Ignorant Love
Bible Text: Luke 10:25-37
My in-laws are originally from the rural Northeast corner of Pennsylvania, and while they don’t have any kind of strong accent—just regular Midwest—there are a few things they say that I’ve never heard from anybody else. One of these is the word ignorant. Okay, I’ve heard the word before, but in Northeast Pennsylvania, it takes on a whole new meaning—something like, big, over the top, ridiculous. As in, that ice cream sundae you’ve got there is ignorant. Or, Bill Gates’ 40 building estate is ignorant. Or, the rain on the afternoon of the 4th last week was ignorant. Or at least it was in Columbia, anyway.
And when we talk about the behavior of the Samaritan in Jesus’ parable today, I think we could also consider it ignorant. Not ONLY does the Samaritan stop to help the guy, not ONLY does he nurse his
wounds, not ONLY does he put him on his own donkey, and not ONLY does he leave an extravagant amount of money with the innkeeper to care for the man, but he does it for someone who normally wouldn’t give him the time of day. Ignorant.
So what’s Jesus going for here? What’s this story all about? The introduction we get from Luke tells us that Jesus uses this story to teach an expert in the law. He reminds me of a few of my fellow classmates in graduate school. They wanted to be in on the debate, and had a kind of glow of triumph whenever they asked a question that could stump the teacher. Or at least make her pause. In the mini-scene that leads into the parable, the expert asks Jesus “What do I have to do to get eternal life?” Jesus answers the question with another question and the expert comes up with his own answer. Love God with all your heart, mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. Then Jesus says, “that’s the right answer,” and so the guy realizes that he missed the chance to ask the smart question after all, and he’s not going to get a good grade in participation. So he comes up with a definition question: Who is my neighbor?
I actually feel kind of sorry for the guy at this point, because what he’s hoping for, it seems to me, is a good discussion: which people are neighbors? Which ones can be excluded? He wants some parameters. You can’t just love everybody, but then it probably also means more than the people living right next door. So what are the limits? What are the parameters? But Jesus takes things to a whole different level. He won’t draw the lines. He tells a shocking story about two people whose religious codes keep them from showing mercy, and an outcast who goes beyond the pale.
Indulge me for a minute. I’d like to retell this story with some more modern characters to try and communicate some of the feel of it for that first audience.
A businessman was walking down the street when he was mugged and beaten up by some thugs who left him on the sidewalk, thinking he was dead. A minister drove past, saw the man, and kept driving. In the same way a church deacon drove up, saw the man, and kept driving. But a drug dealer was passing by and saw the man and felt terribly sorry for him. He tore up his designer shirt to bind the man’s wounds. Then he put the man in his own car and drove him to the hospital. At the hospital he went to the front desk and said, “This is my good friend. I want him to get the best possible care. Please send all the hospital bills to my address. I’ll pay whatever you spend.”
Crazy, huh? Doesn’t make the religious leaders look good, that’s for sure. Now granted, in Jesus’ day the religious laws for priests and Levites included prohibitions on touching dead bodies, so if they thought the man was dead, then it would make sense for them to go around to the other side. And it’s true, too, that a Samaritan wasn’t automatically a criminal, like a drug dealer, but the Judeans did think of the Samaritans with contempt and spite.
So given that the Samaritan in the parable is someone that the man who was robbed would normally despise and avoid, his actions are that much more surprising. Especially compared to the religious officials, who carefully follow the rules that have been laid down for them. I mean, he LAVISHES his attention, time and money on this man. It’s downright ignorant.
And then the clincher is: Jesus turns to the expert in law and says, “go and do likewise.” What? I don’t know about you, but this is hard stuff for me. Go out there and find the really needy people, whether they might normally be your enemies or your friends, and spend ignorant amounts of time and money and heartache on them. That kind of a commitment might mean changing your whole life around.
