In Jesus Holy Name July 14, 2019
Text: Luke 10:25 Redeemer
“Peeling the Onion - Let Me Do It”
At first glance the Gospel lesson is going to give us a list of the things we can do in order “to get into heaven”. That is what the Jewish lawyer is asking Jesus. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus tells a great story. We know it well. Or do we? In the Gospel of Luke we find that the parables and teachings of Jesus were written for Christians in the 1st and 21st Century. They were chosen by Luke to answer the question: What does it mean to “follow Jesus? What is discipleship?
Chances are if you grew up going to church you know the parable of the Good Samaritan. It’s as well known as the Prodigal Son. It’s a good story. Its message is timeless. “The parable of the “Good Samaritan is famous for its ethics.” It’s a multi layered story that we can easily oversimplify. It’s a lot like an onion. We have to peel it one layer at a time in order to get to the core of the message. And like an onion sometimes we cry when our heart is touched.
At the outer layer, the lawyer’s question is one many would like answered.“ “What do I have to do to obtain eternal life.” This question is like the question that causes teachers to cringe when they hear, “What do I need to do get an A?” Good teacher’s hate this question. They much prefer the question, what will I learn? Or how I will I improve?
Now to be fair, this is a loaded question. If the Bible said that a man on the street asked this question we might be more apt to believe that this was a genuine question. But it’s not just anyone who asks. It’s a lawyer. It is a Jewish lawyer. He is an expert in the Jewish law?
And lawyers back then and today are taught to never ask a question for which they already have an answer. And the lawyer has the answer. And Jesus knows that the lawyer thinks he already knows the answer and so Jesus said: “you know the law, tell me yourself”.
The lawyer responds: “You must love God and your neighbor.” Jesus said: You have answered correctly. “Do this and you will live.” Wait. Jesus did not answer the question. Do this an you will live is not the answer to question. Jesus chooses to tell a story.
Actually, the lawyer’s original question is flawed. What can anyone do to inherit anything? Inheritance, by its very nature, is a gift from one family member or friend to another. If you are born into a family, or perhaps adopted into it, then you can inherit. Inheritance is not payment for services rendered. The religious lawyer knows this.
Yet the lawyer’s question is a valid one. People than and now want to know if “they can do anything to earn eternal life.” The order of the answer is important. “Love God” comes before “love of neighbor.” It is hard to love the cranky, ungrateful neighbor until the disciple’s heart is filled with the love of God. It is only the love of God that provides the energy and motivation necessary for the difficult task of loving the neighbor.
To inherit eternal life, all he must do is to consistently practice unqualified love for God and his neighbor, without ever failing. If you can meet that standard, you don’t need grace. Who can you truly love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength? The problem is not with the law, the problem is that we cannot keep the law. That is why we need Jesus He kept God’s laws perfectly. (Romans 7:13-20)
The lawyer presses. Who is my neighbor? The onion begins to be peeled.
So the lawyer says to himself: “Fine, so I must love God and my neighbor to earn my salvation. What I now need is some clarification of exactly who is and who is not my neighbor. Then I can proceed. He wants to justify himself. (Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes. Kenneth Bailey p. 287)
He is looking for a list that he can manage. In his culture, in his mind, the neighbor will include his fellow Jew who keeps the law in a precise fashion. Gentiles are not neighbors, and everyone knows God hates the Samaritans so they certainly do not qualify as neighbors.
Jesus tells a story.
The story takes place on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. This road was, and still is a notoriously dangerous road. The road between Jerusalem and Jericho is a seventeen-mile hike of narrow rocky passages, and of sudden turnings, which made it easy for robbers to take advantage of travelers. This would have been common knowledge for the original listeners of Jesus’ story. It was not a surprise that a human being was mugged and beaten along the side of the road.
That’s all we know about victim. He was a human being. We don’t know if he was Jewish or a Gentile, if he was wealthy or poor, a conservative or a liberal, a good person or a bad person. He’s just a naked, completely vulnerable, beaten person, left for dead on the side of the road. The only thing we know about the victim was that he was a human being.
Then as now, various ethnic communities in the Middle East are identified by their clothes, their language or their accent. Jewish scholars spoke Hebrew. Peasants spoke Aramaic. Language, dress and accent were class markers.
We know more about the people who passed him by, or at least we know about their professions. The first passerby was a priest. The priest, has a special problem. The wounded man beside the road was unconscious and stripped. If the victim was a fellow Jew, a law abiding Jew, the priest, would have been able to reach out and help him. But this man was unconscious or was he dead?
If the man was dead then the priest would become ceremonially unclean. He would not be able to serve at the temple in Jerusalem. He would need to return home, undergo a weeklong process of purification. He could not collect tithes to give to the poor, the same ban would apply to his family.
