+ 5thSunday after Pentecost – July 14th, 2019 +
Series C: Leviticus 18:1-5, 9-18; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37
Beautiful Savior Lutheran, Milton
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.”
Although Shakespeare’s famous words were written about the parts we play in various stages of human life, his words give us a helpful way to see Jesus’ parables. Jesus’ parables are a stage for God’s unexpected mercy, and Jesus’ shocking, outrageous undeserved, unmerited, and unconditional love for the lost, least, last, losers and outcast. Think of Jesus’ parables as a divine drama, where his compassion, mercy, and love are center stage.
This doesn’t mean the parables cease to be God’s Word. Quite the opposite. Jesus’ parables are God’s Word through and through. His Word taught and proclaimed and given to us with all the richness and imagination of the storyteller, the divine playwright himself, Jesus the Word of God made flesh.
It’s no surprise, then, that we find Jesus’ parables full of the dramatic: villains and heroes. Lead actors and supporting roles. Plot and story arc. Truth, meaning, and symbolism. And so on.
Now, usually when we read the Parable of the Good Samaritan we imagine ourselves playing the lead role of the Samaritan. “The moral of the story is…Don’t be like the priest. Don’t be like the Levite. Be like the Samaritan. Be nice. Do good. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Pay it forward.”
And while it’s true, Jesus calls us to love our neighbor, we miss the whole point of this story if begin by putting ourselves in the spotlight of this parable. For as soon as we do, it’s not too long before we start to feel the heat and bright lights hitting us like sun glares on the freeway. Revealing, exposing, and shedding the spotlight us.
How would Siskel and Ebert, or a Broadway review rate our performance as Good Samaritans? How are we doing at keeping Jesus’ commands? Are you loving the Lord your God with allyour heart, and allyour soul, and allyour strength, and allyour mind? How about your neighbor? Are you loving your neighbor as much as you love yourself?
Go down that road long enough and it’s not too long before we find ourselves just like that certain man in the story: beaten, bloody, and left for dead in the ditch.
Remember how this all started. The whole story of the Good Samaritan begins with a question about salvation. A lawyer asked Jesus, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
The answer to this man’s question is found, not by focusing the spotlight on us and our work, but Jesus crucified and his work for us. Not in seeing ourselves as good Samaritans, but to see Jesus as the Good and Perfect Samaritan who comes and finds us lost, and outcast, and left for dead on the side of the road.
If the point of this story is to be the Good Samaritan. Inherit eternal life. Love the Lord your God with everything you are and have and love your neighbor as yourself, then we’re all as good as dead. We flop and fail time and time again. We may as well be lying in the ditch beaten and bloodied and on the road to the grave.
And that’s exactly where Jesus wants us. That’s the point Jesus is making here. If anyone is like the Samaritan, it’s not us, it’s Jesus. Jesus is the Good Samaritan who rescues us, pulls us out of the ditch. Binds our wounds in his. Carries us with him to the cross. Everything we need is charged to his account.
Only Jesus is the Good Samaritan. Jesus loves the Lord his God with all his heart, all his soul, all his strength, all his mind. Jesus loves the neighbor as himself, even those who hated and rejected him.
Jesus became that Good Samaritan who bent down in compassion to rescue us. Jesus loved His neighbor and He loved God. He fulfilled the Law with His love.
As Isaiah declares, he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
In His love for us, for all of humanity, for His whole creation, Jesus joined us in the ditch. Jesus became the man who fell among thieves, crucified between two of them, bloodied and beaten by a world who did not want Him or His way of salvation. Left for dead on the cross, crucified and risen for you. What the Law demands – and what we have not done – Jesus does and gives for you. Jesus helps us who can never help ourselves. He washes away our blood with his own healing blood. He strips himself and wraps us in own garments of righteous love.
As St. Paul proclaims: He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
The story of the Good Samaritan is the story of Jesus’ compassion towards us. It is the story of his self-giving, self-denying love for us. It’s also the story of our love for others.
Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”
Someone once said that telling people the Good News of Jesus crucified for them is like one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.
Our life of love, compassion, and good works for our neighbor works the same way. Each one of us are fellow dead-beat sinner-saints rescued from the ditch, called to share Jesus’ mercy and compassion with those who are in the ditch with us. We love because he first loved us. This is what we do – we go to our neighbors in the ditch, because that is what God has done for us in Jesus.
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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