What's important?

[An all-age talk based on Luke 10:25-37]

What do you think are the important things in life? What gets you excited? What do you care about?

What we find important makes us who we are and helps us decide what to do. One day, a lawyer tried to catch Jesus out by asking him to list the most important things of all. The man stood up from the crowd and asked Jesus, 'What must I do to live forever?'

That's quite a question. The guy was after eternal life. I mean where to start? Did the guy even know what he was asking? That he was wanting some kind of map to find his way to heaven.

Jesus could have explained that heaven is about being with God forever so wanting to spend time with God is a good start. He could have gone on about how being selfish and just looking out for ourselves keeps us apart from other people and even God. He could have taken the whole of the Old Testament scriptures and started working his way through them, pointing out the best bits.

But he didn't. The guy was too much in the mood to argue. So Jesus did a smart thing. He turned to the lawyer and said, "Well, what do you think?"

The man said, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind’; and ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself.’"

Jesus replied, "Yep. Do that and you'll live. Next!"

But the lawyer didn't really feel satisfied. He'd been expecting to be at the centre of a big discussion about a difficult question but it was already over. He wasn't quite ready to sit back down again. He asked another question. "And who is my neighbour?"

I'm not sure whether Jesus sighed or grinned at that point but he told the lawyer a story:

The story was about a man travelling along the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. Some robbers attacked him on the way, beat him up, took his stuff and left him there in the dirt, barely able to move.

Not long after, a minister came along the road, saw the man and then hurried past, keeping as far away as possible. A few minutes after that, a church elder came along, saw the man and then did exactly the same as the minister. Finally, someone else came along, a foreigner, from another country with a different religion. A strange-looking stranger. People had probably been avoiding him all the way along the road despite the fact he was fit and healthy and not needing help.

He was a Samaritan – someone from a place called Samaria. We talk about someone who helps other people as a good Samaritan these days because of this story. That's not how it was where Jesus lived, though. Samaritans weren't people to hang around with. It wasn't because they were bad – they were just different. Certainly, no one ever made them the hero of stories.

Anyway, the Samaritan saw the man, stopped and took pity on him. He got off his donkey, treated the man's wounds and then put him on the donkey. He took him somewhere safe and paid for him to be looked after. A couple of days later, the Samaritan came back to check the man was OK.

After finishing the story, Jesus asked the lawyer. "Which one of the travellers acted like a neighbour towards the man attacked by the robbers?”

"The one who was kind to him," the lawyer answered.

Jesus nodded. "Then go and do the same."

The lawyer didn't ask any more questions after that.

We don't know what stopped the other people in the story from helping the man who was robbed. Maybe they were busy. Maybe they were too scared to help. Maybe they just didn’t love themselves very much. Being a neighbour can be a difficult and scary thing.

It's important, though. Luckily we don't have to do it on our own.

Jesus didn't just say loving your neighbour as yourself is important. First, we must love God with all our heart and mind and strength and soul. With everything. Once we try to do that, we can get an idea of how much God loves us and the other people around us.

I'm going to give you a hint - it's quite a lot. Knowing we're loved by God makes helping others less scary. Knowing how much he loves them makes it less difficult.

So what's important?

Love God. Love yourself. Love other people.