Passage: Luke 10:25-37
Preacher: Rev. Joel Beyer
Series: Parables of Jesus
Category: Service, Mercy
Keywords: heart , deeds , good samaritan , unlovable , unclean , compassion , mercy , good neighbor
Summary:
The point of Jesus' story is not simply to do good deeds for others out of obligation or because God tells you to, or even to please God, but to have a heart of compassion for all people. Being a Good Samaritan is more about your HEART than about good DEEDS. So let me ask you this, where do you draw the line? Who in your life, in your world, is unlovable, is unclean, is someone who you might pass by? How is God calling you to change your heart and giving you opportunities to show compassion?
Detail:
We live in a world that is in love with stories. While reading may not be the medium of choice, the wide variety and accessibility of audio and video entertainment has made our obsession with stories higher than ever before. With the advent of companies like netflix and hulu, we now have the ability to even “binge watch”tv shows in which we spend hours at a time, usually into the middle of the night, to follow a storyline as it unfolds in 15 hour long episodes. I have to admit, I even succumb to this temptation from time to time. What can I say, I’m a sucker for crime shows and there’s an abundance of those. Even advertising and marketing has taken advantage of our culture’s soft spot for a good story. Instead of print and flash website, almost every new product now comes with at least a 5 minute video following an individual or family as it makes its way through life and highlighting the integration into their narrative as essential. I was especially impressed with this recent advertisement by Subaru, who managed to tell a story with just two words: “They lived.”
In Jesus’ day, storytelling was of utmost importance, and Jesus himself made great use of drama. Instead of merely teaching about corruption of the temple, he overturned tables inside the temple courts. In Jesus’ day, the aim of a great Jewish scholar was to teach with effect. To win a crowd. To offer teachings that transformed thinning and living. One Middle Eastern proverbial saying expressed it nicely: “The great teacher never offers his students a basket of cucumbers; instead, he places a peppercorn under the tongue.”So many of Jesus’stories have survived in our Gospels because they were peppercorns that remained with his followers for years. In fact, over a third of Jesus ’ words in the Gospels are in the form of parables, or short stories with profound ideas about reality. He hardly ever spoke about God in generalities, and he almost always painted pictures about reality and themes that people could understand. And he was so good at this, that the Gospel writers made sure to tell us how large of a following he had. At one point, we read that over 5,000 people gathered to listen to him teach and then even gives us their reaction to his words:
Matthew 7:28-29 — And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.
Yes, Jesus taught with authority, but he also talked in a way that everyone could understand, and in a way that prompted some kind of emotional response, either positive or negative. Today we’re beginning a series on some of Jesus’most famous parables and unpacking their great truths. The parable we’re going to look at today is probably of the most popular, and probably the most well-known parables of Jesus in our culture - the Good Samaritan. I did a quick search this week to see what modern day references I could find about a “Good Samaritan”and it was quite interesting. From the story of a man who is donating money to all the shops in Ferguson MO that had been looted, to the story of a hero pilot who landed his commercial airplane on the Hudson River a few years ago, to a man who knocked out a would-be thief with a Jenny-O turkey, the stories were always varied and always interesting. Probably my favorite was a reference to the Finale Episode of the TV Show Seinfeld in which Jerry and his friends fail to help a man who is being carjacked and instead stand around and make comments about his size and end up being prosecuted for failing to follow the Good Samaritan law to rescue someone in need. Typical Seinfeld. But is that really what this story that Jesus tells is about? The term seems to be used loosely for anyone who commits a good deed. But is that the force of Jesus parable? Do good to others and you are a “Good Samaritan”? Or is there more depth to the meaning of this parable?
For that, lets take a look at the context:
Luke 10:25-28 —And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? ”—Now he wasn’t a lawyer, as in how we usually think about lawyers. He was an expert in Jewish religious law. A respected authority in regards to reading and interpreting the Torah - which is the first five books of the Old Testament and really the core teachings of the Jewish faith. He asks a question that had been thrown around and debated for many years among Jewish scholars: Is there a way of living according to the law and Word of God that so pleases God that it necessarily leads to a life in eternity with God?
Jesus, not wanting to waste an opportunity to impart a true understanding of our relationship with God, responds with a question of his own: —Acknowledging that this lawyer is an interpreter of God’s law - He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it? ” And he answered, “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 he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live. ” —The lawyer expertly cites the second half of the foundational passage of the Jewish faith - from Deuteronomy 6:4-5 - “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”These words were uttered morning and evening and were even written and posted inside every Jewish household. And then the Lawyer then himself attaches a passage from Leviticus 19:18 “And Love your neighbor as yourself.”Jesus was obviously pleased and he commends him, but then a deeper question surfaces, and no doubt the question that has been plaguing the Jews of that day:
Luke 10:29-32 – But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor? ” —This man wants to know - am I doing this?? Who am I required to love as myself in order to please God? Popular rabbinic teaching of that day excluded any non-Jew and even called for heretics and informers to be tossed in ditches and left for dead. Still another teaching excluded even personal enemies, which Jesus strongly rejected in Matthew’s Gospel when he said love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Here, in Luke, Jesus responds with a simple story. — Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side .
