“The Grammar of Love”

As some of you know, I was once an English teacher – for a brief time.  It was during the years when grammar was taking a real hit. At that time, questions arose about how many parts of speech there ought to be and how to name them.  Old grammar rules I had learned as a student were being tossed aside in favor of a less complex system where there were only 2 parts of speech – subjects and predicates, otherwise known as nouns and verbs. English departments were in an uproar … teachers of foreign language classes rebelled and everyone was confused.  As I recall it didn’t last very long. Eventually, what seemed innovative was relegated to the pile of lost initiatives, and we moved back into teaching 8 parts of speech and diagramming sentences, and  then I left the English teaching business altogether.

I recall some of that with you today because I think we are in for a bit of a grammar lesson ourselves as we unravel the meaning of the familiar story that is before us.  Let me explain…

Just a few weeks ago, I was asked to open a session of Vacation Bible School by sharing with the children the story of the good Samaritan as a way to teach the Bible verse for the day You chose me to care for your people.” Because these were our youngest children in VBS, and attention spans being what they are, I chose to act out the story. So, I began by walking the road of the poor hapless victim who falls among the thieves, the one who is beaten and left for dead at the side of the road… then I took the roles of the priest and the Levite, the holy men, who walked by on the other side, looking but not touching the man left for dead…  Finally, I played the hero… though not really much of a hero at all in the eyes of most people in this story. He was a Samaritan after all, a foreigner, an outcast… least to be considered hero material.  But he is the one who upon seeing the suffering of that man on the road, stoops to care, bandages the wounds, and compassionately act on behalf of another.

Now, the only character I did not act out in this story was the lawyer whose questions about eternal life and “Who is my neighbor?” prompted the parable in the first place.  Of course, he wasn’t actually in the story… but just outside of it.  Yet, he is the one who just might bring this story home to us.

Now remember, this is a man of learning, perhaps even a man who respected Jesus, whose questions may well have been simply honest inquiry…. wanting to know what Jesus would tell him about inheriting eternal life.  He knew the answer to Jesus’ question about the law and recited it perfectly, “You shall the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”  That’s covenant language --- language this man, as an attorney,  knows well… language that, according to Moses, is woven into the very heart of all of God’s people --- in fact, so close, Moses says, that it is not hard at all for God’s people to embrace this law of love and live it out.  Yes, the lawyer knows covenant language… But skilled at the art of protecting his own interests he also knows how to push back, to put some distance between the implications of this commandment to love and himself…to limit its intent so that he can justify how he chooses to live it out.

Not too long ago there was a movie that came out called “It’s Complicated”.  Basically, it was about relationships and how we sometimes feel compelled to justify our own behavior; how we complicate matters with rationalizations or explanations that try to make up for our sins of commission or omission… We all get caught doing it… Obfuscation we sometimes call it… Getting caught up in the nonessentials and making the simple complicated… We stall, we divert, we sometimes even challenge in order to justify our actions and limit our liabilities. And so, we distance ourselves from the way God calls us to live in this world.

Yet, despite our efforts to complicate and confuse, the commandment is still simply this, to “love God and to love neighbor as yourself.” It is a call to come close – to embrace the law of love and to give it life. But if that feels too close, you can divert the conversation a bit, exempt yourself from some part of what God asks of us. It appears that is what the lawyer is doing. In an effort to justify his own desire to limit the commandment to fit his needs, he asks “And who is my neighbor?” Aaah, now that is a question that could stall this whole story. After all, there is much to be considered about who is in that circle of neighbor and who should be left out… That could be hard to decide. Yet Moses says the command to love is not hard at all. It is in your heart and mind…so close. Why complicate it?

This week, the Presbyterians were in assembly over in Minneapolis talking about some familiar business… the ordination of partnered g.l.b.t persons.  They even took on the possibility of same sex marriage. I am grateful their decision for ordination passed and that the discussion about marriage will continue.  But like so much of what we hear in our conversations in the world today, and not just in the church, there seems to be a need to place limits on this very commandment Jesus is addressing in the parable for today. Who is our neighbor and how will we love them as ourselves?

Now here is where the grammar part comes in… and it shows up so clearly in the story of the Good Samaritan. Love, as God commands it, as Jesus lives it, and as the parable describes it in the compassionate action of the good Samaritan, is an action verb.  And more than that, love, in this case, is a transitive action verb.  That means it is a verb whose meaning is not complete without taking a direct object. And the direct object is always the receiver of the action. Get it?  (e.g. so, drive the car, hug your friend, move the piano… Love… your neighbor. 

You see, without its direct object, love is in danger of remaining a noun – a word set aside just to name something…No action required. We can parse it and divide it and limit it. But love – your neighbor… Now that gives love a charge, a direction – a purpose… with no limits as to whom we might include. It’s really quite simple, isn’t it? No stalling, no complications – so close to every heart, just love in action showing up compassion and caring, binding up the brokenhearted, the lost, the lonely, the poor and the hungry..

How hard it is for us to keep God’s will for us simple.  Like the lawyer who stands outside of the story Jesus tells, we often choose to complicate what is best in life in order to get control or to measure out only what we think is right.  But as Pastor John reminded us in a sermon a few weeks ago, it is not right or wrong that we are getting at here, but what is good, what is better or best as we consider a way of life as God’s own people.

This whole encounter with Jesus began with the lawyer’s question “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” As Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “Who doesn’t want that? Life with no end, life with no death.  For some people eternal life means heaven, the jackpot at the end of the rainbow, but to hear Jesus talk about it, eternal life also means hitting the jackpot now; (it) means enjoying a depth and breadth, and sweetness of life that is available right this minute and not only after we have breathed our last.”  And I believe that is why Jesus brings us back to that wonderful intimacy of a covenant that calls us to love one another --- to that gift that is woven into our hearts from the very beginning.

And so, he gives us the model of one who stoops down to love… and gets his hands dirty with compassion for a neighbor in need.

And then he says to all of us “Go”, “and do likewise….”