Pastor Ralph Douglas West - Love In The Abstract, Love In The Concrete | Luke 10:25-37

0:01 This is the day the Lord has made. We rejoice and we are glad in it. Amen. Thank you, choir, for blessing us this morning on this Lord's Day as we have gathered here to worship God in spirit and in truth. Take the Word of God this morning with me and open your Bibles to Luke chapter 10. Commencing at verse 25. Well, that's good. I'm glad that you still bring your Bible to church.

1:05 No, I'm serious about that. One of my young members helped me with that. I said, you have a Bible in your hand. You don't have a pad or phone. And this is what my young member said. Said, no, I can't use that. I look at too many other things on there. And so I said, well, I don't want to know what you watch. So he said, so I separate my Bible from my phone. It was just good to see. Verse 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?

2:02 what's written in the law how do you read it 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 you've answered correctly Jesus replied do this and you will live but he wanted to justify himself so he asked Jesus and who is my neighbor Thank you. in reply Jesus said a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by Ramos they stripped him of his clothes beat him and they went away leaving him half dead a priest happened to be going down the same road and when he saw the man he passed by on the other side so too a Levi When he came to the place, he saw him pass by on the other side.

3:15 But the Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was. And when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wombs, pouring on oil and wine. And then he put the man on his donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. Look, look after him, please, he said. And when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expenses you may have.

3:52 Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? the expert in the law replied the one who had mercy on him Jesus told him go and do likewise this is the word of God amen you may be seated several years ago a famous seminary new testament professor ended all of his lectures lessons his sermons at the seminary or in church children meditations eulogy orations marriage celebrations with the words and go and love every lesson lecture sermon he ended with an invitation or call to go love and so the students nicknamed him Dr. Love after retirement Dr. Love wanted to do like most academics do who have worked in their mind for so many years, he wanted to do something with his hands. And so he went out and dug up his driveway.

5:18 He wanted to put a new driveway in. He dug it up, put the rebar down, and mixed his cement, poured it in the drive, and waited for it to settle when a group of children chasing a dog ran across the wet cement, leaving paw prints and footprints. He grabbed his garden hoe and started chasing at the children, blurting out unlovely things. And his wife intervening and just said, Dr. Love, don't forget who you are, love. And he said, that was love in the abstract. This is love in the concrete. That piece of humor from a professor of the New Testament actually sets in motion what Jesus did in the opposites. And that was he too said, I don't want to talk about love in the abstract.

6:24 I want to talk about love in the concrete. Over the years, I've always kept up, just because somebody may ask about Miss Universe or Miss World or Miss America, and I've always been interested in the interview of these pageant queens when they would be asked their vision for the world, and they would always at least say two things, world peace are to love everybody. to love everybody. that's an easy way to get around loving somebody is to say I love everybody. Jesus is not talking this morning to you or to me about loving everybody. He's talking about loving somebody.

7:20 And this is difficult for us because as long as we keep love in the abstract, We never have to worry about paw prints and children running across the wet cement of our unsettled convictions. And yet this morning, God's not calling you or me to love everybody. He said, I want to know, can you love somebody? This was the problem that takes place in the story that we have read. I know that that shocked some of you. All of our life, we've always been talking about the universality of love, loving people whose names you don't know and histories that you're unaware of. Jesus says, I want you to love somebody.

8:12 This is what troubled a lawyer one day who came to Jesus. Jesus had had encounters with lawyers in chapter 7 of Luke chapter 11 sets the stage for this lawyer it's the line that's borrowed from Shakespeare's Henry VI when Dan the Butcher says kill all the lawyers Let's go. that's not what Jesus is getting to, but he had had a run-in with lawyers in chapter seven who rejected John the Baptist and thus rejected the purposes of God, or rather in Luke seven. And then in Luke 11, Jesus at a big gathering like this one singled out everybody, and the lawyers cried out, well, that includes us too, And Jesus said, you're the ones I'm talking about.

9:16 And this day a lawyer comes. This is not someone who is dealing with criminal law or dealing with corporate law or entertainment law. These are lawyers of the Torah, the five books. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the sixth book of Joshua. These are the people who have studied the law, the God's law. They're experts in the law. They're not just called that. They possess one characteristic that no one else possesses for the most part, and that is they can read. This distinguished them as being part of the religious elite. They knew exactly what they were asking Jesus when he was standing around and talking and they asked a question, this particular lawyer on this occasion wanted to know what must I do to inherit eternal life? That is a good question.