My temptation here is to qualify this a little bit. Maybe find some of my own parameters, right? Figure out who is the most needy, or who will be most grateful, or who I like best. Figure out a way to screen some people out. But that’s just what the legal expert wanted to do with his question: have a set answer for who is included and who is excluded.
To be fair it’s hard to tell if Jesus is being entirely serious in this story. I think there may be a glint of humor in the whole confrontation. The legal expert, seems a little uptight. And then Jesus gives him this story, just piling it on—how great that Samaritan is, what generous things the Samaritan does, what a nice man the Samaritan is—and at the end, if you’ll notice, the expert still can’t even say the word “Samaritan” out loud. “The… the… the… one who showed him mercy,” he stutters out. Talk about rendering someone speechless!
So maybe Jesus is trying to get at a new kind of attitude. An attitude that expects anything to happen, and doesn’t try to hedge God in with rules. An attitude of mercy toward even our enemies. And maybe to loosen up a little and not worry some much about whether we’re being graded, or if we’ve got the answer right, or if our parameters are laid out correctly.
That being said, however, there is a deeper call here. A life-changing call, if we can figure out how to answer it. To find a way to love unreasonably, impractically, and to love people who might otherwise be our enemies.
How on earth could this be possible? I’ll tell you. It’s not something we can do alone. It’s not by our own power, but by trusting in God’s love that we can learn to give this ignorant love. I don’t know about you, but I am most kind-hearted and ready to serve when I myself feel loved. When I have felt that brush of the holy, that unexpected abundance, that surprising joy that is the reign of God in the world.
And if you’ll let me flip the parable over one more time, I’ll say this: the Samaritan in the story may be an example to us of how we should behave, but he is also an example to us of how God does behave. God’s love is downright ignorant. God’s love is LAVISHED on us every day. The whole of creation is given to us to care for and live from. The body of Christ is a gift to us for fellowship, learning, care and love. God is present with each of us, rejoices with us, challenges us, suffers with us. God’s love is ignorant. What a blessing.
May we be so blessed that we find a way to share that blessing with all our neighbors. Amen.
My in-laws are originally from the rural Northeast corner of Pennsylvania, and while they don’t have any kind of strong accent—just regular Midwest—there are a few things they say that I’ve never heard from anybody else. One of these is the word ignorant. Okay, I’ve heard the word before, but in Northeast Pennsylvania, it takes on a whole new meaning—something like, big, over the top, ridiculous. As in, that ice cream sundae you’ve got there is ignorant. Or, Bill Gates’ 40 building estate is ignorant. Or, the rain on the afternoon of the 4th last week was ignorant. Or at least it was in Columbia, anyway.
And when we talk about the behavior of the Samaritan in Jesus’ parable today, I think we could also consider it ignorant. Not ONLY does the Samaritan stop to help the guy, not ONLY does he nurse his
wounds, not ONLY does he put him on his own donkey, and not ONLY does he leave an extravagant amount of money with the innkeeper to care for the man, but he does it for someone who normally wouldn’t give him the time of day. Ignorant.
So what’s Jesus going for here? What’s this story all about? The introduction we get from Luke tells us that Jesus uses this story to teach an expert in the law. He reminds me of a few of my fellow classmates in graduate school. They wanted to be in on the debate, and had a kind of glow of triumph whenever they asked a question that could stump the teacher. Or at least make her pause. In the mini-scene that leads into the parable, the expert asks Jesus “What do I have to do to get eternal life?” Jesus answers the question with another question and the expert comes up with his own answer. Love God with all your heart, mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. Then Jesus says, “that’s the right answer,” and so the guy realizes that he missed the chance to ask the smart question after all, and he’s not going to get a good grade in participation. So he comes up with a definition question: Who is my neighbor?
I actually feel kind of sorry for the guy at this point, because what he’s hoping for, it seems to me, is a good discussion: which people are neighbors? Which ones can be excluded? He wants some parameters. You can’t just love everybody, but then it probably also means more than the people living right next door. So what are the limits? What are the parameters? But Jesus takes things to a whole different level. He won’t draw the lines. He tells a shocking story about two people whose religious codes keep them from showing mercy, and an outcast who goes beyond the pale.
