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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
And in response, it's almost like Jesus says, ah, friend, you forgot the most important part. You can't love the Lord your God. You won't love your neighbor as yourself, not until you learn how to listen to them. Today though, we are often running into our learning to listen series. Today, we're gonna talk about learning to listen to our neighbors.
Jeremy Duncan:And to do that, we are going to explore a familiar story to frame that listening. First though, let's take a look back at last week because we launched this new series by talking about, well, my dietary habits. Actually, that was not the point of the sermon at all, but hopefully, I didn't feel too self indulgent because we talked about a phrase that I use in my own head to remind myself that sometimes just starting, taking a first step, and doing things poorly if you need to on the road to doing them well, all of that is a whole lot better than just sitting and waiting for change to happen. And for me, the phrase that I like to use for that is a veggie with bacon. Now, the reason I like that phrase is because as a decades long vegetarian, it just sounds absurd.
Jeremy Duncan:Also, made me laugh when I was offered one at the drive through. But of course, for someone who's wanting to make a change in their diet, maybe someone who wants to cut down on their red meat, for example, ordering a veggie with bacon seems like an objectively good first step. So what good is it for me to gatekeep veggie burgers behind bacon free barriers rather than just celebrate veggie options wherever I find them? There's not enough. Again, silly example.
Jeremy Duncan:I acknowledge that. But there are some pretty tangible parallels. For one, almost anything you do in life will require you to do it badly before you do it well. And yet sometimes we struggle to bring that mentality over with us to faith. So last week, we looked at the story in Mark nine where a father brings his son to Jesus asking for some help.
Jeremy Duncan:And the child has been in distress for years. The disciples can't help. The man is desperate, so he says to Jesus, if you can, take pity on us and intervene. And Jesus gives this really interesting response. He says, if you can, everything is possible for the one who believes.
Jeremy Duncan:And on the surface, at first, it almost feels a little bit antagonistic, like he's baiting him or challenging him. But then, when the man responds, I think we can see Jesus' words for the intent behind them. It's an invitation because his father responds, I do believe. Lord, help my unbelief. And, as I said last week, this is one of my favorite verses anywhere in the Bible.
Jeremy Duncan:Because I'll say this even as a professional Christian, someone who has been a minister for more of my life than I haven't at this point. It still feels like the kind of statement that reflects my actual lived experience of faith. It's vegetarian with a little bit of bacon. It's agnostic with a dose of Jesus. It's belief and trust and conviction and that healthy measure of cynicism that creeps its way back in from time to time.
Jeremy Duncan:And the thing is over time, what I've come to realize is none of this is a failure of my faith. It's actually part of the structural bones that hold it together. I think if I ever stopped listening to my doubts, I think I would probably also slowly stop listening to my faith as well. And I think if I ever got fixated on doing faith perfectly, I'd probably find myself failing and then eventually walking away from it. And what this father at the end of his rope in Mark nine reminds us is that faith is not a question of having the right answers.
Jeremy Duncan:It's a question of trusting the way of Jesus to bring us all the way home. And that's the kind of faith that I can find myself still believing in. Today, we wanna continue to talk about listening, but now to our neighbors. First, let's pray. God of grace, we come today with all the faith that we have and with the faith that we don't.
Jeremy Duncan:With the questions that we carry, and even with the questions that we still hesitate to ask. And we thank you for meeting us here anyway regardless. So we open a familiar story today. Help us make room again for new questions. For something perhaps we missed last time.
Jeremy Duncan:For an invitation that has just been waiting for us to notice it. Slow us down just enough. Grant us the humility and the beauty of surprise. And through it all, would you teach us again to listen, to be curious about stories, to be attentive to the things we might assume too quickly about ourselves or each other. And then, to notice the grace that surrounds us always, forever.
Jeremy Duncan:In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Okay. Today, it's all about learning to listen to our neighbors. And to do that, we're gonna cover what our titles tell us, what we miss in our quotes, a second chance to hear, and the priority sequence of becoming a neighbor.
Jeremy Duncan:But first, let me say this. We're dealing with a very familiar story today, one you've probably heard before, and sometimes that's a bit of a problem. And the problem is, we know how the story ends, and therefore we think what they know what the story is about. In fact, I'll say this, we might actually know exactly what the story is about. But sometimes, that stops us listening to hear what the story is about now.
