Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Pentecost 7 - Proper 10


Luke 10:25-37


Nearly all of you are well acquainted with the Gospel lesson today. We heard the familiar parable of the “Good Samaritan” which to mind the story of a priest, and a Levite (supposedly holy men) passing by a wounded man lying on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho and a Samaritan who saves that man from dying. While many aspects of the New Testament may be unfamiliar to our society, the term “Good Samaritan” gets thrown around a lot. In the newspapers or on Fox News we occasionally read and hear stories about people who go out of their way to help others in need. Headlines read, “Good Samaritan Pulls Victim from the Water” and “Good Samaritan Helps Police Make Arrest.” Since we are bombarded by stories of tragedy and loss in the media and on the news, “Good Samaritan” stories do come as a welcome relief. Good, so our culture understands what Jesus is telling us through this parable, right? Or does it somehow miss the point about the parable of the “Good Samaritan”? While the theme of coming to someone’s aid is indeed an aspect of Jesus’ parable, it only scratches at the surface of what Jesus wants you and me to learn from the Gospel lesson this morning. We will learn that there is only one true “Good Samaritan” only one truly good neighbor that rescues a world in need. Our Gospel lesson teaches that,
JESUS CHRIST IS OUR GOOD SAMARITAN

I. The way to inherit eternal life is through perfectly keeping the law.
1. So how can we as Christians understand this parable so differently from the rest of our culture? First of all, we need to pay attention to how the parable starts. Our text reads, “On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” While his motives for coming to Jesus may not have been pure, (the text says he came to test Jesus) the lawyer’s question is extremely important. He wants to know from Jesus himself how he can inherit eternal life. Not only that, he wants to know what he can personally do to earn that life. Even though we discover through his wording that he recognizes that eternal life must be inherited, as a son inherits a family estate, he still thinks that there is something that he must do to make eternal life a reality.
2. Jesus replies to the lawyer’s question with a question of his own. “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” Jesus asks this not to evade the question but to give the lawyer a clear understanding of what earning eternal life really means. So the lawyer answers “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, Love your neighbor as yourself.” This lawyer is no slouch. He knows the law well enough that he quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” and Leviticus 19:18 “love your neighbor as yourself.” By doing that he rightly captures the essence of the God’s law. Jesus tells him as much. He says, “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.” Jesus makes it clear that the only way a person can earn eternal life is through keeping the demands of God’s law. The lawyer in today’s text understood at this point that the law could be demanding more than he could do himself. So trying to find a way out, or as our text puts aptly puts it, desperately wanting to justify himself the lawyer tries to mitigate the law’s demands. So he asks Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
Application: You can see the problem the lawyer finds himself in. It’s easy to love your neighbor as yourself if your neighbors are none other than your close family and friends. If those people were your neighbors then you might have a shot at keeping the law’s requirement of loving your neighbor as yourself. But what about the new family who just moved in down the street? What about the new kid in your classroom? What about those in-laws that you have never gotten along with? Why should they be our neighbors? Unfortunately, in our sinful and fallen nature all of us would much prefer a short list of neighbors to love. For as often as there are stories about “Good Samaritans” coming to the rescue in the news, there seems to be twice as many stories about someone being in trouble, needing help, and no one does a thing. Just this past week, I found a news story about how bystanders did nothing as an elderly man was beaten in a carjacking outside a convenience store. Other disturbing stories recount how children are abused and beaten on playgrounds as others just stand around and watch. There is even a psychological term that has been coined, called “the bystander effect,” which tries to make sense as to why people do nothing when they witness someone in trouble. And even when identifying strangers as neighbors is hard enough, how often do we fail to love our family and friends as we should?
II. When we realize who our neighbors really are, we discover that we cannot keep the law.
1. Jesus makes clear though the parable that a neighbor could be anyone. It could even be the man who was beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. The priest and the Levite kept their distance from the dying man on the side of the road. By avoiding him they denied that the man was their neighbor; that he meant anything to them at all. The Samaritan, however, saw the dying man and felt compassion. His heart went out to him. It is interesting to note that the same Greek word is used in describing how the Samaritan felt and how Jesus felt when he saw the Widow at Nain come out of the town with her son in a coffin. It was not just simple compassion the Samaritan felt, it is a heartfelt, gut wrenching pity that moved him to help the dying man no matter what the cost was.
