Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

Luke 10:25

Nowadays the state of biblical literacy in this country is so low that I'm not sure a majority of Americans would even identify the Bible as the source of the story of the Good Samaritan.

And a far lower percentage would know that the context for the story is a conversation between Jesus and a lawyer.

"'Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?'" this curious attorney asks this traveling rabbi.

We all know the answer he gets: Love God with everything you've got, and love your neighbor as yourself. "Do this, and you will live," replies our great Christ.

The question raised by the lawyer is a matter of eternal significance, and it surely gets at the heart of the gospel. The stakes could hardly be higher. So it is worth paying very close attention to Jesus' answer .

To the lawyer's apparent dismay, Jesus replies to his question not with a doctrinal formula - as you would perhaps ordinarily expect from a rabbi or a seminary professor. Instead he gives the lawyer a simple three-part command: Love God, your neighbor and yourself. What could be clearer? "But wanting to justify himself, [the lawyer] asked Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor?'"

On the question of how he might inherit eternal life, Jesus' answer was too simple, or perhaps it was too hard, for this legally minded man. Or perhaps for him love simply did not seem to be enough.

And for that reason Jesus gives him, and he gives us 21 centuries later, the story we know as the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Now, as so often happens with these ancient stories, I'm startled by just how relevant it is to our contemporary situation. Jesus' simple answer to one of life's deepest questions - what must I do to inherit eternal life - does not seem to be enough for our church today.

In place of Christ's three-part command, many church folk want something more, something different. Many of our church-going neighbors want our faith to be about a singular understanding of complex theological formulations. What I mean is that a very large number of people insist that to be saved, i.e., to inherit eternal life, you've got to believe a series of theological propositions in exactly the same way they do.

Others want our faith - and this is especially true of many Presbyterians - to be about a thorough knowledge of, and conformity to, our historic creedal and confessional standards. Above all, we want our faith to be about getting our doctrine right.

Ironically, the push in this direction usually comes from clergy and lay leaders who are concerned that the church is straying from its faithful adherence to the Bible and to historic Christian tradition. Truth be told that's why several churches in our Presbytery are leaving this denomination. They think we're coming untied from our moorings in Biblical faith.

But what's so ironic is that, as this story helps us see, these well-intentioned folk may be moving the church away from, not toward, the primary standard of a faithful life given to us by Jesus Christ himself.

For Jesus, love was the final apologetic of the Christian life. Love is its ultimate test and its final proof: "By this shall all men [and women] know you are my disciples" he says, "if you have love one for another."

This is effectively the last thing Jesus tells his disciples before his death. From the start it is really the only thing he asks of them, the one thing that matters above all else.

But consistent to the last, the disciples don't get it. The moment he leaves them, fights ensue about polity, practice, doctrine, membership. The first half of the book of Acts is essentially a running commentary on the disciples' comic and divisive struggle to make Jesus' astonishingly simple, love-based community a reality.

As it was for the lawyer and for the disciples, perhaps the program is too simple for the church today. Or too hard. Or not enough. But it was evidently enough for Jesus. Like a diamond with a hundred facets, nearly every story in all four gospels reflects the truth that love is the final test of our discipleship--the one thing that matters above all else.

Sadly nowadays animosity, not love, is perhaps the word many people would use to describe relations between Christians. What that is doing to the church's stature in the world, and to church attendance throughout the country, is simply impossible to measure.

And so, in light of this ancient story starring a lawyer and a Rabbi, one is compelled to wonder about the future of Christ's church. Are we moving closer to, or farther from, the vision of Jesus for his church, his startlingly simple, love-based community? And if we moving farther from that, then what must we do to reverse that trend and realize his vision?

Many things, of course, and one hopes the millions of faithful folks who love the church and care about its future will think of and do them.

But very simply, I wonder what might happen if conservatives, moderates and liberals alike were to unite, not around complicated theological or doctrinal questions, but simply around our love for God, our neighbors and ourselves?

What might happen is that our neighbors might sit up and take notice. You can argue doctrine until the planet warms up and the seas rise, but you can't argue with love. It is the most powerful, wonderful and redemptive force in the world. When you feel it, when you know you are loved, the need to fight and win, the need to be right, the need to justify yourself -- these all simply go away.

Why is that, do you suppose? It's because doctrine - that is, what we believe - does not transform us. Mind you, what we believe is important. And not just what we believe about God. What we believe about this country is important, and what we believe about ourselves. As a country, ought we to be fighting the war on terror using violence or should we be fighting it in other ways? As a person, am I okay the way I am or do I have to look different or be different for God to love me, or even for me to love me?

So, yes, what we believe matters a great deal. But belief alone does not transform us.

Only love does that. But mind you, it's not easy. I'm not sure it's meant to be easy. Like baseball, perhaps love is supposed to be hard. As Tom Hanks says in A League of Their Own, "It's the hard that makes it great."

And like baseball, love takes lots and lots of practice. For the practice of love, doing it over and over again until we get it right, that's the transformational part.

That's what makes it possible for two strangers who have never met to become a couple who shares their life together - their joys, their sorrows, their hopes, their dreams, their frustrations. It's wonderful but it's hard.

It's the practice of love that transforms enemies into friends, painful histories into hopeful futures. It's wonderful when that happens, but it's hard.

It was love, finally, that transformed a ragtag band of disciples into the Church, that living breathing community of Jesus.

And it's love that transforms a diverse group like us into a congregation; into a family of faith. It's love that prompts people to drive their friends hundreds of miles to drop them off at their summer cottage. It's love that prompts our able bodied members to give up a day of their lives to help move some of our older members into new living quarters. It's love and faithfulness that motivates us to make casseroles when someone is hurting, to serve meals to a group of homeless ladies, and to spend the night here with them as their overnight hosts.

That's what love does. Theology doesn't do that. Church polity doesn't do that. Church history does not do that.

Love alone does that. Love alone transforms us.

There's a movement afoot nowadays in our denomination to simplify our Book of Church Order. Heaven knows it needs to be shortened. What started out as a simple guide to how we do business together, and an explanation of why we do things the way we do, has acquired the heft and density of a legal textbook.

So what if we shorted it to just one story, this story of the Good Samaritan? What if the entrance exam to church membership, and to becoming an elder and to becoming ordained consisted in getting the answer to this one question right:

What must I do to inherit eternal life - love the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. Do this and you shall live!

Course we'd have to make sure we got the most important part of that formula right:

Do this and you shall live!