Jeremy Duncan:That makes sense? Like, you can do all kinds of textual analysis and cultural work, and let's be honest, we do a lot of that here at Commons. It's fun. But there's still gotta be that moment where we allow the text to confront not just what was happening, but what is happening today here. And that takes a willingness to listen in a slightly different way.
Jeremy Duncan:So listen to this. On one occasion, an expert on the law stood to stand and test Jesus. Teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What's written in the law? He replied.
Jeremy Duncan:How do you read it? Well, the man answered, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. That's a good answer, Jesus said. Do that and you'll be fine. But wanting to justify himself, he pressed, and who would you say is my neighbor?
Jeremy Duncan:Now, out of this, Jesus is going to go on to tell one of his most famous parables, the one about the good Samaritan. But there's already a lot to talk about here. So in the setup, let's just hang out for a bit and chat. Because some of this we've already talked about before. We actually came across the parable of the Good Samaritan in our parables of grace series in season twelve last year.
Jeremy Duncan:And there, we talked about how this man is introduced as an expert in the law. The Greek word here is nomikos. And that means lawyer, but in context here, almost certainly is a reference to a religious lawyer or someone who studies religious law. And there's a few different titles that are used somewhat interchangeably in the gospels to talk about largely the same group of people. We get nomikos, lawyer, here in Luke 10.
Jeremy Duncan:We see gramitus, which means scribe or clerk. That's used a lot primarily in Matthew and Mark. And then sometimes we get nomo didaskalos, which means teacher of the law. That one has a bit of an honorific quality to it. It's a term of deference.
Jeremy Duncan:Certainly, the most prestigious of the three, but they are all used somewhat interchangeably. What's interesting though is that each of these titles emphasize something slightly different about the role. You can be a teacher of the law, someone who wants the law to shape people. You can be a scribe of the law, someone who's intent on preserving the tradition and memory, the letter of the law, or you can be an expert in the law, someone who's interested in the interpretation, the fine devils, maybe more specifically, the application of the law to specific circumstances. And none of those are bad.
Jeremy Duncan:Like, you need to do all of them at some point, but the gospel writers are tipping their hand just a little bit with the descriptor they choose when they tell a story. And here, we got a lawyer who certainly leans into that expectation. Right? Like, he's very pleasant with Jesus, at least on the surface. Right?
Jeremy Duncan:Calls him teacher. That's didaskalos, which as we talked about, is a title of honor. Although, I do notice here, he doesn't call him a nomo didaskalos, which would mean teacher of the law like him. Here, it's just teacher. And, that is kind of interesting to me because first of all, I think he's right.
Jeremy Duncan:Like, Jesus is not a teacher of the law. Jesus is very much a teacher. A teacher of the way of God, a teacher who uses the law and interprets the law, but certainly not a teacher who thinks the law is the point or the lesson. Right? So I think he is correct.
Jeremy Duncan:Jesus is not a nomo de dascalas. But then, I also wonder, for a guy who's very focused on the law, is this like a bit of a backhanded compliment? Like, sure, you might teach, but not like I do. Maybe a little passive aggressive compliment to start the conversation here. I don't know about that one.
Jeremy Duncan:I'm not sure. I do know though that he leans into this with a somewhat generous invitation to debate. Because Jesus responds by asking about his interpretation of the law, and the lawyer responds by quoting Jesus to Jesus. Now, of course, he's not just quoting Jesus. These are famous quotes from the Hebrew scriptures, but it is also verbatim an answer that Jesus gives when he is asked about how he interprets the law.
Jeremy Duncan:If you jump over to Mark 12 verse 29, Jesus is questioned there by a group of grammatus, scribes. And he answered them, the most important command is this, hear, o Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, with all your strength. And the second is this, love your neighbor as yourself. There's no commandment greater than these.
Jeremy Duncan:Seems to me at least, to be somewhat obvious that this lawyer has an agenda. He wants to drive the conversation to a specific challenge of interpretation, but he wants to get there by, maybe we could say, like softening Jesus up a little bit. And I literally told this joke a month ago, but it's a true story. So my daughter wanted something out of me a few weeks ago. I think it was ice cream on that particular day.
