their uncleanness remains on them.”

The priest would have also read Leviticus 21:1-4 “The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and make himself ceremonially unclean for any of his people who die, except for a close relative, such as his mother or father, his son or daughter, his brother, or an unmarried sister who is dependent on him since she has no husband-for her he may make himself unclean. He must not make himself unclean for people related to him by marriage, and so defile himself.”

The reason they went to the other side of the road was because if a priest was close enough to a corpse to cast a shadow over the corpse, the person even casting the shadow was considered impure. So the priest and the Levite were doing exactly what they understood the Bible's instructions for them to do. There wouldn't have been a Jew who heard this parable of Jesus in those days who would have thought the priest or the Levite had done anything but what God's Word, the Torah had regulated them to do.

The Sh'ma versus the Jesus Creed

The priest and the Levite weren't living by the Jesus Creed. They were living by a Jewish Creed called the Sh'ma which goes something like this: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength. Period. What's missing? What Jesus added from Leviticus “love your neighbor as yourself.” For a Jew, their creed, the Sh'ma meant loving God by loving the law. The priest and the Levite thought they were showing love to God by obeying the law and avoiding what they honestly thought was a corpse.

Christians aren't that different. We think loving God with all our being is going to church on a regular basis. Many of us here have daily disciplines where everyday we read the Bible for at least ten minutes, pray for ten minutes in addition to going to church weekly. Those disciplines are very important to my life. For me I try to have that time before 7 in the morning.

What would happen if I got a phone call at 6:30 in the morning letting me know that someone I knew had taken a potentially fatal fall and was slipping in and out of a coma? I was told that their loved one badly wanted me to come and pray with them. What's more important at that point, fulfilling the spiritual disciplines of prayer and Bible reading or being with the person in crisis?

Canceling Worship to Love Our Neighbors

There's a movement among evangelical churches that started a few years ago where the church cancels its Sunday morning worship service and goes out into the community and serves in any way that it can such as yard work and painting projects or serving homeless meals. Our former church in Cupertino where our daughter attends does it at least a few times a year and then comes back together in the evening for a worship service and shares testimonies from the day. Some of the churches in Hemet are doing a valley wide Sunday like that later in April.

When I first heard of the idea a few years ago I really didn't like it. Sunday morning is worship time. It's God's time. God's time gets pushed out all the time with out of town friends coming to visit us, moving plans, travel plans, sleeping plans. We have to have at least one time a week set apart for God. That's non negotiable. But I've come to understand and accept that we won't be struck down if we have to help someone in need and Sunday morning is the only time they can be helped.

The Jesus Creed says that if you truly love God with all of your being you will also try to love others as yourself. If you fell and started bleeding profusely you'd do something to stop the bleeding. You wouldn't continue reading your Bible until you finished your disciplines for the day. That would be ridiculous not to attend to your sore. In the same way it would be ridiculous not to attend to someone in a crisis because you had to go to church.

An Example of Someone in Need

But we do that all the time. There are people in our church who can't get to worship. They can't drive any longer but they can come to worship if someone would give them a ride and they want to come. Taking someone to church slows you down. Or I've heard some say “what if they fell getting into my car to go to church and sued me?” Ok, what if a rock fell from the moon and hit me on the head while I was mowing my lawn? My point is that if we want to love someone as we would ourselves we will and if we don't want to it may indicate that we've forgotten what that love feels like.

A Summary of the Jesus Creed

Loving God with all your heart means loving God with our emotions. Are you passionately in love with God like a young couple taking a moonlight walk? Loving God with all our soul means loving God with no other gods to share. Is God your one obsession these days or is golf, your travel plans or your yard the god of your now? Loving God with all our mind means when the intellect says I have good reasons not to like someone, we discipline our minds to think other kinds of thoughts about them. To love God with all our strength means we make ourselves get up in the morning and read God's Word. We make ourselves get up in the morning and pray even when we don't feel like it. We drive forward even when our body doesn't feel up to it because we're passionately in love with our God and we want nothing to separate us from him. Then we demonstrate that love by loving everyone we come into contact with, those are our neighbors.

We love God not so that we can convince him to give us a lifetime pass into the heavenly kingdom but because we've experienced his love and there's nothing like it in all the world. Have you ever experienced unconditional love in your life before? It's a love that doesn't say “I'll love you if you go to church.” It doesn't say “I'll love you if you work with the middle school students at church.” It doesn't say “I'll love you if you drive someone to church.” God says to you “I love you.” “I love you because I made you the way you are.” “I love you and I want to spend time with you.” “I like being with you.”

Can you receive those words or do you still think you need to earn God's respect? Living by the Jesus Creed only makes sense if you can receive these words from God “I love you just because of who you are.” Once you experience those words then you'll be able to love yourself in healthy manner and then love others as yourself.

This week let the words “God loves me, he really does” sink into your mind. Record what those words do for you. Ask yourself what kind of comparable love to this has been modeled for me in my life. Who has loved me like God loves me? Maybe it's never been modeled. May you in this very special Holy Week, receive a fresh filling of God's love that radiate from you to those around you. The Jesus Creed, a creed for others.

Small Group Ice Breaker Questions