Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Well, I guess I’m supposed to have a thesis statement. It is this: Included in the gift of Christ as sacramentum is always the gift of Christ as exemplum. He both gives Himself to us and then invites us into communion with His life, doing things His way. A little known feature of the old The Lutheran Liturgy (Altar Book for TLH) is that it provided a collect for each epistle and gospel reading. So I went to the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity and found this prayer for the Good Samaritan gospel which I invite you to join me in praying:
O Lord Jesus Christ, our Good Samaritan and only Mediator, who, seeing us in our guilt and blood, didst have pity upon us and of Thine infinite mercy didst give Thine innocent blood in payment for our sins that we might live, we humbly thank and praise Thee that Thou hast saved us from destruction and by Thy holy Word hast brought us to the saving knowledge of Thee, our Redeemer: and beseech Thee, enable us by Thy Holy Spirit to love Thee, the true God, with our whole heart and to love our neighbor as ourselves, that we may show mercy on all men in their need, bind up their wounds with tender care, and ever in this evil world follow Thine example of love and service, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Don’t neglect our father’s and grandfather’s prayers when you are seeking to understand their faith! On into the text:
Luke 10:25-37 (KJV) 25 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? 26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?
Interesting question the man asks. I think he and his fellow lawyers were more than a little suspicious about Jesus and His propensity to welcome sinners (publicans, prostitutes, Samaritans, Gentiles) and even to hang out with them. He is really asking Jesus whether or not He believes that you have to keep the Law in order to please God and be saved. So the test. What will Jesus say? Curiously, he turn the tables on the lawyer and asks for his opinion. The lawyer was out to catch Jesus in heresy, but Jesus wanted to catch the lawyer with divine love. So, He asks, what’s written? What’s your reading of it.
27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. Right answer, of course. Jesus had given that answer himself earlier. The fellow knew his catechism, alright. And Jesus approves of his answer.
28 And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. Was it in the way Jesus said it, that the challenge came across? Was it how He said: “this do”? You see, it’s not KNOWING what the Law demanded, but DOING it that counted. How easily we mix that up. As though the entrance into the kingdom required but getting the answer right, knowing rather than doing.
29 But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour? He didn’t miss the challenge in Jesus’ words. He caught the implication: that he hadn’t been loving. Striking that he jumps over the first table of the law as if he’d done all that perfectly, and seizes upon the second table by asking “who is my neighbor?” That is, and who do you think I really need to be bothering myself about loving as myself? He wanted to justify himself; but it never works. Jesus wanted to justify not himself, but this man, and you and me. So in good Jewish fashion He answers with a story.
30 And Jesus answering said, A certain [man] went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded [him], and departed, leaving [him] half dead. Active breaking of the fifth commandment: the thieves hurt or harm their neighbor in his body. Pretty clear stuff. They take what they want from him and leave the fellow half dead (in other words, destined to die if no one came along to help). The fathers see in this the way the demons have waylaid Adam and in him all our race.
31 And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked [on him], and passed by on the other side. Passive breaking of the fifth commandment. It’s rather like the striking example Luther gives in the Large Catechism of the drowning man, with you standing on the shore, doing nothing as he sinks beneath the waves. Bye-bey. By NOT helping, you HAVE harmed. But neither the ancient fathers nor the fathers of the Reformation were wrong when they saw in the priest and the levite the law of Moses and especially its many ordinances and regulations. The Law didn’t help. It could only reveal the damage, but it has no power to mend what ails us. It merely looks and then passes on, leaving Adam and us in him in as bad a shape as he was when it first encountered him.
33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion [on him], 34 And went to [him], and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. Jesus loved to stir the pot. He could have chosen a pious Jew to make his point, but he instead lifts up a Samaritan, a pariah. You remember that in John 8, Jesus is accused by his enemies of being a Samaritan and having a demon. He tells them He doesn’t have a demon; and curiously says nothing about not being a Samaritan. Almost as though He had this parable in mind. For surely Jesus IS the Samaritan. The One that His own people regarded as a pariah, and yet who has compassion on His own. “He came to His own” St. John wrote. And so this Samaritan doesn’t pass by. He comes to the wounded man, to humanity fallen in Adam, and He begins to tend the man’s wounds, getting bloody and dirty as he does so. His compassion is the key. Every other place in the NT it is Jesus who has compassion, so also here. They may regard him as a pariah, but he will not let that get in the way of His mercy, and so He carries the man to the Inn and provides for His care and restoration.
35 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave [them] to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee. When I come again. Heavy, choice words in the mouth of Christ. He promises that whatever we spend on the healing of those committed to our care is something He will tend to. It’s just like He said in Proverbs 19:17 (ESV) Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will repay him for his deed. Jesus will talk about that in a few chapters: Matthew 25:40 (ESV) And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’
36 Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? Which is to shift the man’s deflecting question from “Who is my neighbor?” To the far more pertinent and vital question of “Am I a neighbor? Have I been a neighbor?”
37 And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise. The lawyer cannot bring himself to say the hated word “the Samaritan.” But Jesus has gotten him to the very word at the heart of the Law, to what God’s after with it: mercy. And so: “He that showed mercy on him” is the very definition of neighborliness. Of not passing by, but of going to the neighbor in his time of need. People loved by God, there is no doubt that Jesus sees Himself as the Good Samaritan and that He wants you to recognize Him in that guise. But you cannot, you must not lose the force of the final words He spake: “Go, and do thou likewise.” Jesus, you see, has no problem with ending a sermon on the law. So this whole parable about love and the fulfillment of the law which happens fully and finally only in Jesus and in His obedience to His Father, obedience which leads Him to lay down His life for us and to provide all we need for our healing in the arms of His Church through His word and sacraments, this is but an illustration and invitation to what He would tell His disciples on the night of His betrayal: John 13:34 (KJV) A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. Go and do thou likewise, then, means “go love as I have loved you. Go show mercy as lavishly and freely as I, your Good Samaritan, have showed you. Come, be a Pariah with me: don’t be put off by fear of association. Be neighborly to one and to all. No, you will not do it perfectly, purely, or as ardently as I have done. Your love is going to always need my forgiveness and my perfection to cover all the imperfections of Your love. But you have that as my gift to cover you and you have My Spirit as My gift to work this love more and more inside you. And on the last day, the day when I come back, I will bring that love to perfection within you. For you see, I can do what the law by itself couldn’t do, but what the law faithfully points you to. Love. Mercy. Life. All in me.”
People loved by God, let us then love then as we have been loved: not in mere word or talk, but in deed and in truth. Jesus, your good samaritan, bids you too: “Go and do thou likewise.”
Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
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