The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)
I’m so excited and honoured to have the opportunity this morning to introduce
dear friends of ours all the way from our second homeland, Zimbabwe: Chris and
Nancy Maposa. The Maposas have been blessed Good Samaritans to us. They
found the five Kuepfers on the roadside, beaten, bleeding, half dead; and they
picked us up, put us on their donkey… Okay, that’s stretching it a bit. We did feel
beaten down by the torrid Zimbabwean sun and we might have had a few blisters
on our feet, but Chris actually picked us up from the Dangamvura Inn, with their
pickup, not a donkey!
And took us to their home for a wonderful evening
dinner. And it’s such a joy to have them with us this morning. They’ll be sharing in
adult study about an amazing work God is doing in Zimbabwe, in which they’re
being Good Samaritans, caring for those left on the roadside half-dead. They’re
caring for the most vulnerable of all people in Zimbabwe, in Jesus’ name.
Our dear friends Roy and Gwyneth were also amazing “Good Samaritans to us in
Zimbabwe. Sixteen years ago this month, Gwyn came to our house in Rusitu and
gave Zach his very first bath, the morning after he was born. And about 17 years
ago, Roy picked me up at the side of the road on our very first day in Rusitu, and
drove me to town, because we didn’t have a vehicle yet.
Now, I noticed when I said to you, “Chris and Nancy, Roy and Gwyneth, are Good
Samaritans,” none of you even flinched. None of you are saying to me, “How dare
you insult your friends by calling them ‘Samaritans’?”
Now we even think of “Samaritan” as a good word, but in Jesus’ day it was a
horrid curse word. There weren’t enough ugly words in the Hebrew language for
“Samaritan.”
When Jesus’ enemies were really, really angry with him, the very ugliest thing
they could think to throw at Jesus was, “Surely he is a Samaritan, and demonpossessed” (John 8:48). “Samaritan—demon-possessed:” same thing. And we say,
“Good Samaritan”? To Jesus’ audience that’s a complete oxymoron, like “reality
TV” or “military intelligence” or “a vacuum cleaner that really sucks”! What if I’d
called Chris and Nancy, Roy and Gwyn, “good terrorists”? That would have
offended, right? The Jews in Jesus’ day thought Samaritans were as bad as
terrorists. Today Billy Graham’s son heads up an organization called “Samaritan’s
Purse.” Crazy! I wonder whether there will ever be a Christian organization called
“Al-Qaeda’s Purse.”
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So this is one of the most famous parables in the Bible. Almost everybody knows
Jesus’ story about the Good Samaritan. Or do we? Each week we look at another
of these little stories of Jesus, and Sunday after Sunday Jesus keeps surprising us
by this unexpected picture he keeps painting of God! Story after story—all about
God—the God who surprises us! Finally, a story about us, right? A story about
how we should be good neighbours. Well, not so fast!
Why did Jesus tell this story (verse 25)? What’s the big question Jesus gets asked?
A very good Jew, a man who’s spent his entire life studying the Bible and trying to
obey it, an “expert in the law (of God),” stops Jesus along the road and asks him a
really important question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Say you got five minutes backstage with Jesus, and you could ask him one
question. What question would you ask? I can’t think of a better question to ask
than this Bible expert asked. Can you?
But think again about his question: “What must I do to inherit?” That’s an odd
question, isn’t it? What do you do to inherit? Apparently we’re inheriting some
beautiful heirloom silverware from Sandra’s parents. What did I do to inherit
that? I married Sandra, I suppose. But seriously, what do I do to inherit? Nothing!
I get born! I just inherit from my parents because I’m their son. I don’t do
anything. Inheritance is complete gift, isn’t it?
But this Bible expert thinks he needs to do something to inherit. So Jesus, being a
good teacher, answers the question with another question: “You’re the expert in
the Bible—you tell me. What does the Bible say you must do to inherit eternal
life?”
And the Bible expert has the perfect answer. It’s all about love. It’s a relationship
thing. Wouldn’t you agree? He quotes the famous Shema, what all good Jews
recite every day. It’s the heart of the Bible: “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 neighbour as yourself!” Actually, that last line is not part of the
Shema, but this Bible expert gets it—love for God and neighbour go together.