The priest abides by the rule book of an ethical and theological system. – His life was a system of do’s and don’ts. He doesn’t stop and help because he wants to save his job. To be fair, he may have had compassion for the man, but job security, and serving God in the Temple was a high priority. These two things kept him from doing the right thing. The listening lawyer would have understood this.
We arrive at the second layer of the onion. The second passerby was a Levite. They were assistants to the priests in the temple. This particular Levite knew the priest was ahead of him on the road. Since the priest, who knew the law better…. Who was he to argue? The precedent had been set. He could pass by with an easy conscience.
The onion continues to peel away. The hero of the story arrives. A Samaritan.
This Samaritan goes above and beyond reasonable expectations in helping the beaten man. He binds his wounds, gives him his clothes, puts him on his donkey, takes him to an inn, pays for his room and food, comes back to check on him.
The Samaritan risks his life by transporting the wounded man to an inn within Jewish territory. Such inns were found in village, not in the wilderness. The Samaritan would have to take the man back down to Jericho where an inn could be found. A Samaritan would not be safe in Jericho, a Jewish town, with a Jewish man on his donkey. So, he would be expected to unload the wounded man at the edge of Jericho and leave.
Let’s put the story into our American context around 1850. Suppose a Native American found a cowboy with two arrows in his back, placed the cowboy on his horse and rode into Dodge City. After checking into a room over the saloon, the man spent the night taking care of the cowboy. How would the people of Dodge City react to the Native American the following morning when he emerged from the saloon?
After the Samaritan had paid the bill he still had to escape the Jewish town. Was he beaten or killed? We don’t know. Jesus has left that part of the story unanswered.
The lawyer’s question: “Who is my neighbor?” Is answered. Having told the story, Jesus now says to the lawyer, “So, you, now define the term ‘neighbor.’ Who proved to be the neighbor in this story?”
The lawyer cannot bring himself even to spit out the word “Samaritan.” He simply mumbles, “The one who showed mercy.” “Go and do likewise, and you will live.” Jesus said.
Robert Wuthnow, a professor at Princeton University, once conducted a research project about why some people are generous and compassionate, while others are not. He found out that for many compassionate people something had happened to them. Someone had acted with compassion towards them. That experience had transformed their lives.
For example, Wuthnow tells the story of Jack Casey, a rescue squad worker, who had little reason to be a Good Samaritan. Casey was raised in a tough home, the child of an alcoholic father. He once said, “All my father ever taught me is that I didn’t want to grow up to be like him.”
But something happened to Jack when he was a child that changed his life, changed his heart. He was having surgery one day, and he was frightened. He remembers the surgical nurse standing there and compassionately reassuring him. “Don’t worry,” she said to Jack. “I’ll be here right beside you no matter what happens.” And when Jack woke up again, she was true to her word and still there.
Years later, Jack Casey, now a paramedic, was sent to the scene of a highway accident. A man was pinned upside down in his pickup truck. As Jack was trying to get him out of the wreckage, gasoline was dripping down on both of them. “Look, don’t worry,” he said, “I’m right here with you, I’m not going anywhere.”
When I said that, Jack remembered later, I was reminded of how that nurse had said the same thing and she never left me. Days later, the rescued truck driver said to Jack, “You know, you were an idiot, that truck could have exploded and we’d both have been burned up!” “I just couldn’t leave you,” Jack said.
We are at the center of our onion now. You see at the core, we are all like the man in the ditch. Naked, vulnerable, in need of help. We have failed to love God without exception. We break our own ethical standards. The lawyer is given a standard he cannot meet. He is like us. We all have broken God’s commandments. We have fallen short of perfection, which God demands. Neither could the lawyer nor can we earn eternal life. It is a free gift from God by faith in Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:1-2,6)
Jesus Christ sacrificed His own life on the cross. His compassion for you and me is overwhelming. His mercy should make us cry when the onion of our life
is peeled away. The next time you peel an onion, and tears fill your eyes, remember. Remember you mistakes in life. Remember you broken ethics. Then remember that God chose to erase, wipe away your broken commandments, by nailing them to the cross. In that moment, peeling an onion, let your tears be tears of joy.
God has shown us mercy, to forgive us, to bind up our wounds and hold our hand as we enter the gates of heaven, our inheritance by baptism.
You see, the point of the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke is not only that you and I should be like the Samaritan….but to remind us that in the story we are the person beat up, and left for dead. Helpless. Jesus the Good Samaritan, has stopped to rescue us.
The neighbor is anyone in need.
Compassion reaches beyond the requirements of any law, and racism.
The Samaritan offers a costly demonstration of unexpected love. This is what Jesus did when he went to the cross.
