How to really love someone

Risk Management

In my last year at Hunter Water, I worked as the senior wastewater operations engineer. Effectively that meant I was the main engineer responsible for ensuring the sewerage network worked effectively.

I hadn’t been in the job for long, when a decision was made by management above me that at every sewerage pump station, a railing was to be placed around the wells, because, even though there was a locked cover on them, when they were opened for maintenance, there was a risk that people could fall in.

This was all due to a heightened awareness of workplace safety. But there was a little bit of irony to the whole thing.

These railings that were being put up involved some welding. One contractor in the Lake Macquarie area, just so happened to be working at a pump station that had a build up of gases.

In the various jobs I had when I went through university and then once I left, there were three little letters that would occasionally be spoken about, often as an afterthought. They were OH&S. That stood for Occupational Health and Safety. Basically, it was something that was designed to keep employees safe.

But as time progressed, I noticed safety talks became more prominent, at least, management tried to make it that way.

And so, while the job was meant to make things safer, gas plus welding equals kaboom!

In 2012, legislation changed and so did the three letters. OH&S has now become WH&S, and the law is making it hard to ignore.

Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt, but this then started a big new investigation. As the senior wastewater operations engineer, I was tasked with going back to the site doing an investigation. I felt a bit like an investigator on one of those detective shows, complete with asking the neighbours what they had heard.

Even within the church it is now something we have to have on every agenda.

This incident had quite an effect on the organisation. Though safety had already started to feature in what it did, there was a renewed focus to assess all risks. Everything had to have a risk assessment.

And with all this talk of WH&S, the language of risk management also becomes more prominent. Words like, likelihood, consequences, and control measures.

Now for anyone who has been in a position where you have to do a risk assessment,

Now, some tasks, like welding in a gaseous environment, is risky work, and so a risk assessment is a useful thing.

But while this terminology might only relatively

But for a lot of other tasks, risk assessment are more about using a bit of common sense.

Clean up spills. Remove trip hazzards.

The reality is, even though we might not normally use the language of risk assessments, we are constantly assessing risk.

Hop in a car for example. You will straight away make an assessment about how much you trust the driver and the vehicle you’re in. If you assess it is safe, you’ll relax. If not, you’ll be on edge the whole trip.

Now I’m going to suggest that we do something similar in relationships too. Now this is mostly going to happen on a sub-conscious level, but when you meet someone, you’re going to decide how much energy you want to give to a relationship.

There is good reason we do this. We’ve been hurt. We’ve been burnt. We give ourselves to others, and get nothing in return, and it feels horrible.

But particularly for those who have been hurt badly, you sort of get what happened in my old workplace. An over-reaction.

This can obviously cause a big problem for us as Christians. You see, we are called to love others, but this filter comes on in our heads.

If I love this person, what is it going to cost me?

The Good Samaritan

Earlier, I read to you the parable Jesus taught about the good Samaritan.

It’s a well known parable, in fact, I’d suggest it is up there as one of the best known parables.

Even outside of the church, much of society is familiar with the phrase, ‘the good Samaritan’.

People like it because it’s got a good lesson in there about being kind to others.

I suspect that most, if not all of you here, would have heard this parable taught enough to know that it’s not just about being nice to those like us, but that Jesus deliberately chose people that should have enmity between them, to show that the love we are to show should cross all barriers.

Unfortunately, though we are probably aware, at least on a theoretical level that our love for others should have no barriers, the reality is that our filters kick into gear and we don’t love as we should.

Take for example the parts of society that like to make life difficult for churches. There’s the lobby group trying to actively get Scripture out of schools, and those that want to make it hard for us to teach the bible.

Now imagine you were at an event were it was obvious who they were, and let’s just say that an opportunity arose that you could expose them for who they are. Or you could choose love, and instead of scoring easy points off them, actually honour them.

You see, what’s going on in our head is that we are assessing the consequence of the effort we can put in. And quite possibly, the love we show them won’t have any immediate effect.

Love God - love others

Well, let’s just leave that hypothetical for the moment as I move into the actual passage and try to unpack it a little.

The prelude to the parable is a lawyer asking Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life.

Now we actually see this question being asked a number of different throughout the various gospel, including another time in Luke’s gospel when we see the rich ruler asking in .

Every time it’s asked we get to the same initial answer. Sometimes Jesus gives the answer, or as in this case, Jesus puts it back on the questioner.

The answer is what the Jewish people called the Shema.

It comes from and according to Jesus himself, proves a good summary for the entire law.

In the case of the parable we’re looking at today, Jesus could well expect the questioner to know this because after all he is a lawyer.

And so, the lawyer is able to quote it: “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 not only is he able to quote that, he also can quote a verse from Leviticus that naturally flows from this, and that is to: “Love your neighbour as yourself”.

And so there you have it. Regardless of how long you’ve been a Christian, this is the most important thing to know.

Love God and love others.

You know, there is obviously a lot more you can learn, and it’s all great stuff, but this here is the crux of it. All the other teaching you learn should boil down in essence to these two things. Love God. Love others.

The problem however is that we like to complicate things.

We want to find the loop holes.

And in this passage, we’re dealing with a lawyer, so who better to find that loop hole.

And so he goes for it. Surely we can find a loop hole in the word neighbour.

After all, if the command is to love your neighbour, all we need to do is establish that someone is not our neighbour and we’re off the hook.

But Jesus then does what Jesus does best. He takes that question and answers it with a story. It’s a story that is deliberately designed to close the loop hole.

The neighbour

Jesus sets the story on the road between Jerusalem to Jericho. The walk itself would be roughly equivalent to walking from here to Raymond Terrace, except it isn’t flat. In fact, there is an elevation drop of close to a thousand metres, meaning, this is some pretty rough terrain.