John’s letter will say, “Don’t tell me you love God if you don’t love your
neighbour. How can you say, ‘I love God,’ whom you have not seen, if you don’t
love the person in front of you whom you do see? Anyone who says I love God
but hates his brother or sister is a liar!” (1 John 4:20)
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So Jesus says, (verse 28), “Correct. That’s how you’re saved. Do that, and you’re
guaranteed eternal life.”
Honestly?! That’s depressing. How can this Bible expert—how can anybody—
think, “I can do that. I can love like that.” Who actually dares to think, let alone
say, “I love God with all my heart, all my soul, all my strength, all my
mind”? Good luck with that.
Still, there’s lots of people today who think like this Jewish expert in the Bible:
“It’s basically about being a good person. God just wants me to try extra hard to
be a good person.” Maybe I can’t really love God with all my heart, soul, strength
and mind, but I’ve got this checklist of the really important stuff, and if I just keep
this checklist, I should be okay. God will accept that. I’ll be justified. Look at verse
29: this man thinks he can justify himself.
What would this guy’s checklist—his justification list—be? The Jewish people had
a pretty standard list: “Make a pilgrimage to the temple every year (check), pray
to God every day (check), study Torah daily (check), never eat pork, or prawns
(check), observe the Sabbath (check), keep the Ten Commandments (check)—
well, most of the time… that last one is tough… once in awhile I covet my
neighbour’s donkey. Check, check, check. Clearly I’m justified. I love God.”
What would your checklist look like, if someone asked you, “Do you love God?”
“I go to church most Sundays, I attend a LIFE group during the week, I give 10% of
my income to God’s work, I pray at mealtimes, I read the Rejoice devotional every
morning, I volunteer for MCC, I try to tell people about Jesus, I try to keep the Ten
Commandments (most of the time… that last one is tough… once in awhile I covet
my neighbour’s smartphone). Yeah, I think you could say I love God.” Maybe not
with all my heart, soul, strength and mind… but that’s impossible!
See: I want to justify myself too, just like that Bible expert. Besides, compared to
others, he’s doing amazing. Compared to his neighbours, he’s got the “love God”
thing down.
So how about the “love your neighbour” part? Here the expert has a question for
Jesus: “Who is my neighbour? Who do I get to exclude? Who do I still get to hate?
I’d like to hear your definition of ‘neighbour,’ Jesus.”
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And—surprise, surprise—Jesus doesn’t give a nice little definition. He tells a story.
A little, ordinary “secular” story. There’s our first “s,” again.
“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho.” Maybe that man walked past
them, just right now. See, Jesus is walking up that very road, right now, together
with this teacher of the law. They’re both heading up that hot desert road in the
other direction, from Jericho toward Jerusalem, pilgrims on the way to Passover.
It can be a very lonely, twisting, rocky, dangerous path. It winds through scary hills
where criminals would hide and jump out at you. Better to travel in groups.
But this unlucky traveller gets ambushed, robbed, stripped, beaten within an inch
of his life. And as he’s lying there, bleeding and unconscious, a priest happens to
come along. In those days priests were from the wealthy class, so he’d be riding,
of course. So he has the means to transport this guy to help.
But when he sees him lying in the ditch, the priest instead immediately crosses
over to the other side of the road, looks furtively up into the hills—are those
robbers still lurking around?—and he urges his donkey to hurry toward the city,
out of that dangerous situation as quickly as possible.
He has another reason for not daring to touch the injured man: he has a job to do
in the temple. If the man is dead, or if he’d die while in the priest’s care, that
priest would be defiled, and he wouldn’t be able to do his job in the temple. God’s
law forbade priests touching dead bodies. Besides, the wounded man is stripped.
Who knows if he’s even a Jew?
Next comes a Levite. Levites also work in the temple, as assistants to the priests.