Indulge me for a minute. I’d like to retell this story with some more modern characters to try and communicate some of the feel of it for that first audience.
A businessman was walking down the street when he was mugged and beaten up by some thugs who left him on the sidewalk, thinking he was dead. A minister drove past, saw the man, and kept driving. In the same way a church deacon drove up, saw the man, and kept driving. But a drug dealer was passing by and saw the man and felt terribly sorry for him. He tore up his designer shirt to bind the man’s wounds. Then he put the man in his own car and drove him to the hospital. At the hospital he went to the front desk and said, “This is my good friend. I want him to get the best possible care. Please send all the hospital bills to my address. I’ll pay whatever you spend.”
Crazy, huh? Doesn’t make the religious leaders look good, that’s for sure. Now granted, in Jesus’ day the religious laws for priests and Levites included prohibitions on touching dead bodies, so if they thought the man was dead, then it would make sense for them to go around to the other side. And it’s true, too, that a Samaritan wasn’t automatically a criminal, like a drug dealer, but the Judeans did think of the Samaritans with contempt and spite.
So given that the Samaritan in the parable is someone that the man who was robbed would normally despise and avoid, his actions are that much more surprising. Especially compared to the religious officials, who carefully follow the rules that have been laid down for them. I mean, he LAVISHES his attention, time and money on this man. It’s downright ignorant.
And then the clincher is: Jesus turns to the expert in law and says, “go and do likewise.” What? I don’t know about you, but this is hard stuff for me. Go out there and find the really needy people, whether they might normally be your enemies or your friends, and spend ignorant amounts of time and money and heartache on them. That kind of a commitment might mean changing your whole life around.
My temptation here is to qualify this a little bit. Maybe find some of my own parameters, right? Figure out who is the most needy, or who will be most grateful, or who I like best. Figure out a way to screen some people out. But that’s just what the legal expert wanted to do with his question: have a set answer for who is included and who is excluded.
To be fair it’s hard to tell if Jesus is being entirely serious in this story. I think there may be a glint of humor in the whole confrontation. The legal expert, seems a little uptight. And then Jesus gives him this story, just piling it on—how great that Samaritan is, what generous things the Samaritan does, what a nice man the Samaritan is—and at the end, if you’ll notice, the expert still can’t even say the word “Samaritan” out loud. “The… the… the… one who showed him mercy,” he stutters out. Talk about rendering someone speechless!
So maybe Jesus is trying to get at a new kind of attitude. An attitude that expects anything to happen, and doesn’t try to hedge God in with rules. An attitude of mercy toward even our enemies. And maybe to loosen up a little and not worry some much about whether we’re being graded, or if we’ve got the answer right, or if our parameters are laid out correctly.
That being said, however, there is a deeper call here. A life-changing call, if we can figure out how to answer it. To find a way to love unreasonably, impractically, and to love people who might otherwise be our enemies.
How on earth could this be possible? I’ll tell you. It’s not something we can do alone. It’s not by our own power, but by trusting in God’s love that we can learn to give this ignorant love. I don’t know about you, but I am most kind-hearted and ready to serve when I myself feel loved. When I have felt that brush of the holy, that unexpected abundance, that surprising joy that is the reign of God in the world.
And if you’ll let me flip the parable over one more time, I’ll say this: the Samaritan in the story may be an example to us of how we should behave, but he is also an example to us of how God does behave. God’s love is downright ignorant. God’s love is LAVISHED on us every day. The whole of creation is given to us to care for and live from. The body of Christ is a gift to us for fellowship, learning, care and love. God is present with each of us, rejoices with us, challenges us, suffers with us. God’s love is ignorant. What a blessing.
May we be so blessed that we find a way to share that blessing with all our neighbors. Amen.
posted by Amy Sens at 1:20 PM
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