10:18 It's a question that's on the lips of people every day. What is this eternal life that you're talking about? What is this exoteric experience that I will engage in when I die? And that's not what he's getting to. He's an expert. He wants to know about eternal life now. How do you inherit eternal life, qualitative life, good life on earth? Time doesn't permit. I could have a lot of fun talking about the different things that people say that we can do to inherit a good life on earth.

10:58 He wanted to know that. And so in this story, Jesus says to him, you know the law. you've read it, what does the law say? And so he doesn't come up with his own invention to answer this. Remember, he's an expert in the laws. He reads from his little phylactery boxes every day, some morning devotion. And rarely does he ever read and not read from Deuteronomy chapter six or Leviticus chapter 19. He said, oh, I mean, you know, The law says to love God with all of your heart and all of your soul and all of your strength and with all of your mind. And then he blended another verse into that. He says, and then you're to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said, well, you're asking me what you already know.

11:58 He says, but I have another question. And this is one of these ways, we call it Socratic thinking, but Jews perfected this, particularly these rabbis. They always ask a question and answer the question with a question. Have you noticed that? Yeah. They answer questions with questions. A friend of mine said that he asked a Jewish friend, why do you do that? Why do Jewish rabbis always answer a question with a question? And he said he had a wry look on his face and answered, why not? To love God with the totality of my being is how I love my neighbor.

12:56 Jesus says, well, you answered this right. You said it the right way. He said, do this and you'll live. that word to do carries a lot of weight and the way that it is written in the Greek New Testament it's an aorist participle I apologize for sounding a little pedantic one of my members accused me of sounding like I'm trying to take you into a classroom to teach you something I told him, well, my mama sent me to school and said, whatever you learn, bring some of that back to the church. So I'm not apologizing for it. I'm just saying that this is such an important piece of history.

13:57 That if you get it, then you get what he's getting to. Jesus said, do this. do this and you'll live remember he had already asked what must I do do what must I do what exercise what what do I do that is good to inherit eternal life that's what he's getting to do I put $20 in the collection plate do I take a box of macaroni to a hunger shelter? Do I pack up a blanket to give to somebody? What am I to do? And so he thought that by doing something, this would qualify him to be an inheritor of eternal life. He completely missed the whole law and that is that God's gifts to us comes by way of grace.

14:55 That God, we didn't work for it. He graces us with it. For those of you that don't know, that's your time to shout. that we're here this morning as recipients of God's amazing grace. Hallelujah. You don't deserve it. We didn't earn it. We didn't work for it. We used to say, I'm blessed, I'm blessed, I'm blessed. I'm blessed. Don't deserve it. And yet, I am blessed. Grace, grace, grace. Don't deserve it. And yet, we have been graced. Jesus said, well, if you know this, do it. said and then you'll live.

15:49 You've answered correctly. He should have left it at that. But there's something about people who show up that always want to test. how much you know and he said, well, who is my neighbor? because now he's living in the abstract.

16:26 He's trying to get Jesus to engage in a study of words, get Jesus to talk about something analytical, to carefully critique what he has already said.

16:46 And Jesus says, I want to get you out the abstract and put you in the concrete. And Jesus didn't go out and say, now, neighbor means, the word neighbor is defined. Jesus says, let me tell you a story.

17:10 Stories are powerful because they are never at the mercy of an argument. And so Jesus says, one day there was a certain man that was going down the dangerous road, the bloody way from Jerusalem down to Jericho. That steep perpendicular that goes to the lowest point on the map. And it's a dangerous road. I looked up this morning about dangerous roads I wanted to know what are some of the most dangerous roads I knew that it's kind of hard to stretch your mind Jerusalem to Jericho And I-45 is a highway in Texas From Galveston to Dallas is in the top two most dangerous stretches of road in the United States.

18:18 They're already calculating how many people would die this weekend on that road. It's the most dangerous stretch of road in all of Texas. That road from Jerusalem down to Jericho was a hotspot for robbery.