The Levite can pass by with an easy conscience. He can’t stop. Does he think he
knows the law better than the priest? Who is he, a mere Levite, to upstage a
priest? He’ll probably have to face that same priest this very evening. He can’t just
ride into town with the wounded man whom the priest, with his understanding of
God’s law, chose to ignore. What an insult that would be to the priest. He too
passes on by.
So far the expert in the law is tracking with Jesus. He knows how these stories go.
Strike one, strike two… but the third one’s the charm. Yes, the story is pretty
harsh on the priests and Levites, but it’s true: the Temple system is
corrupt. Everybody knows the priests and Levites are in cahoots with King Herod.
They like the money, the power, the prestige. So this Bible expert sees the
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direction Jesus’ story is taking, and I think he likes it. First a priest (that’s like a
bishop) messes up. Next a Levite (that’s like an ordinary pastor). Clearly the next
guy, the hero, is going to be a honest, faithful layperson (like himself). The third
guy is going to be a good, solid, righteous Jew. Maybe even an expert in the law!
“Third,” says Jesus, “along came a… Samaritan!” What?! A corrupt politician. A
drug dealer. A sex offender. A terrorist. A ___ (You fill in the blank with the kind of
person you despise the most.) Surprise and scandal, all wrapped in one! There’s
our second and third “s’s.” (For those who haven’t been with us throughout our
series, we’ve been watching how each story Jesus tells is an ordinary little
“secular” story that all at once surprises, then scandalizes.)
And what this Samaritan does is incredible. He doesn’t seem to even care about
his life, at all. A hated Samaritan (with money, and a donkey!) is a huge target for
robbers. Nobody would care at all if robbers attacked a Samaritan. They’d say,
“Good riddance.”
Verse 33: “When the Samaritan saw him, he took pity on him.” That’s way too
weak a translation. Literally, his belly, his internal organs, stirred inside him. Not
because the sight of all that blood makes him queasy in the tummy. No, he feels
enormous compassion welling up from right from down here. And he gets down
on his knees, pours healing oil and wine on the man’s wounds, and bandages
them up. (Oil and wine—these sound suspiciously like Jesus’ healing gifts to us,
don’t they? The oil of the Spirit, the wine of Jesus blood.)
And then he puts the wounded man on his donkey, and heads for town. I’m not
sure what direction the Samaritan was travelling, but it doesn’t matter. Jerusalem
and Jericho are both Jewish towns. He’s taking an enormous risk by riding into
town with a half-dead Jewish man on his donkey. He’ll be in immediate danger of
a lynching. A Samaritan would be expected to unload the wounded man on the
edge of town, and make a quiet getaway. But instead he boldly risks community
vengeance and rides into town. He loves this neighbour more than he loves
himself! He risks his own life in order to save the Jew’s life. He heads to the inn,
and rents a room. And then he watches over that Jew all night. And in the
morning he pays the innkeeper enough money to cover the lodging, the care, the
food for the wounded man for at least a week, maybe two. And promises to pay
more if the wounded man needs more time to recover.
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And then, like so many of Jesus’ parables, this one just stops. Once again, Jesus
leaves his story open-ended, unconcluded. So we’re left wondering: what’s
waiting for the Samaritan when he steps out of doors? By now word will have
gotten out all over town: “A Samaritan has had his dirty hands all over a Jewish
man. Maybe it was he who stole the Jew’s money, ripped off his clothes, beat him
half to death.” Who’s going to believe the Samaritan’s version of the story? When
he steps outside that morning, is there a crowd waiting for him on the street?
Does he get beaten up, maybe killed? We don’t know.
Notice how Jesus ends the conversation: “Which of these three do you think was
a neighbour?” You know, by now, the expert in the law is deeply offended, and
angry. He can’t even bring himself to say that “S” word he hates. He simply
mutters, “The one who had mercy on him.” And then Jesus insults him even
further, “You go and be like that Samaritan.”
Now, did you notice Jesus didn’t even answer the Bible expert’s question? He’d
asked, “Who is my neighbour? Who do I have to love?” But Jesus does not answer
that question. The right question is not “Who is my neighbour?” but, “Look who
is a neighbour to you—the hated outsider!” He doesn’t say, “You really should
love the Samaritans.” No, he says, “Look how the Samaritan loves you!
