Sermon: Trinity 13 - 2018

26 August 2018

Text: Luke 10:23-37 (Gal 3:15-22)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is one of our Lord’s best known stories.  And to people who are hostile to the church (at least if they knew enough about the Bible to even know this parable), at least at first glance, this ought to be one of their favorites.

For who are the villains in this parable?  The priest and the Levite, who are the clergy, who represent organized religion.  They are the bad guys.  And who is the hero in this story?  The Samaritan, who is a guy from an oppressed and mistreated ethnic group.  And what does the Samaritan do?  He avoids doctrinal disputes or arguments about marriage and abortion, and instead helps the victim in a non-judgmental way.

And indeed, all of this is true!  But sadly, most of our university students (who are taught to hate Christians) are so alienated from their own western civilization in their educational experience, so removed from the history of Christianity and its great foundational text, the Bible, that they don’t even know what they don’t know.

So is Jesus telling us to abolish the church, get rid of the clergy, adopt an anything-goes approach to doctrine, to ditch our creeds for deeds?  No indeed!

In fact, the main teaching of this parable is about Jesus Himself.  He is the Good Samaritan.  He is the one who is treated as an outcast by His own people.  He is the one who comes into the highways and byways of our fallen world, who happens upon all of us who have been beaten and battered and bruised by Satan and by our own sinful nature.  And even when the same people who hold Jesus in contempt likewise ignore the suffering of those victimized by the devil, Jesus, by contrast, has “compassion.”  Jesus binds up our wounds.  Jesus applies the oil of Holy Baptism and the wine of the Holy Eucharist as a balm and a medicine to cleanse us, and to heal us.  Jesus gives of Himself and oversees our rehabilitation.  Jesus provides a home for us to receive care.  Jesus provides people to look out for us and places us in their care under His orders.  And Jesus promises to come back.  

Much to the consternation of those who hate Christianity, those who see Jesus as nothing more than a sort-of storybook Mister Rogers with a beard, the Parable of the Good Samaritan is actually about the doctrines of the incarnation, the cross, and the atonement; it is about Jesus: His victory over the devil and the grave; it is about forgiveness: the doctrine of justification.

Jesus does not entrust our spiritual care to the Old Testament priests or to the Levites, not to the “blood of bulls and goats,” and not to ceremonial cleanliness.  Rather, Jesus entrusts us to Himself as our High Priest, our Messiah, our Savior, our Redeemer, whose blood literally atones for us.  Jesus works His mercy and compassion through the men whom He calls, who are charged with proclaiming the Word of Christ, and who are under holy orders to administer Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist, who are ordered to forgive sinners who confess and repent, the innkeepers who take in those victimized by the devil, the world, and their own sinful nature in order to care for them, with Christ’s mercy and Christ’s compassion.

And yes, all of us, in our various callings, pastors and laypeople alike, are charged to “go, and do likewise.”  For Jesus works through Christians in all of our holy vocations to be merciful and compassionate to those who are “half dead” in our own journeys from Jerusalem to Jericho – wherever that may be for us.

But what started the whole parable in the first place is something that is indeed both “creed” and “deed.”  For the lawyer did not come to Jesus humbly, to learn, to hear His Word, and to live out a daily life of repentance.  Instead, he came to Jesus filled with pride and oozing with hubris.  He came to put Jesus to the test.  He came to pit his education against the Word of God.  He came with arrogant contempt and pride in himself.  And though his answers were correct in a technical sense, the lawyer needed to hear this lesson about mercy.  And so do we, dear friends.  This parable is for us as much as it was for the lawyer.

For what was our lawyer seeking to do?  He was trying to “justify himself.”  In other words, he was trying to declare himself righteous by his own understanding, his own words, his own works, his own reason.  He was trying to tell Jesus that he was already righteous.  Like the priest and the Levite, he lacked compassion and mercy.

Dear friends, we all need the compassion and mercy of Jesus, and we all need to “go and do likewise.”  We need to stop justifying ourselves for whatever reason, be it our position in the church, our standing in the community, our education, our lack of education, our church attendance, our lack of church attendance, or any other reason that our sinful flesh likes to boast in as self-justification.  We need to repent of this pride.

We cannot justify ourselves, whether we are Christians or haters of Christianity.  For in our sins and trespasses, we are half-dead.  In the fallen world that we live in, breathe in, work in, and will die in, we are constantly under assault.  And as St. Paul points out, if the “law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.”  And if that were true, our lawyer could indeed “justify himself” through the law.  But St. Paul says, “the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.”  In fact, the Greek text says that what is given to us is “the faith of Jesus Christ.”  It is the faith of our Good Samaritan, His compassion and His mercy, that justify us.

And so, dear friends, Jesus again teaches us that we are not rescued by our own knowledge, our works, our position, our education, or any other way in which we might justify ourselves.  Rather, we are justified through faith in Jesus Christ: the faith of Jesus Christ, according to His promise and through His means of grace, through which He binds up our wounds, applies oil and wine, brings us to safety, and promises to return for us.  

Let us indeed believe, that is, have faith in what our Lord teaches us.  Let us humbly receive His gifts, His merciful care, His compassionate redemption, let us go and do likewise, even as imperfect as we are, striving to be a more merciful and compassionate innkeeper to whom the Lord brings people who have been beaten half to death – by the evils of this world and of our own flesh.  Let us not justify ourselves, but rather praise the One who justifies us by grace through the “promises of God.”  

Jesus tells us that “many prophets and kings desired to see what [we] see, and did not see it, and to hear what [we] hear, and did not hear it.”  So let us see and hear our Good Samaritan’s merciful compassion, and let us rejoice in it!  Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.