A series of sermons on the parables of Jesus

The parable of the good Samaritan

Luke 10: 25-37

The story

It must have been a fool – the one who went from Jerusalem to Jericho! Some people don’t go out alone in Canberra, much less in Chicago, in New York or in down town Washington. I was staying in a Hotel in down town Atlanta. After a day of speaking and listening I was tired. But I needed to go for a walk to clear my head and put things into perspective. The bell boy at the reception, said: “Don’t do that, Sir, you will be mugged.”

The road from Jerusalem from Jericho was well known as a hide out for robbers. And so it happened, what sensible persons knew would happen: the robbers “stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.”

Half dead! Not dead, but half-dead. That is the state when you lose control over your life. You don’t really live, you are being lived. You become dependent on others for your survival. Death is separation from life. “Half-dead” means that you see life drifting away. Loneliness. Sickness. Old age. Frustration. Sadness. Marriage problems. Broken friendships. We have all been there, on the side of the road, not knowing what to do, paralysed, unsure, struggling, longing, not knowing what will happen – half-dead. Will anyone see me and find me? Really see me and find me?

Yes, there comes a priest and behind him a Levite, they “saw” the man who was lying half-dead on the side of the road. In Jesus’ day, they were the representatives of the dominant and official religion. They were expected to help. Indeed, they had just been at the temple in Jerusalem to get their spiritual batteries recharged. Their God was the God who shows partiality to the poor and oppressed, to the orphan and the widow and the stranger. Their God hears the cry of all those who lie half-dead on the side of the road of life.

But then: in merciless and ugly repetition: the priest “saw … and passed by on the other side.” The Levite “saw … and passed by on the other side.”

It was not all unconcern and sloth. You see, in Bible School they had been taught that you must not touch a dead body, because death is infectious – they were taught. Death is a kind of evil that rubs off on you. It pulls you down into the dirt and soils your spirituality. It was drummed into them: don’t eat with sinners, don’t work on the Sabbath, don’t touch the dead.

But they were also taught that God has a heart! That God hears the cries of people in need. At least, even given their own theology, they could have stayed a moment, turned the seemingly dead person over and see whether the heart was still beating.

They did not do that, because they had not understood that loving God and loving your neighbour is the fulfilment of all other commandments. They did not really look, because they did not really love and therefore they missed the call of God in that situation.

Whose sin is greater, we wonder. The sin of violence by the robbers; or the sin of neglect by those who had just been to the house of God?

Someone else came. A Samaritan. He would not help! Would a Serb help an Albanian? Would a Hutu help a Tutsi? Would a Naga help a Kuki? Humanly speaking: No! For a moment the man lying there half dead on the side of the road, opened his eyes with hope. But when he saw who was coming, a Samaritan, he closed them again in resignation. Jews and Samaritans had no dealings with each other. There was a longstanding hatred. He of all people will walk passed.

Like the priest and the Levite, the Samaritan “saw” him, but he saw him, not only with his eyes, he saw him with his heart: “he was moved with pity” – and he does what needed to be done:

“He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took, care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’”

Love can not pass by on the other side. Love discovers! Love is inventive and courageous. Love goes into the situation with the expectation that God might be there.

Saviour

“… moved with pity”

It is not only us – at least at certain times in our life! – who are hidden in this parable. Jesus is hidden in it. Jesus tells the story and Jesus fleshes out what he says. He staked his life on his words. For the “fool” who was silly and messed up his life by travelling roads that were known for their danger, the Samaritan meant life, new life. Life from unexpected corners.

And is not this what Jesus brings to us when we with uncertainty and loneliness and frustration and disillusionment lie half-dead on the side of the road of life? There are times when we need grace; unsolicited, undeserved, no-strings-attached grace. There are times when our strength is dissipated and we need someone from outside to lift us up and bind our wounds. Hear the great Christian confession:

“… by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” (Eph 2:8)

The Samaritan was the gift of God to the man who was lying half-dead on the side of the road of life. Jesus is the gift of God to us. He comes to us with the promise that all who receive him, who believe in his name, he gives power to become children of God (John 1:12).

Like the Samaritan to a Jew, Jesus may be a stranger to you. But a stranger can become a friend if you let him!

Example

“Who is my neighbour?”

The man who was foolish, but who has been set back on the road of life – was he a changed person after that experience? Has this unexpected encounter of love and joy changed him? We do not know.

What we do know is that when Jesus enters our life, when we accept Jesus as our Saviour, then we are changed. We become “new creatures”. Our understanding and vision of life is refigured. The soil on which our life grows is now Jesus-soil. Our priorities change. Jesus, our saviour, becomes also our example.

