Fith Sunday after Pentecost

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost | July 10, 2022 | David Brooks |

“A lawyer stood up to test Jesus…”

When you read that sentence, does your mind go to some image or scene of a standoff, a showdown, a duel? Two combatants enter the ring, step out into the street, draw their rapiers, and face one another. The story Luke tells almost has the scent of a good Western: the disciples are streaming into the saloon, full of good cheer at what they have experienced on the road, dusting off their clothes and pulling off their leather gloves. They belly up to the bar where everyone is getting a nip of the good stuff from the glass shelf overhead, not that rotgut down in the bar well. Jesus raises his glass and says to the disciples gathered around him “you are fortunate, ones! Many of the wise and great yearned to experience what you’ve seen and heard.”

And suddenly the din of the saloon hushes as a student of the law—maybe, in your mind’s eye, he’s wearing that infamous black hat—rises from a hitherto unseen table and says “you talk big, Jesus, but let’s find out what you really know. What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

At this point, maybe we should pull a post-modern move and stop the film, step out on the set, and ask questions. Take a good look at our lawyer friend. Why does he have a black hat? Should he? Is he a bad guy? Why is he a bad guy? After all, he’s asking our question. We want to know the answer. We want life that endures—no, that’s not quite right, we want life that is full, that does not fail us, that is comprehensive and complete, life that is authentic and good and true. We are the lawyer, ready to argue our case, confident that if we nail the right career, cultivate the right acquaintances, secure the right life partner, buy into the right neighborhood, join the right political party, read the right authors, take the right pill, find the right surgeon, cultivate the right self—why, a life that is fulsome and free is ours for the taking.

Eager to justify ourselves, to claim that what we do is freedom, we are not ready for what Jesus shows us. In the parable, the two persons we are expected to admire, to hold as exemplars, and to imitate are not walking the way of life—they are moving away from eternal life, not toward it. Far from being free, they are bound. We might, we could justify their actions: they have responsibilities, they have obligations; the road is dangerous, the man lying there a trap, they are prudent; they made a hard choice of one duty against another. Yet all our justifications of them, of us, comes to the same place. They did not choose rightly, they were prevented, they were not free. They were not able to be neighbor because they did not see themselves as neighbor to the man on the road.

Sadly, these days we try to limit and circumscribe and define as narrowly as we can who are our neighbors. We draw our boundaries close. We are not free, because we do not see ourselves as neighbor. The Law is clear: how we love and regard others is deeply intertwined with how we love and regard ourselves. If we define ourselves narrowly; if we only love those things that are unique about each of us individually; if we only see those things that set us apart from others, then we will only be able to see those who share our narrowness as neighbors. As an author from the early 1960s during the titanic struggle for civil rights observed:

a terrible thing about the world in which we live is that it tries to force each of us to regard ourselves in deficient terms, to love ourselves for the wrong reasons. Racial arrogance, economic demands, or nationalistic jingoism in a group cultivates equal and opposite reactions from similarly situated groups…but when I acknowledge that God has made me, searches my heart and judges me; in that judgement it is Christ who suffers for me and redeems me, well, can’t that be said of everyone I meet? In such a truth, I have every reason to greet with love all that cross my path.

What happens to our lawyer? In your mind’s eye, how does this scene end? I think he discovers that he has no reason to justify himself, no reason to narrowly define his neighborhood. I hope that he lives into the broad blessing of God, who gives freely, holding nothing back. I pray that he joins Jesus, clings to him as the only good worth having, holds onto him with heart and soul and mind and strength. I expect that, if my hopes and prayers are answered, he will rejoice for his full life and for the things that he will see and hear as he offers himself as neighbor to others. Amen.

—

Pastor Dave Brooks

Pr.Dave.Brooks@zoho.com

Durham, NC USA