A sermon on Luke 10:23-37 for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity. Delivered by Pastor Caleb Strutz.
On the first day of fourth grade, when my teacher was setting the rules for the classroom, one of the things she said was that there’s no such thing as a stupid question. Maybe you’ve heard that before. As an instructor, you want to encourage your students to ask questions. If they do, it shows that they’re paying attention and engaged with the material and sometimes things just don’t quite click or need to be explained more thoroughly, no such thing as a stupid question. Immediately after my teacher said that, one student set out to prove her wrong. He raised his hand and said, “What would be a stupid question?” Now that was a stupid question. He had just heard the statement that was made, knew there was no such thing, he wasn’t asking a genuine question but was trying to be a smart alec. And, as good of a sentiment as that might be, there are such things as stupid questions. If a student hasn’t been paying attention or is trying to be a know-it-all or wants to derail the teacher to waste class time—certainly no genuine question is a stupid question, but some questions are stupid.
In our Gospel today, Jesus is engaged in a round of questions, a back-and-forth with a certain lawyer. And the lawyer asks a stupid question, “Who is my neighbor?” This isn’t a genuine, sincere question, but a question seeking an abstraction and an excuse. Jesus answers with concrete action both in what He desires for us and in what He has done.
I. A question seeking an abstraction
So I think we’re all familiar with the parable of the good samaritan, but the context in which it is told is really important to understand what exactly is going on here.
There’s “a certain lawyer,” we shouldn’t read this as “lawyer” in our sense of the word, this is a canon lawyer, an expert in Jewish religious law. He’s a man that knows the Scriptures but interacts with them, as we’ll see, in a more academic way.
He asks Jesus, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” A decent question. But we see where he’s coming from. He’s not genuinely seeking information from Jesus, but testing Him, trying to trip Him up and get Him to say something wrong.
Jesus flips the question back on him, you can sense he’s a little taken aback by this, but he gives a good answer, he accurately summarizes the Law, Jesus says, “You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.” The conversation could have ended here. He’s got the answer to his question. But it doesn’t.
This religious expert is left a little embarrassed. He’s put on the pretense of asking this complicated question that needs a teacher’s advice when the answer he’s led to give is well known and simple. He’s painted himself into a corner. So he asks a stupid question. “And who is my neighbor?”
This isn’t the question of someone genuinely trying to love his neighbor. This is the question of someone “wanting to justify himself,” as Luke says. He wants to pretend like the simple answer he’s given isn’t actually so simple. Instead of looking for ways to love his neighbor as himself, he’s looking to make his neighbor an abstraction, to come up with a list of people that he doesn’t have to love. That’s a stupid question.
Now we’re familiar with this text, we know that this is a bad question to ask, but in giving an answer to that question, we can be tempted to make the same mistakes that he did.
The popular moral of the story, perhaps your go-to answer to this question is that everyone is my neighbor. That sounds nice, it sounds pious, it seems to avoid this pitfall, but it really doesn’t.
Because if everyone is my neighbor, does that mean that I’m responsible to buy groceries for everyone on my block? If everyone is my neighbor, am I morally required to empty my bank account to support all the orphans in China? If everyone in the world is my neighbor, well I can’t possibly help them all. If everyone is my neighbor in theory, then no one is my neighbor in practice.
We commit the same error as this lawyer. We make our neighbor an abstraction, look for ways to wiggle out of what Jesus plainly says. We can become so familiar with the Gospel that we don’t sit in the Law and let it do its work. Jesus’ conclusion isn’t, “Yeah, there’s no way you can do this so why even try?” No, it’s, “Go and do likewise.”
If we default to painting this task as something that’s impossible from the get-go, then we’re not truly sitting with what Jesus says. Our reaction to this shouldn’t be, “Well, I can’t,” because that’s just another way out of it. Our reaction must be, “I haven’t.” Sure, there are times that I have, but that only highlights all the times I’ve failed.
If you can still breathe after reading this parable, you’re not doing it right. We’re presented with this standard that is impossible, but that we are still held to. There’s no way out. No excuses, no abstractions, no justifications. This is the point that Jesus is trying to drive home. You can’t justify yourself. You can’t define your neighbor differently to cut yourself some slack. Any excuses that we make are stupid questions that show that we’re not taking this seriously. “Go and do likewise” is a heavy burden.
