Luke 9:51-55, 10:25-37
“The World-View Buster”
By: Ken Sauer, Pastor of East Ridge United Methodist Church, Chattanooga, TN
This passage is one of the best known in all of Scripture.
Whether one attends a church or not, most people know the details of the story long before it’s read to them…
…the traveler who “fell into the hands of robbers,” who dump him by the side of the road, unconscious…
…the priest and the Levite who pass him by…
…and finally, the Samaritan, the “good guy,” who turns out to be the true neighbor.
Many of us think we know the meaning of the story as well; it’s a simple morality tale, an example for living.
“Be like him!” is the moral of the story.
“Don’t be like the others, who passed him by on the other side.”
And sure, the Parable of the Good Samaritan can be used as a morality tale.
But that’s not necessarily why Jesus told it.
Back in Chapter 9 we are told that Jesus “resolutely set out for Jerusalem.”
Which means that Jesus was beginning His journey…
... in a determined way to where the Cross awaited Him.
And the first place Jesus and His disciples go, on their way, is a village in Samaria.
“But,” as Luke puts it, “the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem.”
In order to understand why this particular Samaritan village gave Jesus the cold shoulder, we’ve got to understand a little about where the Samaritans came from, as a people.
Originally, they were Israelites…
…but during a terrible invasion by the Assyrians, several hundred years before, most of the Israelites living up north in Samaria had been killed or carried off into exile.
Only a few of these northern tribes of Israel were left.
And over the years, these Samaritan Jews intermarried with other races, and adopted many of their neighbor’s pagan religious practices.
They still worshiped God, but they made their sacrifices on the top of Mount Gerizim, not in the Temple.
They interpreted the Law differently from the Jews in Judea.
In language, lifestyle, and custom there wasn’t much left to unite these two groups, both of whom considered themselves the true descendants of Moses and David.
And this hatred between Jews and Samaritans is still reflected, tragically, in the smoldering tension between Israel and Palestine today!
Both sides claim to be the true inheritors of the promises of Abraham and Moses, and both sides regard themselves as the rightful possessors of the land.
We see it in the news daily.
It appears to be the never-ending-war!
This gives us just a little glimpse of what a “play on words” it is for the Jews to have a Parable called the Good Samaritan!!!???
It’s nearly laughable, indeed!!!
Jesus went through Samaria; He just chose a different town.
Even today, few Israelis would even give a thought to travel this route from Galilee to Jerusalem, because it will take them through the West Bank.
There is just too much violence.
But Jesus went straight through, and He instructed His disciples to go straight through as well.
And that is what they did, healing the sick and announcing, “The kingdom of God is near you.”
We are told this was a very successful mission.
The disciples were exuberant, and Luke 10:21 tells us that Jesus was “full of joy through the Holy Spirit.”
It’s not long after this that a lawyer, “an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus.”
This lawyer is nothing like a lawyer of today.
He has more in common with a seminary professor than a practicing attorney.
What he really is, is a scholar of religious law…
…and he’s pretty certain that this country-bumpkin rabbi from Galilee is no match for his towering intellect.
So he asks Jesus a condescending question, one to which any Jewish school-boy would know the answer:
“Teacher,’ he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’”
And Jesus turns the question back on him, “What is written in the Law?”
The lawyer beams!
He’s on his own turf now.
The lawyer is just beginning to pat himself on the back when Jesus congratulates him on answering correctly.
“Do this,” he tells the lawyer, “and you will live.”
But his ego won’t let it go.
So he asks Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
And this is where things get tricky!
This is an abstract theological question that the most learn-ed scholars had been debating for centuries…
… “When Leviticus commands us to love our neighbor, this only includes other people of Israel, right?”
No one, but no one among the elite would dream of suggesting that the word “neighbor” also includes Samaritans.
And it’s at this point that Jesus launches into the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
This parable, that many of us may take for granted, would have been shocking and surprising to the lawyer—and to anyone and everyone listening.