What that hated outsider does is, frankly, unbelievable. What a costly
demonstration of unexpected love from a hated Samaritan toward a Jew! The
Samaritan saved a life that day, by risking his own. The Samaritan is the saviour in
Jesus’ story.
Who is this Samaritan, anyway? Who is this man who put his life in real danger for
a stranger? Who is this, who loved the wounded man’s life more than his own?
Who is this Samaritan who pours in oil and wine, then rides fearlessly into
Jerusalem on a donkey to be the Saviour? You know: it has to be Jesus.
The early church fathers—Origen, Ambrose, and Augustine—they all said Jesus is
clearly talking about himself here! Scandal of scandals: it’s not just Jesus’ enemies
who shouted at him, “You Samaritan.” Jesus calls himself a Samaritan! Jesus is
willing to be the ultimate outsider—throwing away his life, to rescue us, to give us
eternal life!
Jesus is not saying: “You can inherit eternal life by really working hard to love God
and love your neighbour. Why would he even be on that hot, dusty road heading
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to Jerusalem to die, for us, as the Passover lamb, if Jesus just wanted us to try
harder?
See: this can’t be just a little story about good morals, teaching us that, if you see
somebody in the ditch, you really should go over and help them. This is far more
than just a “good advice” story about how we shouldn’t show racial prejudice or
religious prejudice, like those Jewish people who hated Samaritans like poison.
No, this story, too, is a big God story! Good news, not just good advice! Can’t you
see it? Isn’t it amazing!? This story is all about God’s love for us, in Jesus! Jesus
drives home his point so clearly in this story: even the most religious people—
priests and Levites—miserably failed to love God and their neighbour.
We can’t do a thing to inherit eternal life. We are lying in the ditch—bleeding,
naked, half-dead. The idea of us loving God with all our hearts, all our souls, all
our strength, all our minds—that’s laughable! Who would ever be so bold as to
claim, “I’m doing that”? No, none of us loves our neighbours as much as we love
ourself.
You know there is only one person who loves God totally—with all his heart, all
his soul, all his strength, all his mind. Only Jesus loves you and me more than he
loves himself! So much that Jesus willingly became the hated outsider, and even
laid down his life for us!
Listen: the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord! You and I can’t
possibly do anything to inherit eternal life. It’s a gift! Inheritance is always a gift.
It’s God who loves us with all God’s heart, all God’s soul, all God’s strength, all
God’s mind. God loves us as God loves himself! That’s what this cross is all
about! God’s total love for us.
What does this mean for us, if it’s Jesus who is our Good Samaritan, Jesus who is
the rejected outsider, if it’s Jesus who is our one true neighbour?
It means we’ll stop trying to make ourselves into Good Samaritans! For example,
at our community meal on Tuesday evening, we’ll stop thinking we have all the
answers for our guests. No, this story reminds us that Jesus comes to us in the
person of the Outsider. We need Jesus to come to us in the little child. We need
Jesus to come to us in the sick person in the hospital, in the needy person, the
homeless person, the inmate in prison, the stranger, the outsider! Maybe we
think we have our stuff all together, but we don’t. We need our neighbours to
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come to us. We need them to be Good Samaritans for us, who will bandage up
our wounds and heal us. We need our neighbours to come to us, and be Jesus for
us! Will we be willing to meet Jesus this coming Tuesday evening—every time we
meet a stranger, an outsider?
Let Jesus be your Good Samaritan. Let him rescue you. Let him pay the whole
price for your healing, your salvation. We’ve got to stop trying to do stuff to
inherit eternal life. We need to accept that it’s us who are the bleeding, wounded,
beat-up guy, lying in the ditch.
Jesus is walking from Jericho up to Jerusalem in order to die for us, so that we can
be joined to him in his death, and in his resurrection! Let Jesus rescue you. Let
him pour in the oil of his Spirit. Let him save you by the wine of his own
lifeblood.
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