Jeremy Duncan:And she opened her argument by saying, daddy, you're so handsome, and your muscles are so big. And she ended up with a great big scoop of ice cream for dinner that day. This guy and my daughter know exactly what they are doing here. However, did you catch this little difference in Jesus' answer from Mark 12 and what our lawyer friend offers here in Luke 10? The quotes are, like, essentially the same.
Jeremy Duncan:It's Deuteronomy six five, love the Lord your God. It's Leviticus 19, love your neighbor as yourself. There's something really interesting that I noticed this week. Jesus begins six words earlier. Now, in English, it's not six words.
Jeremy Duncan:It's 11. But in Hebrew, those six words are not frivolous. They are famous. In fact, they are the opening phrase of something called the Shema. And the Shema is probably the most important prayer in the Hebrew religion.
Jeremy Duncan:It begins, Shema Yisrael, Edonai, El Chaimu, Edonai, Echad. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. That's Deuteronomy six four, which leads directly into Deuteronomy six five, love the Lord your God with everything you've got. But it's also the starting point from which all Hebrew prayer flows. And when Jesus is asked about the greatest command, he starts with listening.
Jeremy Duncan:Hear, O Israel. I tried to listen to that this week. I tried to sit with it and read it again. I tried to decide whether this was just like a neat little linguistic quirk that would let me work in the title of the series, or whether there's something more to this. And the longer I sat with it, the more I started to become convinced that maybe this is important.
Jeremy Duncan:In fact, maybe this hearing is the key to the whole exchange. You see, we've got someone here who, by predisposition and training, is naturally going to be inclined to want to get to the rule, the application. And his question is about how we can narrow reality down into a definable set of circumstances in which we can measure our performance against an objective ordinance. Like, he wants a pass fail, like a yes, no. That's the goal of his question.
Jeremy Duncan:And in response, it's almost like Jesus says, ah, friend, you forgot the most important part. You can't love the Lord your God. You won't love your neighbor as yourself, not until you learn how to listen to them. This is why Jesus stays undefeated for me. Because instead of pointing that out, shaming this guy for quoting the Shema without, you know, the Shema part, instead of even lecturing him and why it's so important to hear, instead, he just simply tells the guy a story.
Jeremy Duncan:Or in other words, he very gently offers this man a chance to do the thing that he forgot to do. If that doesn't feel like quintessentially a Jesus move to you, I wonder who you've been listening to all this time. Because at least in my faith journey, what I have found over and over again is that almost every area of growth, every example of change, any legitimate transformation that I can point to in my life, almost all of that has come because at some point, I realized Jesus was gently inviting me to look again at something I thought I already knew. I can think of specific relationships that I thought had ended, weren't part of my life anymore. I assumed had nothing left to teach me.
Jeremy Duncan:And then somehow, at some point, that person entered back into my orbit. Perhaps even by what seemed like total random chance. And there I was, given the opportunity to decide if I was willing to take another look. Some of those have become some of the most important meaningful relationships and lessons in my life. Not just because of friendships renewed, but because of what that has taught me about people and myself, the ongoing forever possibility of change.
Jeremy Duncan:Even when I'm too cynical to think it's likely. A reminder that my estimation of probability never has anything to do with the work that God is going to do in anyone's life. I can think about times when I was pretty sure about my theology. Sure enough at least to get up in front of people and talk a big game about it. And then slowly, steadily, one drip at a time, Jesus would confront me with a new perspective hidden in a kind word.
Jeremy Duncan:Maybe an article from an unexpected author or a book from another corner of the Christian story, and slowly, but then all of a sudden, I find myself with my theology against my will unraveling in the most beautiful ways I never could have imagined. Sometimes. Sometimes I've even found myself sitting down on a Wednesday morning to write a sermon and thinking, oh, man, the good Samaritan, like, again, I gotta do this one? What am I supposed to come up with to say that's interesting about this one one more time? And Jesus is like, would you chill out?
Jeremy Duncan:Just listen. Sit down for a bit. Read it again. Stop writing and stop talking. Stop thinking about your next clever line, and open yourself up to wonder about what's always been there waiting for you every time you blow past it.