II. An answer with concrete action
But we can see why Jesus is forced to make this point. Certainly He knows that this man needs to be struck with the Law and stripped of his own righteousness. But beyond that, think of what this question entails, “Who is my neighbor?”
If Jesus answers in the way that this guy is looking for, so that he’s only held responsible to his fellow Jews and not to Samaritans or Gentiles, think of what that would mean for Jesus and His mission. If perfectly fulfilling the Law meant you only had to love Jews—you can see why Jesus is so offended at this question, why He goes off on this big story to prove how wrong this guy is.
Because Jesus loves everyone. And for Him, that’s not an abstraction. Jesus is the only one who has met this impossible standard perfectly. His love knows no limits, will take no exceptions, truly is for all people.
And this isn’t an abstraction. This isn’t a generalization. Jesus backs it up with concrete action. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He offered Himself as the perfect sacrifice for sin. He atones not just for some people, but for all people. He will not answer “who is my neighbor” because He will not limit His work of salvation. Jesus’ death is for everyone. He forgives all sins, no exceptions. He shows mercy on all men.
Jesus isn’t willing to dignify this question with a response. He flips it again, asks the lawyer what he thinks. But even in telling of the story, we see how Jesus flips the script. If the moral of the story was simply “you’re supposed to be nice to everyone,” then it’d make more sense to have the Samaritan in the ditch and a Jew helping him. But by making the Samaritan the neighbor, Jesus shows to this lawyer how someone that he thought was beneath him is capable of showing mercy in a way that was beyond him.
And so it is with Christ. He did the impossible, showed mercy in a way that was unthinkable. He left His throne in heaven to become a man in humility. He fulfilled the impossible Law perfectly. By His death, He showed infinite love and mercy. Unthinkable. But Jesus did it. He loved perfectly where we have failed and He loves you perfectly as well.
So how are we supposed to react to this parable? Certainly Jesus’ point to this lawyer is to show him his sin, to show that he hasn’t kept the Law, to crush him to prepare him for the Gospel.
We can approach this text differently. We know of our sin and have received forgiveness by faith in Christ. So when Jesus says, “Go and do likewise,” now this is something that we actually are capable of doing. Only through the Gospel are we now capable of doing what the Law says. Only because we have received the love of Christ are we now able to extend it to others.
The moral of the story isn’t “Everyone is my neighbor.” But “anyone can be my neighbor.” The question we are to ask is not “who is my neighbor?” but “to whom I can be a neighbor?” Your neighbor is not an abstraction, but an individual. Your neighbor has a name and specific things that they’re struggling with. Your neighbor is someone in need whom you encounter on the road of this life.
Certainly we aren’t to exclude any type or category from this possibility. But in order to start, we need to think in specifics. It’s so easy to come away from Scripture thinking “I need to love people, I need to share the Gospel” in generalities. The challenge that Jesus has for you is to think concretely, to think in particulars.
Who do I know who needs help and how can I help them? Which of my family members, friends, physical neighbors needs to hear the Gospel? Christ doesn’t call you to love in generalities or in abstractions. He calls you to love people. Individuals. Start by getting to know the people in your life. Maybe that starts here with just learning everyone’s name and taking a personal interest in them and learning what they’re going through. And that same attitude, cultivated in this safe space, extends to the rest of your life. You probably cross paths with more people than you think. Get to know them. Ask “to whom can I be a neighbor?” View the tasks that Christ gives you as applying to individuals. Everyone isn’t your neighbor because everyone isn’t a real person. But a particular individual is your neighbor.
“Go and do likewise” will suffocate you if you let it. If we think in terms of “what shall I do to inherit eternal life” as the lawyer did, it will. But we know that that’s not how it works. That, too, is a stupid question. We rely, not on what we have done, but on what Christ has done. Because of His perfect love and mercy, He has won salvation for you and gives it as a free gift, a true inheritance, to those He has made His children. Our love flows from the love He has shown us. And “greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (Jn 15:13). Jesus is your friend, He considers Himself to be your neighbor. Amen.
