Leading with the Heart
Sermon Given July 10, 2022
Reading this parable again this week, I was really struck with who this legal expert, whom our translation calls a lawyer, was. This was a person who studied the laws of God, who knew all the additional regulations created to ensure that the laws of God were not broken, who spent a great deal of time reading the Torah, what we know today as the first five books of our Bible, studying what God had commanded Moses and helping others learn how to live by God’s commandments in their day and age. This person had a good and noble task, and he understood what was the point of what he did. He correctly identifies the greatest commandments of God, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. This guy was good at what he did. He had been taught well.
We can see this legal expert’s deep study and love of commandments and regulations in how he phrases the greatest commandments. While the Hebrew language has no word for the mind, it’s simply wrapped up in the heart and the body, the legal expert separates it out. He adds to the great commandment, saying it is: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind. He adds the Greek concept of mind, and in doing so shows his admiration for the great philosophers and shares their passions. This legal expert is a logical and analytical person. He gets into the nitty gritties. He loves figuring out the best wording, getting into debates, analyzing terms. He is an academic in this highest regard. Of course he adds that he wants to love God with all his mind. His mind is brilliant and beautiful and good.
I think Jesus admires him. There is no condemnation, there is only praise. Jesus never says the legal expert is wrong or bad. Jesus speaks to him with love and kindness. But the legal expert and Jesus are very different in their approach to the law. Jesus admires and loves the commandments too, but he’s not really a details person. He takes them as overarching concepts, a general guidance that can help one grow in their love of God and neighbor, but not something that requires additional regulations to ensure the commandments are kept. Jesus picks grain on the Sabbath, heals people on the days he shouldn’t be working, and is known to completely ignore the regulations created in addition to the Torah which legal experts have added on to help people remain true to God’s commandments and God’s will. Jesus follows the intent of the law, he’s less concerned about the letter of the law.
But this expert wants to debate the letter of the law with him. He wants to show Jesus his expertise in this area. I’m sure the expert has studied the concept of neighbor in the Torah extensively. He knows that strangers and immigrants are included in the law. Sojourners in their land are considered a special category of neighbor, given high honor. I don’t think he wants to limit the concept of neighbor to those who think and act like him, I think that’s an insult to his extensive knowledge of God’s law. He is asking who is his neighbor, but it’s not a question born of the desire to limit the concept of neighbor to those who look or act like him, it’s a question to see how well Jesus knows the Torah, to see if Jesus can produce a right answer too. He is wondering if Jesus can quote the law or if Jesus will be tripped up. He wants to use a style of debate that is still common in some Jewish communities, a kind that asks good questions and digs into the scriptures to find the answers. This kind of back and forth, this kind of quoting and then asking deeper questions based on the scripture quoted is normal for this school of training. This is what legal experts do. This is what they love. He wants intellectual dialogue.
But Jesus doesn’t want to go there. Jesus isn’t interested in a debate. The issue for Jesus is a matter of the heart, not the mind. He refuses to debate human interaction in ways that make people concepts rather than complete humans. It doesn’t matter what laws people do or don’t follow, for Jesus the neighbor is the one who sees the other as a complete and whole person worthy of dignity.
Jesus tells the legal expert this using the kind of teaching tool Jesus loves, a parable. In it Jesus uses what, if a commentator I listened to is right, was a common storytelling outline: You portray two people doing the wrong thing, then the third person does what is right. The third person is always the hero, always the one to emulate. The other two are examples of poor behavior. Jesus doesn’t hold back in his critique. His first two people are people who knew the law, knew the commandments, knew who their neighbor was, and then did not act neighborly. These are people the legal expert admired: a priest and a Levite.
Some commentators have said that the priest and Levite didn’t help because of purity laws, but Jesus makes a point to show that they were heading away from Jerusalem, not towards it. Purity laws only applied to temple sacrifice. They weren’t moral codes, they were regulations that had to do with temple worship. If the priest and Levite were moving away from the temple and going home, they wouldn’t be concerned with purity laws. They had plenty of time before they had to serve in the temple again, their service was not a weekly duty. They were obliged by the commandments to help. That’s what makes them not helping so shocking.
Martin Luther King Jr. in his sermon on this text shared how the road the priest and Levite were traveling on was dangerous. It was windy and steep. Robbers could come around any bend. They couldn’t even be sure that the man by the side of the road wasn’t faking it. They worried about self preservation, and for good reason. What would happen to them if they stopped? I probably wouldn’t have stopped either if I’m honest with myself.
But then a Samaritan fulfills the priest and Levite’s obligation. He asks, “What will happen to this person if I don’t stop?” and that makes all the difference for him. The Samaritan welled up with compassion for his neighbor and could do nothing else but stop.
Through this parable, Jesus is telling the legal expert that the heart is the center of faith. The heart will lead you into true obedience to the commandments, not the mind. As our text from Deuteronomy this morning reminds us, the word is very near, it’s not far away. It is in our hearts and mouths for us to observe. If we follow God’s heart, God’s commandments will naturally be followed as well. We can intellectually know the law, but when push comes to shove, it is compassion that will lead us into doing God’s will.
This is what Paul is trying to say in many of his comments about the law in his letters. He shared in his letters how the law led to death in him, something that often gets interpreted in anti-Semetic ways. But what Paul’s actually saying is that he tried to do everything by his own sheer willpower, tried to force himself into obedience, and that tore him up inside. That didn’t lead to life in abundance. It was only when he tapped into compassion, into his connection with God’s mercy and grace, that he was able to stop pushing and start living in ways that were life giving, not just to himself but to others.