Jeremy Duncan:And I wanna get to Jesus' story. I wanna get to this guy's response. I do wanna hold us here just for a second because maybe I think it's worth asking. Is there something, anything in your life right now? A relationship or conversation, maybe a book that keeps popping up on your field of view and you keep brushing it aside because you don't have the time?
Jeremy Duncan:Is it possible that the universe is offering you chance after chance after chance to slow down and listen to something, and the invitation of Jesus buried in that moment is not to rush through to the next thing you've got on the list. Or even to learn the lesson and then implement some new life improvement strategy. What if the invitation of Jesus buried in that moment is simply to slow down long enough to take one more look? To notice what's always been there, even if you've noticed it before, but now to hear the thing you've always known, but couldn't quite grab for yourself at the front of your mind. Like, this guy, his lawyer, he's an expert in the law.
Jeremy Duncan:He knows what it says. He knows the prayer starts with listening. He doesn't need Jesus to lecture him about that. What he needs, what all of us need at times is just for someone to offer us the opportunity to do it. So who is my neighbor?
Jeremy Duncan:He asks. And Jesus says, friend, let me tell you a story. A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers, and they stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, went away, left him half dead. Later, a priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he went over to the other side. Same thing with a Levite.
Jeremy Duncan:He came to the place, and he saw him, but he went to the other side as well. But then a Samaritan, as he traveled, came to where the man was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He put the man on his own donkey, and he walked beside it until it brought him to an inn, and there he took care of him. The next day, when he had to leave, he took out 2 denarii, and he gave it to the innkeeper.
Jeremy Duncan:He said, look after him. When I get back, I'll reimburse you for any expense it takes. And we can do a lot to analyze the story. Right? Like, we can pay attention to where Jesus starts, a man.
Jeremy Duncan:Nameless, faceless, from unknown origin. We know nothing about his motives or intent or character. What is he even doing? Jesus starts with precisely the type of, quote unquote, neighbor the lawyer is talking about here. Presumably the kind he wants to be cleared of obligation toward.
Jeremy Duncan:I don't know this guy. I I think that's why stories are important. Right? Like, almost immediately, in a couple sentences, Jesus takes the abstraction of a neighbor that the question's framed around and turns that into a human being And we can maybe imagine ourselves coming across one day. Maybe we could even imagine ourselves being.
Jeremy Duncan:I think we should probably think about that the next time the news pushes us to think about immigrants or Americans or liberals or conservatives or whatever label is being used to frame the narrative for us. Jesus immediately pushes from the abstraction to the anecdote. Now, does that mean that, like, anecdotes always get to overrule what's rational? No. That's not what I'm saying.
Jeremy Duncan:I do think though that Jesus wants to warn us that the farther we move away from what is embodied, the more we risk forgetting about what's human. We could probably talk about the priest and the Levite who passed by, characters that I think represent both religious and social respectability, characters that I think are, in some sense, meant to represent the very real reasons that all of us have to choose practicality against compassion. Now listen. For me, these guys are not meant to be cartoon villains twirling their scary mustaches. Like, they represent the plausible deniability of our choices.
Jeremy Duncan:We can't do everything. Can't help everyone. We can't respond in every situation. In all likelihood, both of these men probably did more than enough good in their lifetimes to justify passing by on this one opportunity. Finally, talk about the Samaritan.
Jeremy Duncan:Like, that's not a random character. The Samaritan and the Jewish people had this long history. Samaritans were an ethnic group that came out of the intermarriages of Jewish and Assyrian families. And that situation, born out of a war waged by a conquering empire, created a lot of hard feelings over the years. By the way, if you hear that and you think, you mean to tell me these guys are Jewish and half Jewish and they can't get along?
Jeremy Duncan:And you're like, that's silly. Just remember, the closer you are to your neighbor, the harder it gets sometimes. Am I right? Let's be honest, a lot easier to be nice to the waiter you've never met than the neighbor who built their fence six inches across your property line. I hear this all the time.
Jeremy Duncan:The way you treat people, you will never see again, is the true measure of your character. I think that's true. Something undenoutedly important about that. At the same time though, sometimes, lot easier to be nice to a stranger than to someone who lives with you. Being kind when you're annoyed is the real measure of your character, I think.