Being such rough terrain, it would have been easy for someone to hide out and wait for an unsuspecting traveler.

Jesus doesn’t tell us much about the man, but it’s reasonable to assume given the context, that he was a Jewish man.

This man then gets beaten up, stripped, and left half dead.

Three people then come by. The first two people Jesus uses are people with high religious standing in the Jewish community.

If anyone should know the way that God would want them to respond it is these.

First the priest and then the Levite.

Now the priest is someone who has been set aside specifically for religious duties. But with these specific religious duties he actually has a very good reason why he should avoid this beaten up man.

You see, the Jewish system has quite a complicated structure of clean and unclean. Now being unclean is different from being sinful, but nevertheless, being unclean rendered you unfit for certain tasks for a period of time.

Coming into contact with a dead body was one such means of being unclean.

And so, this priest has a dilemma. If he helps the man, there is a high likelihood that he will not be able to perform his priestly duties. This could have real flow on effects. And so he elects not to help.

Now the Levite is someone who comes from the priestly tribe. He is not specifically being designated a priest, so he is lower than that of the priest, but still, it is generally best if you can avoid being made unclean. And so, he makes a similar decision to the priest.

The third person however is someone Jesus has deliberately chosen to make people feel uncomfortable. It is the Samaritan.

Now there is actually some common heritage between the Jew and the Samaritan, but to cut a long story short, essentially the Samaritan’s had compromised too much on their worship of God, that the two groups could just not see eye to eye. And unfortunately, their enmity had grown to the point that they could not be civil towards each other.

But this is the man Jesus uses to teach who is our neighbour.

And take note of what this Samaritan does, remembering of course that he has the most reason to ignore the fallen person.

He doesn’t just help him on to the next town. Rather his care is extravagant.

Some basic first-aid comes first. Then the transport to the next place. And then perhaps the most extravagant of it all, he pays in advance to the inn keeper and tells the inn keeper that any further expenses he will meet.

Jesus isn’t just closing off a loop hole with this story, he is completely turning around any such notion of not loving certain people, and suggesting that we should actually go above and beyond with them.

A mind shift

The type of love that Jesus advocates requires a complete mind shift from what comes naturally.

You see, I spoke before about this idea of some mental risk assessment that we do when we interact with others.

You see there is a question that we ask.

The question is: if I help this person, what’s in it for me or my people?

If I give somebody some money - then I no longer have that money for me.

If I give somebody time, it could be wasted.

I gave that hypothetical before about having an opportunity to score some points against those who are antagonistic towards Christians. If you shower them with love (and I’m not just talking about a superficial showing to prove a point - but real love), then you might have nothing for it. Worse then that, you may have lost ground in a fight for our rights.

But the type of love that Jesus advocates, changes the question that we need to ask.

Rather than asking: if I help this person, what’s in it for me? the question needs to become: if I help this person, (or don’t help this person), what affect is that going to have on them?

If we don’t love the godless, the reality is, no one will.

This radical, extravagant love of God is so rare today. Sure we see love today - but it’s of the kind that will love if there is something they can get in return.

But the love that says - it’s not about me, it’s about you - that is the love that people so rarely witness.

The blind spot

The problem is that this leaves a blind spot. It’s a blind spot that the lawyer in our passage recognised, but he wanted to keep blind.

You see, when certain people serve no value to us, we can ignore them.

And the reality is, there are many groups of people that we ignore.

Of course, practically speaking, we can’t focus on everyone who needs help. We are only finite people after all.

But it is like this Samaritan. At times, certain people will come across our path. And it is then that we see what our love is truly like.

Are we going to allow that blind spot to remain or will we put aside self-interest in the name of God’s love?

Aboriginals

Today is the end of NAIDOC week. It is a week in which we can celebrate the history, culture and achievements of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

This years theme is “Voice. Treaty. Truth - Let’s work together for a shared future”.

As I’ve spent some time thinking about it, what becomes apparent is the reason they need this theme is because as white people entered this land, we’ve had this blind spot.

As the colonisers came, they saw little to no benefit from the indigenous people.

As generation after generation came and went, numerous policies that caused real harm to the indigenous owners of the land were put in place. Now, it is sometimes argued that the people at the time genuinely thought they were doing what was for the best, but I can’t help but think that what they considered was for the best, was judged based on the blind spot I’ve been talking about. The blind spot caused by a love that consider self first.

In hindsight, it is now plainly obvious that these policies have caused generational problems. There are real gaps in health, education, incarcerations rates and more. While there are many factors in all this, I believe there is a clear connection with the generations of mistreatment.

Now we can argue - but that wasn’t me. I am not responsible for what happened in generations past.

That may be true, but we are responsible for what happens today.

You see, we can be like the priest and the Levite walking past the battered man. They didn’t harm him. They didn’t take his possessions. But they also didn’t do anything to help him.

We can look at the Aboriginal and think - it’s got nothing to do with me. And there is no real strategic benefit to me if I help them.

But think of this mind shift I spoke of before. Instead of asking - if I help them, what’s in it for me? to if I help them, what benefit is it to them?

This is the kind of love that they need. It is the kind of love that we all need. It is the kind of love that comes from God and can change lives.

Conclusion

It is natural that any interaction we have with others will go through certain filters in our mind. These filters can be very useful, but if we want to love like God wants us to, those filters need adjusting.

We need to switch them from being focussed on ourselves to focussing on others. This is not easy because at times it won’t be to our benefit, but ultimately it has a much more overall benefit.

I want to end this morning by actually showing a short video. It is a video produced by a group called Common Grace. Actually, this video was produced for the season of Lent, so you may notice a reference to Lent at the end of the video, so you can just ignore that as we’re not in the season of Lent, but the message remains the same.

So let’s listen to it...