Sermon: Trinity 13 - 2020

6 September 2020

Text: Luke 10:23-37

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Today’s Gospel is our Lord’s most famous story.  By this parable, Jesus has given nearly every language in the world a common expression: “Good Samaritan.”  A “Good Samaritan” is a person who helps other people voluntarily, and expects nothing in return.  There are various agencies that provide aid that go by this name.  Laws protecting volunteers who render aid to those in need from being sued are called “Good Samaritan laws.”

But this story was not always popular with everyone.  For Jesus targets the Jewish religious leaders, that is, the priests and the scribes – and calls them out for their hypocrisy.  To pour salt into the wound, in the story, they are shown up by a Samaritan – who was a hated ethnic minority of that time and place.  Our Lord’s story is not nice to the people in charge: it was seen as provocative, obnoxious, and as many scolds and finger-waggers like to say today: “inappropriate.”

So what is the point of this parable, dear friends?  Why did Jesus tell this controversial tale?  Was He trying to shame people into repenting and acting better?  Was He teaching us how to live out a life of faith and service?  Was He teaching us about Himself?

One of the beautiful things about Scripture – being the Word of God – is that it never runs dry.  You can hear this story read and preached every year at this time, you can read it again and again, and you will never exhaust what the Lord wants you to hear.

There is indeed a moral imperative to this parable.  After all, Jesus tells the listener to whom He tells the story, “You go, and do likewise.”  This is indeed a call to repentance to the lawyer who desired to “justify himself” by asking “Who is my neighbor?”  He wanted to earn his salvation, and so he wanted to know whom to love so that he could benefit from it.

Do you see how terrible this is?  “Who is my neighbor, Jesus, so I can go be nice to that person for my own sake, because I want eternal life.”  How twisted it is to seek to do a good deed for someone just so you can get a benefit for yourself.  This is not love.  This is not keeping the commandments.

Our Lord’s story exposes the hypocrisy of our lawyer by putting his indifference and his self-centeredness into the characters of the priest and the Levite.  And both were shown up by the mercy and love of the Samaritan.  Jesus is calling the lawyer to repent, to put his trust in the Lord and not in himself to be justified.  And in so doing, he would be freed up to think of his neighbor – who is anyone in need – and to serve that neighbor in love, even as God Himself has served him.

But what is Jesus teaching us, dear friends?  Well, there is a little lawyer in all of us.  We want to be praised by men.  We want God to take notice of our good deeds.  Of course, we want God to overlook our sins.  Even our desire to serve God is tainted with the sinful nature that sticks to us like glue.  And so, He calls us to repent, to stop trying to justify ourselves, and to love our neighbors.  All of them.

He is also teaching us how the Christian is to live his life.  He looks for ways to be a Good Samaritan – not for his own sake, but for the sake of those in need.  God knows we are surrounded by neighbors who need to hear the Good News, who need love, who need help in carrying out the things of this life, who are struggling with health issues, with home, with family, with finances.  There are people who simply need companionship and hope.  Everyone needs a Good Samaritan, and our Lord calls us to “go and do likewise.”  And by focusing on the needs of others, we don’t become obsessed with ourselves.

But once more, dear friends, this passage is like a multifaceted diamond that sparkles all the more as you twist it in the light and look at it from a different angle.  For remember our lawyer’s question – and a lawyer’s question is never really an actual question: “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”  If you inherit something, you don’t do anything.  You inherit something – including eternal life – when someone dies and wills it to you.  A lawyer, above all people, knows how inheritance works.  

If you want to inherit eternal life, you need to know who has it. He must will it to you.  Then he must die.  You need to stop thinking that you can do anything on your own to get it. 

Our lawyer also erred by trying to “justify himself.”  For once again, there is no action that you can do to “justify yourself.”  Rather we are justified by One who is just.  And the one who is just shows mercy.  If you want to be justified, dear friends, look to the Merciful One, look to the One who was despised by the priests and Levites, but who, unlike them, shows mercy to you when you are beaten up by this world and left half-dead, when you are bleeding, whether literally or figuratively, and when you desperately need help to stay alive.  And when the Law does nothing for you – the priests and the Levites – look for One who will help: and that is Jesus Christ our Lord.

We inherit eternal life because it is God’s will.  He wills it to you, dear brother, dear sister.  And that will is executed because He has died.  His death on the cross atones for you and gives you eternal life as a gift, as an inheritance from the one who wills it.  

You do not have to justify yourself, because our Good Samaritan is merciful.  Though we deserve God’s wrath, we receive His mercy.  He binds up our wounds when we are battered by the world, the devil, and our sinful nature.  And our bleeding flesh is salved with oil and wine – medicine from the Lord Himself.  And He carries us to our heavenly home by means of His own creatures – even bread and wine which are, by His Word, His very body and blood, and by water poured in His divine name, which washes us free from sin.  And He pays for the damage done to us, and by us, paying “not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.”  And He even promises to come back, just like the Good Samaritan in His story.

Jesus is the Good Samaritan, and He teaches us about Himself in this parable.  

So, dear friends, there is Law in this tale: the Law that calls us to repent and teaches us how to live the Christian life.  And there is Gospel here as well: our Lord Jesus Christ teaching us that we are saved by grace, through faith, by means of His Word, by His will, by His mercy.

Let us hear this Word, ponder this Word, rejoice at this Word, and thank the Word Made Flesh, our Good Samaritan, who binds up our wounds by means of His wounds, who pays our debts out of His own treasure, and who justifies us so that we do not have to attempt to justify ourselves by lying to ourselves.

And in gratitude, let us find our neighbor in need and serve him, being that Good Samaritan, being the love of Christ to those in need, being a neighbor to those who have been beaten half-dead by our fallen world.  And let us indeed “go and do likewise,” not in search of salvation or selfish gain, but in genuine love, remembering the command and the promise: “You shall 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 your neighbor as yourself.”

And let us always thank, praise, serve, and obey our Good Samaritan, the One who shows us mercy.  

Amen.

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