18:43 And a certain man one day was walking that road. It got the nickname, the Bloody Way. And he was victimized violently and he was accosted. He was robbed of his coat and his watch. They even took his shoes. and then they beat him and left him there half dead. Whimpering between life and death.

19:14 One day a priest came and the priest saw him on the same road that he was traveling and crossed over and didn't bother him. sometimes we give these this priest a hard time you know we don't really empathize with him but put yourself in his shoes he's a religious professional he lives by a certain code of ethics that he is aware because of the law that if he touches this body he is ceremonially unclean if this body dies in his arms. He has to dismiss himself from ecclesiastical or church duties until he is reinstated back into the college of priests to do his work in the temple again.

20:16 And so he looks at him, he saw him, and he passes on by, understanding that maybe when I get to Jericho I'll report it to the benevolent committee and somebody can send somebody up the road to go and do it.

20:37 The Levi comes along and he saw the man beaten and bloody and on the side of the road and he too is suspended between, sees his man suspended between life and death. Now to really get this picture is to say that the priest, if he's the pastor of the church, then the Levi would come around the associate pastor of the church.

21:10 This is the one that does the administrative work around the church to make sure that the machine is running smoothly. and there's a possibility that he takes a note of what he saw and say I'm going to use this next week in the sermon as a good illustration and have a discussion around how dangerous the road is and how you ought to plan to travel differently. And then this fellow comes along a Samaritan.

21:51 Now for those of you who don't know who the Samaritan is, this is a despised, rejected piece of humanity. I was thinking how can you wrap your arms around to help a congregation feel who this person is?

22:12 Some of you remember when the end of Vietnam War there were black fathers and Vietnamese mothers and they had these Ameri-Asian children and they were trying to get support and get them cared for. And that was the one group because of their ethnic origin that nobody wanted to put their arms around.

22:40 That's what you're looking at. You're looking at someone who has been abjected because of racialized visions. He knew this. I mean, you know, but he saw a man on the road and looking beyond the priests and the Levite who may have walked by because of, I don't know, religious orders, maybe out of fear to be dehumanized. or maybe they found themselves in a time crunch and they said, well, I can't do it. He set that aside and saw need that provoked justice. And he cared for the man.

23:43 And that's it, he cared for the man. to the extent that caring for this beaten, raw body, he sees this body and he binds up the womb, pours oil, puts the man on the back of his donkey, takes him to the nearest inn, pays his fare, and then says, and here's some extra change. in event that he goes beyond the bill I'll be back to pay that to this story on the surface doesn't sound like much to many of us but one of the things about reading parables is that if you really listen to them they always carry with them a delayed detonation they explode in your hand so I can tell some of you you've heard this so much you you think you know everything about I mean it's just the way people are and yet when you read it and reread it again you you you see something in that that is loaded with some stuff one of the things is did you notice how and Luke is a physician and a historian did you notice a word that he played on they saw.

25:20 When you reread it, pay attention to it. The priest saw the man. The Levite saw the man. The Samaritan saw the man. How do you see broken humanity and not be moved by it? That's one of the issues that comes out of the story. All three of them saw the same broken, abused, humiliated, discarded body.

25:53 Yet only one of them moves in a direction to do something about it. It is because it's not what you see, but it's what's inside of you. One of the things that I've always wanted to be able to do is critique art. I haven't gotten to it yet. But I love art, but I don't know what I'm looking at. and some of you are like that you stand with people and they have such a perception of heart and then they say you see that and a Pharisee like me says what? and they're able to point it out because they possess something inside of them to see. And whenever you can look at broken lives and battered humanity, and it does not move you, it's probably something wrong with you on the inside.

27:01 When you think about what our governor has imposed by law on bodies at the border. and how we remembered on hearts back these officers at the border with their leather whips were beating these bodies or to see a bloated baby and a father drowned in the Guadalupe and people can look at that and not be moved to say that we must do something to help broken and fallen and discarded humanity. Something's wrong with us. And that's not just a Christian ethic.

27:57 World religions all weigh in at the same point to say, theologically, we may not agree about God. We may not agree about our community of religiosity, but ethically, we all can get together, and we believe that God has called us to love fallen humanity, not in the abstract but in the concrete. Because anybody can talk about love in the abstract.

