As you can imagine, our family became interested and involved. So on our recent holiday in the Cotton Tree Caravan Park, our Year 11 student had us out making regular checks on the progress of the erosion. The changes are quite dramatic and some sections eroded a further two metres during the fortnight we were there.
The Maroochy River mouth has always been changeable. By contrast, the course of the Mooloolah River has been stable. A fishing fleet operates out of it. Training walls and the blasting of a rock shelf at the mouth some thirty years ago have enabled a reliable all-weather station to provide pilots for guiding the big ships into the port of Brisbane. But even before the rock wall, the rocky Point Cartwright gave stability to the river mouth.
What is it that drives the change in the Maroochy River - from Twin Waters / Mudjimba in the north to the Maroochydore Surf Life Saving Club in the south? Aerial photographs over a number of years show three constant islands upstream - Chambers, Goat and Channel. Shifting sand-banks plus these fixed points seem to direct the water north or south.
Jesus turned the question back to him. The man answered, " '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.' " This was a good answer taken from Deut. 6.5 and Lev. 19.18. The Ten Commandments themselves are based on our duty to God and to neighbour. The first-century Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria, emphasised that people must be taught "to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong, using a threefold variety of definitions, and rules, and criteria, namely, the love of God, and the love of virtue, and the love of mankind" (De virt. 83).
"You are right," Jesus replied, "do this and you will live." To do that - and to do it perfectly - is to fulfil God's purpose for your life. In the Sermon on the Mount we hear Jesus, not simply re-emphasising these old laws, but stressing the deeper dimension of the thoughts that motivate our actions (Mt. 5.21-38).
Jesus of course had come "to save his people from their sins (Mt. 1.21), "to seek and to save the lost" (Lk. 19.10), "to serve and to give his life to redeem many people" (Mk 10.45)... To state God's expectations doesn't give fallen, sinful humanity grounds for confidence about eternal life.
We reflect on Amos' vision of the plumb-line - "I had another vision from the Lord. In it I saw him standing beside a wall that had been built with the help of a plumb line, and there was a plumb line in his hand. He asked me, 'Amos, what do you see?' 'A plumb line,' I answered. Then he said, 'I am using it to show that my people are like a wall that is out of line. I will not change my mind again about punishing them. The places where Isaac's descendants worship will be destroyed. The holy places of Israel will be left in ruins. I will bring the dynasty of King Jeroboam to an end' " (Amos 7.1-9)
The plumb-line cannot bring the wall into line. Its use is for building it true in the first place - or for guiding the rebuilding.
Paul insists that as Christians we do not live under law but under God's grace (Rom. 6.14). The problem is not with the negatives - "Thou shalt not" - of the Ten Commandments. Not even the positive law of love can do away with sin and make us right with God - only grace, what God has done through his Son (Rom. 8.3).
Our confident expectation about eternal life then is based on the person and work of Christ - a work that goes to the roots of our relationship with God.
Reading it this time, however, I was struck by something quite different. The man's question was "Who is my neighbour?" He had no problems or questions about loving God - or so he thought! He believed he had all that neatly together!
To revisit the Maroochy River erosion again, the problem with the river mouth is further upstream. Day by day we joined a stream of concerned people viewing the next stage of damage - and commenting, "How terrible! Something ought to be done!", bemoaning the loss of camp sites, the beauty and usefulness of the river marred by many she-oaks washed out into the channel, dangers for boating, snags for fishing... and speculating where and when the break-through will occur.
The unrecognised question for the teacher of the law - and for us all - is not finally the need for a broader understanding and practical love towards our neighbour. The parable exposes that as the glaringly obvious need - as obvious as the erosion at the river mouth, as obvious as the wall that is out of plumb. The key issue is "further upstream" in our lives - in our relationship with God. As Jesus said to another teacher of the law - Nicodemus - "You must be born again (or from above)" (Jn 3).
Jesus elsewhere described love for God with heart and soul and mind and strength as "the greatest and most important commandment" (Mt. 22.38).
Let us then ask the question that the teacher of the law didn't ask: "How can I love God?" After all, doesn't Scripture say, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Prov. 1.7 KJV and most translations, but softened to "reverence for the Lord" in GNB)? Jacob was fleeing from the wrath of his brother Esau. At the place he named Bethel, he had a dream and the assurance of God's presence and blessing. He said, "What a terrifying place this is! It must be the house of God; it must be the gate that opens into heaven" (Gen. 28.17). How can I love God if my sins separate me from him? How can I know eternal life if the wages of sin is death?
What did John write? "We love because he first loved us." In order to love God, we begin with his love and the gift of his grace. Paul wrote, "But God has shown us how much he loves us - it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us!" (Rom. 5.8)
Jesus was more than simply a man who died a martyr's death. "God was in Christ making the whole human race his friends..." (2 Cor. 5.19a fn). In Jesus God himself came into this world and was put to death on a cross. Think about it! It was for you he died. Believe it! Receive him!
You want love? You sense the inadequacy of your care for others and, with the teacher of the law, the need to clarify just what is expected of you in love for your neighbour? Then hear Jesus the Son of God - crucified, but now risen, now ascended, now able through the Holy Spirit to be present everywhere at all times. He makes his appeal to you - "Listen! I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he will eat with me" (Rev. 3.20). There is the spring of love, the motivation for our loving and living - our restored relationship with the Lord! And when we have truly opened the door to him, we cannot close it to others.
Who is my neighbour? "God so loved the world..." Not one of us can fix the problems and needs of the whole world. But may we be open and available to the great Lover to love, care for and help those he places near us.