To make the man’s rescuer a Samaritan is more than just radical!!!
It’s provocative, it is “world-view busting”—and probably even insulting to the man asking the question!
They all took it for granted that God had established rigid boundaries that separate one kind of people from another.
And we still have them today, do we not?
We’ve got the slums and we’ve got the country clubs.
We’ve got folks eating out of trash cans and we’ve got people who throw food away.
We’ve got believers and we’ve got non-believers.
We’ve got Christians and we’ve got Muslims.
We’ve got the so-called “cool people”, and we’ve got the supposed nerds eating on different sides of the school lunch room.
There are rigid boundaries, and Jesus challenges us to break through them…
…spend time with people who are different than us…
…get to know them…
…eat and drink with them…
…give to them…
…receive from them…
…learn to love them…
…heal the sick and declare that the Kingdom of God is near both by your words and your actions.”
For God is the God of grace for the whole world, and a neighbor is anybody in need!!!
When Jesus asks the lawyer a question of His own, after telling the parable—“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”—the lawyer suddenly realizes that he’s painted himself into a logical and theological corner.
Jesus’ shrewd question forces the lawyer to admit that the true neighbor of the injured traveler is none other than a hated Samaritan…
…only he can’t bring himself to utter the word “Samaritan”; the best he can do is to mumble, “The one who had mercy on him.”
In the great Jewish sport of theological debate, Jesus has just won a resounding victory with a parable: a story told not so much as a morality-tale, but rather as a sharply crafted hypothetical situation right out of religious case law.
And in doing so, Jesus has exposed exclusivity and racist ideas as they are…
…not from God, but from fallen and broken people!!!
From God’s vantage point, the human race is one family, created in God’s image…
…loved equally with a love that will stop at nothing!!!
Even to death; death on a Cross!!!
What is at stake, then and now, is the question as to whether we will use this God-given revelation of love and grace as a way of boosting our own sense of isolated security and purity, or whether we will see this as a call and challenge to reach out to the world with God’s love and grace.
There is so much need in the world today!
There is a victim beside every foot path.
Prison, poverty, illness, joblessness, hopelessness…
…and as the population increases so do the number of victims.
There are now more beaten, stripped, and half dead people beside life’s roads than anyone could count.
The television shows us.
The radio blurts it out.
Newspapers and the internet tell us the details.
Magazines put it in pictures.
God gives each and every one of us the opportunity to reach out every single day to our neighborhood, at the office, in school and around the world!!!
Our own church gives us many opportunities to reach out to our hurting community.
And through tithing to God we can provide money to feed the poor and bring the good news of the Gospel to the dispirited, the outcaste, the marginalized both here and everywhere.
The need may seem overwhelming, but we are all called to follow Christ into the Samaria’s of our world.
We are called to give our full selves and our resources completely over to God!
These are the reasons for which Jesus died….
…Mercy, grace, sacrifice and love!
There’s a neat story about a guy named Joe.
Joe had been asked to get up at five in the morning and drive a crippled child fifty miles to the hospital.
He didn’t want to do it, but he didn’t know how to say, “No.”
A woman carried the child out to the car and set him next to the driver’s seat.
All the while she mumbled her thanks through tears.
Joe said that everything would be alright and then quickly drove off.
After a mile or so the child asked shyly, “You’re God, aren’t you?”
“I’m afraid not, little fellow,” Joe replied.
“I thought you were God,” said the child.
“I heard mommy praying next to my bed asking God to help me get to the hospital, so I could get well and play with the other children. Do you work for God?”
“Sometimes, I guess,” Joe answered, “but not regularly. I think I’m going to work for Him a lot more from now on!”
This is God’s call on each one of us.
To do God’s bidding.
To live for peace.
To take Christ on the road with us!
To be the messengers of hope, salvation and new life!!!
The whole world has been robbed, beaten, and is lying half-dead in a ditch.
Will we stop to help or just pass on by?