28:29 There's something else when you talk about love in the concrete. There was nothing attractive about that man who was beaten on the road to draw the Samaritan to his aid. the man on the road wouldn't be able to compensate him in the condition that he's in.

28:53 But he saw a body like his own. That's why when you read the history of lynching in America it does something to you viscerally that somebody could turn a lynching lynching into a literal religious church service. and new lynchings are equally as disastrous. Any man's death, Dawn says, diminishes me. I'm involved in mankind. And God in Christ is trying to move us to understand that how can you say that you love God who you have never seen and hate your brother, your sister, who you see every day.

29:50 By the way, that's a scripture. And here Jesus is. He said, look at it. And here this Samaritan is looking at this broken body on the road. and all he knows to do at that point is to use what he has in order to care for this person. Several years ago, one of my young members had gone off to college. She had run into a group of fundamental Christians and she came back and she was angry with me, angry with her mother and father and told us that we hadn't taught her anything about the Bible.

30:49 That all of a sudden she had run into a group that knew everything and we didn't know anything and she called me sophomoric and that I didn't have the spirit. I knew if life would be fair, she would call me again. And she did. and she said that the group that she's part of said that there is, and here's the language she used, one plan of salvation. I knew what she was getting to.

31:22 She said, but I can't find that one plan of salvation. I said, well, Jesus is a good doctor. He heals but he doesn't prescribe the same medicine for everybody. She was a little concerned at that point, and I said, well, when Nicodemus came to Jesus, not only at night, but in the night of his spirituality, he said, you must be born again. When a woman came to him at a well, he said to her, you don't need to be born again. You need to drink water that you'll never thirst again. And then when a young rich boy came to who was a ruler, he said, you don't need to be born again, neither do you need to drink water, you need to sell everything that you have and give it to the poor. Now all of this is tied together beneath a salvation line that Jesus gives us the life and hope that we need. But God does not prescribe for you the same thing he prescribes for me. But when love gets in the concrete, He says, care for one another with the resources that I have entrusted you with.

32:49 I'm done now. I'm done. Jesus asked him, he said, I got to ask you one thing. Which one of these? The priest, the Levite, the Samaritan. Which one of them, which one do you believe embodied what it means to be a neighbor? Which one? And he said, the one that showed mercy. Mercy is active pity. Mercy is getting into the skin of somebody else. Now, I need to say this because when you hear a message like this, you want to go out. And he didn't say that you can help everybody. The neighbor is the person that's next to your feet. He says, don't go looking all over Houston.

33:42 The neighbor that you need to help is probably in arm's length. But he also says, doesn't say, that you got to carry the one that you help for the rest of their lives. You help and you bind and you heal and you encourage and you lift up and then you tell them now. You go and do likewise. passing on to help somebody else. If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a word or a song, if I can show somebody that they are traveling wrong, then my living shall not be in vain. But you know, Jesus can talk about this because he didn't just talk to talk. Jesus walked the walk Because one day he was heading Not from Jerusalem to Jericho But he was coming through Jericho On his way to Jerusalem And he met a man on the side of the road Whose life was bound up in blindness And he gave him new sight on the road And the same way God met Bartimaeus He can meet you And he can meet me And he can meet you And he can meet us and tell us that we can go on and help somebody else.

35:06 Yeah. I don't want a Christianity. And I don't want a love that's in the abstract. I want some love in the concrete. I want to have some children's feet in the wet cement, even the paws of the dog, disrupting my world so that I can show to them what love really looks like. Today you can do that.

35:42 You too today can put your love in the concrete. Our Father, help us not to have an abstract Christianity. Help us to have a Christianity, a faith, a religion, a spirit that is grounded in what is real and tangible in the same way that you showed your love to us on Calvary. Now those who are here today who have experienced lovelessness, may we now, God, by your grace, feel your love afresh and anew. some here today have gone through abandonment may they feel today now your reconciling work teach us to love we pray in the strong name of Jesus we pray for those who are here and those who are watching who say I need Jesus today I need a church I need to be in a family like that Samaritan outcast on the borders and yet love enough to see see my needs thank you Lord for what you have done and what you continue to do in the strong name of Jesus we pray and all God's people say together amen give God praise the door to church is open for those of you