A Good Deed

Englewood and Rust United Methodist Churches
July 11, 2010
Amos 7:1-7
Luke 10:25-37
A Good Deed
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Year C



Examples of the Great Commandment

I know that the gospel lesson is from Luke this morning, but I want to take us to some other scriptures.

In Matthew 22:36-40 Jesus says that the greatest commandment is to Love the Lord you god with all of your heart, your soul, and with all of your mind. That is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it – Love your neighbor as yourself. All of the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.
Every Israelite would have known these commandments and would have followed them. Jesus is quoting the greatest commandment and prayer, the golden rule.
Jews were and still are commanded to pray at all times, and to remember the great commandment – Deuteronomy 6:4 – hear o Israel: the lord our God, the lord is one. Most important. And then Deuteronomy6: 5 – love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your strength.
Jesus says love the lord with all of your mind, and the law says love the lord with all of your strength. The New Testament is written in Greek, and the Hebrew Scriptures are written in Hebrew – so it is difficult to tell why there is a difference in wording. Actually the Hebrew word that is interpreted as strength is meod – which actually means your muchness. Which means your being, your will, your abundance.

Alice in Wonderland as an example of muchness
Did anyone see the new Alice and Wonderland? Anything with Johnny Depp in it is a good movie to me. This movie is not a remake of the old – but a sequel. Alice has been to wonderland before, and they are now in crisis and need Alice to come back to save them. Once they get her to return – the characters get into a debate – which they have to wrong Alice. They called her back because they knew that Alice was the only one with enough nerve to do the right thing and to do what needs to be done to save them.
It’s the wrong Alice – no she insists I am the right Alice – what’s wrong with you then? What do you mean she asks – you have lost your muchness - you are not you anymore. For some reason, your nerve, your commandment, your guiding principle seems to be missing.
For us, we know that the guiding principle of our lives, the great commandment – to love to Lord our God is our muchness.
Repeat after me: Love the lord with all of your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it – repeat after me Love your neighbor as yourself.

Jesus is challenged

Jesus taught that message to us in many ways. He had been teaching is disciples to go out into the world and to give that message, when a law scholar overheard him as he told them to have joy that their names were written in the annuls of heaven.
Feeling this was a good chance to challenge Jesus and stop the mad talk – he asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life – to live with god forever.
Jesus was not only smart – but he was wise enough to beat the scholar at his own game – you know the law – what does it say? Why are you asking me? We all know the greatest commandment.
The lawyer not wanting to be beat just yet continues his question – who is my neighbor –


Story of the Good Samaritan
A Jesus answer is one of the most well known stories in the bible – the story of the Good Samaritan. Society has co-opted this lesson so much that we don’t even realize that nowhere in the scripture does it say that the Samaritan is good. Or that he even did the right thing.
According to the law – the two men who passed by the man in the ditch were doing to right thing. They were in service for the lord – they were the good ones.
What we also may not realize is that this is not a story about how we treat strangers – it is about how we treat family members.

Samaritans are family members
Samaritans and Jews were part of the same family. Samaritans were confused Jews. As a matter of fact, they were Jews who refused to pray the Shema – they did not believe that the Lord was one. The worshipped other god in addition to Yahweh. They did not want to travel all the way to Jerusalem just to worship the one god, so they built their own altars. For a real Jew – to disrespect the shema – was the ultimate disrespect – it didn’t matter who you – that you were family.
When Jesus would have told this story and asked who was a true neighbor – he was counting on his audience to shutter. To get this sick feeling in their stomachs when they would have had to open their mouth and say Samaritan.
But Jesus to realize that charity starts at home. Sometimes the way we treat our own brothers and sisters is worse that how we treat enemies and strangers. We like to think about how good we are – and we totally ignore the sins we commit at home. A misunderstanding ensues – we don’t understand why our sisters and brothers act the way they do, we think that they can do better, do different, we wonder why they are so lost that they don’t even bother to speak anymore. We get comfortable in our self righteous hole – and we don’t speak to one another or even bother to work out our differences.
Jesus was a Jew – trying to bring his family back together again. In the process – he probably experiences the rejection like that of the Samaritans many times. I remember when I was in Israel – our tour guide told us – it is not that we don’t like Jesus – we don’t understand him –why would he disrespect our tradition so much and change it so much.
Because he realized that the love of the tradition and heritage has started to stand in the way of learning how to love one another. Tradition and beliefs had started to take precedence over unconditional love. Jesus knew the sick feeling any Jew would have gotten in having to admit that an alienated brother – the Samaritan was a true neighbor in this story. Maybe it was time to forget about the law and the prophets and to remember the great commandment - which is? And the second…. Perhaps love should be our guiding principle.

Story of boy wanting to be a brother
8-
I recall a story I read about a man
who had just received a new car from his brother. He went to visit a client in a poor neighborhood and as he returned to his car he noticed a boy with leg braces sitting on the doorstep of a nearby apartment building, admiring his car.
“That sure is a nice car mister! You sure must have a lot of money to afford a car like that!”
He replied, “No, not so much! My car was a piece of junk and my brother gave me

-9-
this one!”
“You’re kidding, he GAVE it to you. Like for FREE! You didn’t have to pay nothin’ at all for it?”
The man smiled, “Yes it was for free. I didn’t have to pay anything at all! ”
What the boy said next blew the man right out of the water, “Wow, I wish -
I wish I could be a brother like that.”
(Pause)
The man quizzing Jesus, according to Luke, was seeking to justify himself.


Most of us would have said I wish I had a brother like that. Jesus is trying to tell us that it is not about the brother you have – it is about the brother you are.

So what would life be like if we could love the lord with all of our abundance – our muchness.



We are the neighbors
Neighbors are not the people out there – neighbors are the people in here. We are the neighbors. In how we treat others in our own family. If can’t love one another in here – what is it that those out there really see in us? The reality is that we treat others the same way that we treat our family. We have to love one another – in spite of our differences. We love those whom god places in our lives – we don’t get to pick our family.
I am not going to touch on Amos too much this morning – other than to say that it echoes the lesson of the gospel. Amos takes a plumb line amongst the people to see if they are really following the great commandment of loving the lord and loving your neighbor. And Amos too needed to point out that the religious establishment had gotten so caught up in doing the right thing – they had forgotten the simple rule of love. It is not so much that the rule for us is love – love is the rule of how we respond to others.
That plumb line – that rule in our lives – is to remind us that love controls every aspect of who we are and what we do.
Love is our muchness – our abundance, our nerve, our strength, our heart, our soul and our mind.
The greatest commandment is…… the second……
We all know that – we have to just remember to live that.
Let us pray…..