Jeremy Duncan:Don't tell anyone, but sometimes the people I live with get on my nerves more than the people that I don't. And yet, to be present and listen to them when you don't want to, choosing to work for the long time viability of that relationship, not just respond to the social pressure to look magnanimous. Sometimes that's what it takes to be a neighbor. Still, all this is good stuff. Right?
Jeremy Duncan:Like, all these characters are interesting, but I do wonder what's the angle here. What is Jesus doing with this story? We know he's trying to offer this lawyer an invitation to listen, but what is he trying to say? And for me, no matter how many times I come back to this story, the best reading that I can come up with is buried in the way that Jesus reframes the question for his friend. His whole encounter begins when the lawyer asks, who is my neighbor?
Jeremy Duncan:But the problem with that question is that he asks it preemptively ahead of the encounter as if he wants a metric by which he can walk into an occasion already holding the answer of who his neighbor is. Jesus replies after his story with a question of his own. He says, which of these three was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? And do you catch the difference there? The lawyer in all of us wants the answer before we meet anyone.
Jeremy Duncan:Jesus says the answer is only available once we do. You can't know who your neighbor is. Not until you've met that person. Once you've seen them, really, once you've listened to their story and allowed it to become part of yours. And I get it.
Jeremy Duncan:For a sermon about listening to our neighbors, not a lot of conversation here between this Samaritan and the man in the ditch, but the key is this line here. It's verse 33. It says, a Samaritan, as he travels, came to where the man was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him. That translation is fine as far as it goes. But the word pity misses so much of what's happening here.
Jeremy Duncan:The Greek word is. Often gets translated compassion or mercy rather than pity. But what it really means is that this man felt the plight of his neighbor somewhere deep in his gut. Like, this is your splagnon in Greek. In Latin, it's called your viscera.
Jeremy Duncan:And what Jesus is describing is that visceral reaction when your stomach turns within you and the story that you are looking at becomes the story that you are now involuntarily feeling. That's what it means to listen to your neighbor. And that can happen because you sat down and you had a conversation with them. Or it can happen because you looked one more time and you saw something you didn't the first time. It can happen because you pay attention to what they really need.
Jeremy Duncan:It could happen because you look past what you need. But what it means is that their story slowly starts to become part of yours. That's why the question can never be, who is my neighbor? Who will be my neighbor? It can only ever be, who was my neighbor?
Jeremy Duncan:Who did I allow to become my neighbor? Whose story have I allowed myself to listen to so deeply that suddenly it became part of mine? Neighbour is not a category. It is a post talk acknowledgment of all the stories we have allowed to change us. And so here's the challenge for us.
Jeremy Duncan:At the start of a new season, on the first week of existing now in a new and second neighbourhood as Commons across hundreds of neighbourhoods as individuals across this city. The challenge is this, to reimagine the priority sequence that divines a neighbor for us. Because according to Jesus, it's not someone who's near us. It's not someone who looks like us. It's the person that we learn to listen to.
Jeremy Duncan:The person we train ourselves to be curious about. The person that we invite into conversation without agenda, and we take first step and a second step, and then maybe a third or fourth or fifth regardless of their reciprocation toward us. Because if the call to love your Lord begins with your hearing, then perhaps the invitation to love our neighbor as ourselves can only begin once we really learn to listen to them. And that's the invitation that Jesus offers, not just to the lawyer two thousand years ago, but to every one of us who encounters each other every single day. Let's pray.
Jeremy Duncan:God, for all the stories that we interact with, the opportunities for us to show up, the ones that we take and the ones that we pass on the other side. I pray that in the midst of it all, what you would be doing is softening our hearts and opening our ears to hear new voices and stories and promptings and leadings all the time. The first we would hear from you about who you are and how you love and how you invite us into that story. And then how we would take that story and allow it to shape us into people who listen to each other, who welcome new experiences and new encounters, who stay curious, and allow stories to change our vision and our perspective, the way we think about the world. All so that slowly, we can begin to take steps that align with what we hear from others and what we hear from you.
Jeremy Duncan:So that our lives begin to look more like love. And our world begins to look more like your kingdom. And slowly, we find ourselves walking all the way back to you. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.
Jeremy Duncan:Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials CommonsChurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel, where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Jeremy Duncan:Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.