2. But it isn’t enough to recognize who is your neighbor, what is also required is that we are good neighbors to those who need it. When Jesus asked the lawyer at the end of the parable, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The answer was the Samaritan. He not only recognized who his neighbor was he was also a true neighbor in return.
3. So where do we stand in relation to this parable? When we try to justify ourselves, like the lawyer in this lesson, we become like the priest and the Levite who ignore the dying man on the road. We feel nothing when we fail to help those who need it and we come up with excuses and try to limit who our neighbors could be. If however we can see that we fail to keep God’s law to love him with all our heart mind and soul and that we fail to love our neighbors as ourselves, then we recognize the truth about our sinful and fallen condition. We recognize that there is nothing that we can do on our own to earn or merit eternal life, as the lawyer in our text wanted to. When we understand this we become like the robbed and beaten man on the side of the road in need of rescue. In that man’s condition there was nothing he could do to help himself. And in the same way, when we are beaten down by our own sins, when we realize that we love ourselves more than God or our neighbors, we are rendered helpless.
III. Christ rescues us from the wounds of sin by perfectly keeping the law for us.
1. But dear friends in Christ, I have good news for you today! Jesus Christ is our true Good Samaritan who came and found us when the Devil, the world, and our flesh left us dying on the side of the road. When we could not keep the law of God to earn eternal life, Jesus came to earth and lived a perfect life that kept God’s law perfectly. On the cross he exchanged his glory and the eternal life that were rightly his for our sins, our shortcomings and our punishment of death. From his heartfelt compassion, he selflessly lifted up our sins on the cross to remove them forever from us. By his own wounds ours have been healed. So in the same way as the Samaritan paid for the restoration of health of the dying man, so Christ has paid for our everlasting health through his suffering and death on the cross. There is only one true Good Samaritan in this parable and it is Jesus Christ himself. Unlike us, he will never just stand by and watch as we are torn apart by the powers of this world. No, he comes to our rescue and saves us every time we are in trouble. When we call on his name in prayer we have the absolute confidence and assurance from God’s Word that he hears us and that he helps us by his good and gracious will.
2. Dear friends, we have inherited eternal life, not by anything we have done, but by what Christ has done. Through his work on the cross we have been reconciled to the Father. Since we are reconciled, we have become heirs to his eternal kingdom. St. Paul writes in Galatians chapter 3, “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.” We have been made heirs to eternal life through Christ’s saving work. Through faith in that promise we will receive that gift.
IV. Through Christ, we love and serve our neighbor as he loves and serves us.
1. Now that we know how we as Christians understand the parable of the Good Samaritan, we know that any good work done by us to help our neighbor is not really our own work, but it is Christ working through us. As Jesus found us and rescued us from our wounds, so we look to help all our neighbors. We welcome the new family into our neighborhood. We pray for and provide for the needy through our donations of time and goods. When we see someone who does need help, we go out of our way to help them. We don’t do this to show how good we are, but to show the world how much Christ loves us.
2. When I was studying late one cold winter night this past year at the seminary, a friend of mine stopped by to say hello. We were both having a tough time keeping up with our studies but I was encouraged by my friend’s concern long hours in the library as I worked on a paper that was due that week. A few minutes after my friend left, he returned with a small takeout bag from McDonalds and insisted that I take the bag and have some food to hold me over till I get home. I couldn’t help but think to myself how blessed I was to have such a great Christian friend who somehow knew how hungry I was without even asking. I thought to myself at the time, and still do today, that this is how Christ serves us through our life in this world, through our neighbors’ actions. The great Good Samaritan moves us through the power of the Holy Spirit to spread his mercy to anyone who needs it. Thanks be to God for the gifts of forgiveness, life and salvation made possible through Jesus Christ and opportunities to serve in his name every day.

sermon written by Sem. Brian Flamme
Schnorr von Carolsfeld woodcuts © WELS for personal and congregational use

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