Sermon: Trinity 13 – 2024

25 August 2024

Text: Luke 10:23-37 (2 Chron 28:8-15)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

One of our Lord’s most famous parables began with a question from the audience: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  It was posed by a lawyer and was asked dishonestly, “to put Him to the test.”  In spite of the bad motivation question, it is an important question.  We could rephrase it in a way that a lot of people today might say it: “What do I have to do to get to heaven?” 

Jesus the Teacher asks the lawyer to recite the Law.  The lawyer correctly sums up the Ten Commandments: to love God and love the neighbor.  Jesus replies, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.” 

At this point, the correct answer is to say, “But I can’t do that.  I always try to keep the Law but I fail.  I don’t love God with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind when I serve other gods, when I misuse His name, and when I do not honor the Sabbath day.  I don’t love God when I love myself instead, and when I commit any sin, it really is a sin against God.  And I am terrible at loving my neighbor.  Even when I was a child, I didn’t honor my parents.  I wish harm on others, I have impure thoughts, I think I’m entitled to others’ things, I think and speak ill of others, I covet things and people that God has not given to me.  What do I do about this, Teacher?”

But this was not the lawyer’s response.  For he was “desiring to justify himself.”  He needed to find a loophole: some way to make the law manageable.  And his attempt was really pretty weak: “And who is my neighbor?”  For think about it, dear friends, if we only have to keep the commandments with a very few people, that might make easier.  After all, it is easier to love people we already love than total strangers, or even our enemies.  Our lawyer – as lawyers often do – is seeking to focus on the definition of a word to limit the scope of the law, to make it easier somehow (as if that were even possible). 

So who is my neighbor?  We use the word to mean different things in different contexts.  Is it the person living on your left and your right?  Is it someone in your neighborhood?  Someone who is of your same ethnicity or tribe?  Is it your countryman?  Is it someone who has the same citizenship as you, even if that person lives in a foreign country? 

Jesus connects the idea of showing love as a way of keeping the Ten Commandments to the idea of mercy.  For when we are merciful in our minds, our acts of love will follow.  And, of course, it is easier to show mercy to someone we have a connection with than to a stranger, or even an enemy. 

We see this in our everyday lives.  When our own family members suffer, it consumes our lives: an elderly parent, a sick child, a handicapped brother or sister, a spouse that is suddenly in distress.  The closer our connection, the greater our mercy.  Our best friend is in need of help.  A co-worker falls on hard times.  We notice that the homeless person claims to be a military veteran of our country.  There is a crime victim who looks like us.  One of our countrymen is traveling abroad and is arrested by a corrupt foreign government official.  If we have something in common with another person, we are more likely to have a soft spot for him or her. 

But what about a random person who has no connection to us?  Or worse yet, what about someone that I consider to be an enemy? 

Our Old Testament reading is a passage from Second Chronicles.  It was during a time of civil war when the northern ten tribes of Israel won a military victory over the two southern tribes.  The victorious Israelites captured 200,000 of their enemy relatives.  They were enslaving them and taking their property as the spoils of war.  But the prophet Oded spoke God’s Word to them, and ordered them to show mercy: to return the captives, to feed them, to clothe them, and even to use donkeys to convey the weak to their “kinsfolk at Jericho.”

For though these people were their enemies, they were also their neighbors.  And they justified their murder and enslavement and theft of their neighbors because they had been at war.  But God now commanded them to show mercy.

So knowing this Word of God, Jesus tells the lawyer a story about a man who shows mercy to an enemy.  Our Lord even cleverly points the lawyer’s mind to this passage by making the hero a Samaritan – a descendant of those northern tribes of Israel and an enemy of the descendants of Judah.  And Jesus also mentions Jericho in the story.  This was designed to trigger the lawyer’s memory, as it should trigger ours.  For we just heard this reading about showing mercy even to our enemies.

In Jesus’ story, a man “fell among robbers” on the way to Jericho.  He is beaten up and robbed.  He is bleeding out on the side of the road.  And nobody shows him mercy: not even his countrymen: not a priest, not even a Levite.  They both pretend not to notice.  For they have important religious matters to attend to under the Law.  “But a Samaritan” shows up: a natural enemy of this man.  And he had “compassion” even on this stranger whom he isn’t supposed to associate with, let alone get involved with.  He applies first aid.  And like our Old Testament lesson, he places the enfeebled victim on his own donkey and transports him to where he can get help.

The Samaritan even goes out of pocket to help this enemy stranger whom he treats as his neighbor.  Jesus then stops the story and asks the lawyer to go ahead and define the word “neighbor” now.  The neighbor was not the priest, nor the Levite, but rather “the one who showed him mercy.” 

So God teaches us what a neighbor is.  The Samaritan came upon this victim, and this victim was his neighbor.  The neighbor is someone God places before you.  It doesn’t matter where the person lives or even if the person is of your tribe or nationality.  The person might even be your enemy.  The point is that the person is in distress, and has crossed paths with you.  If you are merciful, if you love God and your neighbor as the Law commands, you will be merciful.

Jesus is teaching us how to apply the Law, dear friends.  But He is also teaching us about Himself, about God’s mercy.  For in His mercy, God comes to all of us who have rebelled against Him.  All of us poor, miserable sinners have essentially rejected God.  We don’t want to live by the Ten Commandments.  And even if we know them, we find excuses and loopholes and workarounds to justify ourselves.  We divide our neighbors up into those we love and those we hate, those on our side and those on the other side, those of our tribe and those of the other tribe.  Our compassion is conditional, and we justify ourselves based on defining someone as not being our neighbor.

But in spite of our rebellion against God, God is still merciful to us.  He sends us prophets.  He gives us His Word.  He guides us to show mercy to our neighbors, and for them to show us mercy.  And He even takes the form of a man, suffering the evil of every sort of enemy, teaching us the Word of God, and keeping the Law for us.  And instead of being shown mercy, Jesus is stripped and beaten and left for dead upon the cross.  He is attacked and killed by His own people, His own relatives, His own neighbors: by the very people He came to save, to bind up their wounds, to show them mercy, and to transport them to heaven.

Jesus is the Good Samaritan, whose mercy to His enemies even extends to the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  Jesus comes to forgive us when we do not love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and when we don’t love our neighbors as ourselves.  He comes to forgive us when we try to justify ourselves.  He comes to give us forgiveness when we are attacked and beaten and left half dead by the devil.

And indeed, Jesus tells us, “You go, and do likewise.”  He calls us to repent of our self-justification and our lack of love and mercy.  For we also need to hear the Law.  That little lawyer in each of us wants to justify himself.  So let us repent, dear friends.  Let us imitate the Good Samaritan.  And the only way to live a life of mercy to our neighbors is to receive the mercy of Jesus, knowing that we cannot justify ourselves, knowing that we fail, but also knowing that Jesus has come to bind up our wounds by means of His wounds, to clothe us with His righteousness, to pay our debt with His own blood as a ransom, and to transport us to heaven even though we are too weak to get there on our own.

The priest and the Levite can’t save us, that is, the law and our twisted interpretations and self-justifications won’t heal us and save us from death.  Only the Good Samaritan, the God who shows us mercy, can do that.  And He does it, dear friends.  He is here for you today with the bread to revive you and wine to cleanse your wounds.  He offers you His true body and blood. 

Instead of asking “who is my neighbor?” in order to justify ourselves, we should be asking “Who is my Good Samaritan?” in order to be justified by grace through faith.  And the answer, dear friends, is “Jesus.”  Lord, have mercy!  Amen.

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