That becomes clearer as we follow the parable of Jesus into another situation. There a lawyer stands up to test Jesus: “what must I do to inherent eternal life?” Jesus says: what does your tradition tell you? He answers: “love God and love your neighbour.” He knows the theory. His theology is right! But does his theology become manifest in his thinking and acting? Is it only head knowledge, or has it permeated his being?

“Do it!” – Jesus says.

“Love God” seems to be fairly easy. The word “God” is more elusive; I can remain flexible at that point; and if we are honest, we all pretty good in finding our own fairly comfortable ways to “love God”.

But “love your neighbour” – that is terribly concrete, terribly particular. And since the challenge to think God and neighbour together comes from Jesus and since Jesus meets us with the story of a Serb having helped an Albanian, and a Tutsi having helped a Hutu, and a Naga having helped a Kuki, and a Samaritan having helped a Jew, there is the lurking suspicion that the reference to the “neighbour” is not as flexible as the reference to “God”.

“Who is my neighbour?”

I am reading the book of a Croatian theologian (Miroslav Volf – Exclusion and Embrace [1996]) who had just finished a lecture on this most challenging aspect of Jesus’ call to discipleship: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (Matt 5:44f.) He had argued that just as God in Christ has embraced us as enemies and sinners, so we need to embrace our enemies. His mentor and former professor (J ¼rgen Moltmann) gets up and becomes concrete and particular: “But can you embrace a cetnik?” Silence – “… the notorious Serbian fighters called ‘cetnik’ had been sowing desolation in my native country, herding people into concentration camps, raping women, burning down churches, and destroying cities.” (p. 9) Then out of the silence came a struggling, a searching answer: “No, I cannot – but as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to.”

When Jesus becomes our saviour, then our lives are re-centered: “Christ lives in me” as the apostle Paul says. Then Jesus also determines our life-style, our way of thinking and doing things, our ethics. Then we see ourselves and the world not with our eyes, but with God’s eyes. And God looks from below. Humanly speaking most of us tend to join the priest and the Levite. We pick whom we want to help. We decide whom we want our neighbour to be. And that one, that fool who is lying half dead on the side of the road (he should have known better, anyhow!), that one is in the “too hard basket”!

But Jesus transfigures our reality. He says to us: you need to learn to look at life from the perspective of the one who is lying there in need.

And isn’t that the way it happened to us? We did not come to God, but God came to us – and by his grace we said “yes” when he came. We were lying there and God found us. It is God’s nature to seek, and it is God’s power to find.

As it is with us, so it is with others. We need to see life from the perspective of the one who is lying half-dead on the side of the road of life. The question is not: “Who is my neighbour?” and then for us pick and chose, for us to decide where to stop and where to pass by. The question is: what is God expecting of me, as a follower of Christ, in each situation. The situation is there. We did not make it and we did not chose it. It confronts us; it invades us. And the situation may explode into the question – as it did for the priest and the Levite and the Samaritan: “Who needs me?” “To whom am I a neighbour?” – that is the question for the friends of Jesus.

Yes, hard it is! But then, there is no cheap grace.

Go and do it.

Invitation

May I invite you to become part of the story, that ancient and ever modern story of the good Samaritan.

Let us not look at the demand first, the demand it places upon us. Let us not look, first of all, at Jesus as example. That will deflate us. We can’t do it. Who can love their enemy? In practice; eye ball to eye ball? We can’t do it.

Before we look at the demand, let us look at the promise. Jesus is not only our example. First of all, he is our saviour. He re-figures our life. He re-organises our alliances. He gives us new visions and new dreams and new resources. If we trust his ways he will help us to carry our burdens.

Will there ever be peace between the Nagas and the Kukis? Will the Serbs and the Albanians ever live together and accept each other with their difference? Will there ever be reconciliation between the Hutus and the Tutsis? Hatred is so deep, hurt is so powerful, injustice has been so great. Humanly speaking, there seems to be no way out. Is our talk of forgiveness and reconciliation empty? Are we humans fated into situations of hatred and injustice?

Or is it true that in Christ we are new creatures? It is true and the truth invites us to claim it and try it. With Christ there came the dawning of a new humanity in which the barriers of race and sex and hatred are suspended by a new act of God:

… in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:26)

Trust the promise. Believe it. Lean into God. Do it!

Rev. Dr. Thorwald Lorenzen
http://www.canbap.org.au/parables.htm