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Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37
A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
We have fascinating texts today. First in Colossians 1:10 where it says: “Lead a life worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work . . . .”
Then, of course, we also have the famous parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. People misunderstand what the Good Samaritan is about. They think it’s about good works, but it’s really about the Samaritans. It’s like the story of the ten lepers in Luke 17:11-19. One came back to say “Thank you.”
Our text in Luke 10 is about: Love God; love your neighbor. Many of our hymns and popular Christian songs are about love: “Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love.” “Love, love, love; that’s what it’s all about.” “They will know you are Christians by your love, by your love.” That’s the message: Do the loving thing.
That’s why this text is so fascinating. It’s like the lawyer who asks: “Who is my neighbor?” because he wants to get out of that question.
We forget how the text begins. It quotes the Old Testament: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind.” Four times: “all.”
It reminds us of 1 Corinthians 13:7: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Four times: “all.”
There is something striking here about “all.”
Remember the Sermon on the Mount. It says in Matthew 5:17:
“Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them . . . till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. . . .”
He’s not referring to the Ten Commandments; he’s referring to the 613 Commandments of the Law. He means the whole thing.
It says also: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We work at that. Remember in this same chapter, in Matthew 5:44, it says: “Love your enemies.” We may say: “Yes, well, but I don’t have to like them.” It then goes on in Matthew 18:21-22 into: “How often shall I forgive? 7 times? No, 70 X 7.” Back in Matthew 5:22 it says: “Everyone who is angry with his brother is liable for judgment.” And 1 John 3:15: “Any one who hates his brother is a murderer.” In Matthew 5:28 it says: “Every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
This is completely and totally to say what Scripture says.
Thus Matthew 5 ends with: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” That’s the same as Romans 10:5 and Galatians 5:3: You live by the law, then you have to do it 100%.
We, then, when we look at this say: Remember Jesus ate with sinners, and he didn’t keep all those laws about the purity of foods. And he said the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the sabbath. He modified those laws.
Yet what he did basically was radicalize them. He says: “With all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, all your mind.”
It’s not a matter of good intentions.
It’s not a matter of “you’re only human.”
It’s not a matter of “do the best you can.”
It’s totally. All.
It’s like Luke 18 and the person says: “I’ve kept the law” (Luke 18:21). And Jesus says to him: “Sell all that you have and give it to the poor.” All.
What do we do? It’s hopeless. Impossible. And the only way we can get around this is lie to ourselves. No one likes to do that.
It’s distressing when people tell jokes about coming to the pearly gates because it’s always about you do this, or you do that.
There’s only one thing that helps, and that is that he stands in my place. Clothed in his righteousness alone. Otherwise, we’re lost.
Thank God that he stands in our place, that he has taken our place; it’s taken care of.
It really comes down to a matter of how you use the Bible.
People turn Jesus into a new Moses, a new lawgiver. That of course leads to hopelessness. Because it says all, all, all, all.
Love never ends. It doesn’t say: “Do as much as you can.” But rather, “with all your strength, with all your mind.”
It does say: “What matters is your intentions.” No, “with all your heart.”
Thank God he has taken care of this through what he has done through Jesus Christ on the cross.
So how do we live the kind of life we are called upon to live? We’re upon to fight a battle against evil—not because we are able to do what only God can do. But we’re called upon then to live the life that is needed for our neighbor on this earth.
The most convenient way of spelling this out is found in Romans 13:8-10 where Paul quotes this statement: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” It says in verse 8 if you love your neighbor, you fulfill the law. What does the law say? “You shall not kill, commit adulty, not steal, not covet, all this is summed up in: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Then comes the decisive factor in verse 10: “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” The purpose of the law is for taking care of this world, not preparing for the next.
This means that we do not possess absolute, unchangeable laws. If the law no longer takes care of this world, it can and must be changed. As even Luther put it, we must write our own Ten Commandments to fit the times.
Take, for example, property and stealing. We are committed, as those who ask: “What does harm?” —that today, as in other times, there is a need for private property. That means we have a concern about stealing and the harm it causes to individuals and society.
How can we say that? If love is what it’s all about, then why not from each according to his ability to each according to his need? That’s what it really says in the first chapter of the Book of Acts, right there in the Bible.
But it doesn’t work. Why doesn’t it work? Because of sin. Sin in two directions. Laziness and greed. Those two things means that all kinds of communes, and they’ve been tried for centuries, fall apart. All those ideas that we can just be loving don’t work because all human systems breakdown because of laziness and greed. People find ways to game the system.
We don’t build a society like a commune because of sin. Basically, we are called up to find ways to balance off laziness on the one hand and greed on the other.
All systems will fail. They fail because we fall into laziness and greed. But we also face the fact that the Ten Commandments don’t mention greed, but Commandments 9 and 10 mention covetousness, which is the same thing.
We’re always looking for some kind of security that can give us a leg up. But things fall apart, including that our own lives come to an end. We can’t find security except in him.
We’re called upon to use our common reason to see what harms the neighbor and to promote behaviors and laws that foster a healthy neighborhood and society.
We will, however, always fail. That is not a counsel of despair, but that reminds us that we live by forgiveness, by what he did on the cross.
And when it comes to measuring what we do, it is in his righteousness alone, and thank God we can be certain of that, because Christ’s righteousness on the cross is complete. He did it all.
He has made you his own in Baptism. We can therefore go forward in confidence asking: “What is that minimizes harm to our neighbor?” and working at that because that’s what we’re called to do.
Amen