One of my friends in my preacher’s Bible study said this week that we often throw around really important words, assuming that we know what they mean when we really don’t. Two of those she highlighted were compassion and mercy. These are the traits that led the Samaritan to action. There have been books written on what both compassion and mercy mean, and I invite you to further exploration, because they are truly rich and deep concepts.
The Greek word used for the Samaritan’s compassion means something akin to a gut punch. He looked at the man laying half dead by the side of the road and he felt something deep in his gut. He knew that he had to do something. Compassion in this case is listening to your gut, and feeling your heart reaching out to the other. There is an empathy, a recognition that if he were on the side of the road, he’d need help too. The Samaritan uses the resources he has available to help make things better for the man.
Mercy is sometimes poorly defined, especially in American Christianity. The Samaritan had mercy on the man. This mercy is not like clemency, it’s not release from a death sentence, though the man certainly didn’t die because of the Samaritan’s actions. Mercy is a form of grace. It is being brought out of harm’s way into safety. It’s being wrapped in a warm blanket and being cared for. It’s a moment of salvation, not the salvation of getting to heaven, but the salvation of having the experience of heaven on earth. That’s mercy.
This Samaritan’s compassion and mercy were also contagious. Upon bringing the half dead man to the innkeeper, they began working together to care for him and help him heal. The innkeeper felt that compassion in their gut as well, and agreed to continue caring for the man until he was healed, showing mercy. In a world without hospitals, the man would not have made it without the care of someone like the innkeeper as well. Because the Samaritan did what he could, the innkeeper was able to use his resources to help too. Both of them did what they could in ways that were lifegiving for all involved. All of them benefitted from this act of compassion.
Using the storytelling, Jesus breaks down the law into its essential elements. It’s not so much about obedience to rules. Commandments are easily broken when challenged to do something you aren’t necessarily prepared to do. It’s not easy to follow the heart in these ways, to tap into God’s compassion. It takes time in prayer. It involves asking God what you should do and allowing yourself to trust God in the moment.The priest and Levite found a conflict between protecting themselves, a very real concern, and caring for a fellow traveler in need. They got stuck in the conflict, maybe even trying to will themselves into doing something, but finding that they could not bring themselves to do it. I think we can all relate to that feeling. It’s not an easy thing to put yourself out there like the Samaritan did. It involves risk. The Samaritan willingly put himself out there and risked himself for this man.
The Samaritan in this story reflects the character and nature of Jesus. In the Samaritan, we see the heart of God, the reason why Jesus came to earth. Jesus came to care for those who were often abused, beaten, and left for dead by the side of the road. He came to bind up wounds, to give himself for others. He expresses the full measure of God’s compassion and mercy. He is the Good Samaritan. To love one’s neighbor is to try to live like Jesus. We can have all knowledge, we can study the Bible inside and out, we can be leaders in the Church, but if we do not have the compassion and mercy that comes from God, we will ultimately leave people whom God loves by the side of the road. We will walk past.
The hard part of this parable is that the more I look at it, the more I see how many are left by the road. I see the hurt and the pain of the world and I know I cannot fix it all on my own. I stand with the legal expert and recognize that the one who showed mercy is a true neighbor, but I see myself in the priest and the Levite as well. We can’t individually help all the time, not even Mother Theresa could do that, but if we support each other collectively, we can build systems that pick people up off the side of the road and reduce the number of robbers in this world. We can build a world that acts more like the Samaritan. That’s God’s vision for the world, that we all collectively act as Christ.
This weekend, we celebrate with Angel’s Attic as they mark twenty years of being a place of help. They are a system of support for those on the front lines, they are part of the communal structure of justice that God longs for. The thrift shop started out of St. John’s, out of Rose learning how profitable thrift shops could be and her longing to set up a stable source of funding to support the free medical clinic called Angel’s Community Clinic. The vision was shared, the Diocese chipped in, and then the entire community of Murray embraced it. It began with a few people at St. John’s, but it quickly became Murray’s. The whole community pitched in. All were joyful to do what they could with their resources to help out. When Medicaid expanded and the need for a free medical clinic was reduced, Angel’s Attic shifted, still focusing on the needs of those who are in poverty. They now give thousands of dollars to HOPE Calloway and Needline every year. They support people who need help with housing, food and clothing. They provide, not only through their monetary donations, but through the thrift shop structure itself. People who don’t have much and those who have plenty can all afford the household goods, fun items, and clothing in this store. If they can’t, there is a voucher system that can be accessed through other local nonprofits. In their own way, Angel’s Attic helps widen the Jericho Road, giving more access to needed items, to housing, to food and utility help to those in need. They are part of God’s plan to shower the world with compassion and mercy.
If we don’t get too bogged down in the legal bits, in trying to keep talks of what is a neighbor or how we care for each other on the intellectual level, but lead with the heart first, using our intellect to support what the heart desires, we can do much in this world. God has given us the gift of compassion, those needed gut punches that help us move forward, even when the way seems scary or tough. Collectively, we have the power to widen the road, to reduce the number of robberies, to make the world a bit safer and better for all. It starts small, but can expand until none are by the side of the road. This is God’s dream. This is loving our neighbor. Amen.