The 17 mile path from Jerusalem to Jericho was remote, difficult, and dangerous - well known as notorious for by many ancient writers. Jesus describes a man traveling here alone - something that was certainly foolish - like walking in downtown New York City alone after midnight, anyone who is robbed might be asked “What did you expect?”This man is robbed, stripped, beaten and left unconscious on the roadside. And probably the most important note here is that this man is naked. His social status and nationality cannot be identified by clothes or speech. He’s just a raw human in need - and that’s all we know. So here we have two servants of the Temple in Jerusalem, a priest and a Levite, probably returning home after offering sacrifice serving the temple, These are religious dudes! And they walk right past someone who could even be a fellow Jew in need!
in their mind they could actually risk angering God by defiling themselves. Especially because this beaten, naked, left for dead man could very well have been an enemy of the Jews. Still, neither of them loved their neighbor as themselves. So enter man #3…Now we’ve had a priest, and a Levite, surely it will be a Pharisee or a Scribe, show ill do the right thing, or a good Jewish man, not connected to the temple, but one who knows and loves God’s law. We read:
Luke 10:33-25 — But a Samaritan —wait, a Samaritan? In a shocking twist, the hero of our story is a half-Jew heretic, a foreigner who worships God on the wrong mountain, who intermarried with pagans, who eats un-clean food and reads the wrong Scriptures. This Samaritans who Jewish teachers say it is okay to exclude from our duty to love? A Samaritan, the enemy! Today it would be like to Pastors walk by and then an atheist stopped to help—A Samaritan as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back. ’
A Samaritan shames not only the priest and the lawyer, but all those listening as well. He goes above and beyond to help a stranger, and potentially a cultural enemy. And he proves that The law of God is not about pleasing God or how to be a good person, or how to get to heaven, living life according to God’s law is all about mercy and compassion. The Greek word for compassion is xplagnisthe and it means exactly what it sounds like - a feeling of mercy and love that flows literally from the gut. In Jesus day, the seat of emotion was not the heart, but the gut. This Samaritan felt so strongly for this stranger, simply because he was a human in need, that he helped him even at great risk and cost to himself.
I think if we’re honest, we’re not always the Good Samaritan in this story. We can be somewhat like the priest and levite when it comes to people in our lives as well. Now we don’t always come across beaten people on the side, but we do have people in our lives, and in this world, that we could be more loving more in our hearts, even if our outward actions are “acceptable”toward them. Like that person at work who’s always talking about politics and of course they are so far off base its not even funny. Or that friend who’s posting too many selfies on Facebook. Or those people who have a different sexual orientation . Or those people who belong to that religion that is so oppressive. We have a lot of excuses not to have to love them. They're the enemy. They're destroying our peace of mind, our culture, our world. They're not living very “Christian”upright lives. But maybe Jesus is calling us to have compassion, to want to reach out and befriend, to love them where they are, to see them as raw human beings navigating through this life just as we are, just as the Samaritan did.
Finishing the story, Jesus turns the lawyer’s question of “Who is my neighbor?”around and asks him, Luke 10:36-37 – 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. ” The point of Jesus' story is not simply to do good deeds for others out of obligation or because God tells you to, or even to please God, but to have a heart of compassion for all people. Being a Good Samaritan is more about your HEART than about good DEEDS . So let me ask you this, where do you draw the line? Who in your life, in your world, is unlovable, is unclean, is someone who you might pass by? How is God calling you to change your heart and giving you opportunities to show compassion?
As a remarkable storyteller, but also the very Son of God, Jesus’story here takes on an even more profound dimension, one that only a few in his day would have caught on to. In Exodus 21, there is a law about restitution for wrong doing, one of many. And it says “When men quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist and the man does not die but takes to his bed, then if the man rises again and walks outdoors with his staff, he who struck him shall be clear; only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall have him thoroughly healed. ” In this story, the Good Samaritan not only helps someone in need, but by paying for his full recovery, he acts as though he were the one who injured this man in the first place! And in an element of foreshadowing, a few years later, we see Jesus hanging on a cross, despised by the Jews, called an enemy of God and a heretic, who is so full of compassion for the entire world of sinful and broken humans like us, that he is actually acting as though He is the one who deserves wrath of God so that we don’t have to. Because of our sin, we’re broken and left for dead, unable to save ourselves. But Jesus, at great risk and cost to Himself, his very life, gave to us eternal life by paying for our restoration with God the Father by dying on the cross.
So our hearts are modeled after Christ, the Ultimate GOOD SAMARITAN , not so that we can be saved, but in gratitude, because we’ve been there. We’ve can claim no status or good deed, no excuse to not show compassion to others because we’ve been shown the greatest mercy and compassion by Jesus who saw us broken on the side of the road and loved us. In humility we recognize there is no difference between sinners out there. Our sin leaves us all broken, and Christ wants to restore each and every one of us to Himself by His profound and shocking grace. As a story-teller, Jesus is one of the best because His stories don’t just entertain, but they give hope and life. As we journey through some of these parables over the next few weeks, may we get to know the heart of God for the lost a little better, may we see the profound love of God poured out not only in the words, but in how Jesus demonstrated that love on the cross, and may we be brought deeper into relationship with him, to sit at his feet, and take in His life giving Words. Amen.
