This morning, we continue our mini-series on the parables of Christ. Parables are stories intended to convey spiritual truth. They’re not historical; they’re not accounts of actual events; they are fictional narratives involving made-up characters. The situations they describe never really happened, and the people involved aren’t real people. That’s why the characters in parables aren’t named; they’re just identified by their occupations – a farmer, a merchant, a shepherd, a priest. But they could be real, and that’s the point. The characters in parables are instantly recognizable by everyone, regardless of time or culture, because they are based on a deep understanding of universal human nature.
Jesus knew people, better than anyone before or since. He is the most astute observer of the human condition, the most profound philosopher, who ever walked the face of the earth. And that’s why these deceptively simple little stories are so full of wisdom, so strikingly memorable, so true to life. Because they come from the Master himself; the one whose understanding of reality surpasses all of history’s greatest minds. Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, Aristotle, Socrates, Plato – each of them achieved, at best, a partial enlightenment. But Christ’s understanding is absolute and comprehensive. He understands what makes people tick. He understands how the world works. And he’s given us that knowledge in the form of parables. Let’s listen, then, to this story from the gospel of Luke, chapter ten, the parable of the Good Samaritan.
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
"What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"
He answered: "`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 neighbor as yourself.’"
"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"
In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ’Look after him,’ he said, ’and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’ "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"
The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise." – Luke 10:25-37
This parable is introduced by a dialogue between Jesus and an "expert in the law," a scribe. In the days before printing presses, the scribe was someone whose occupation was to make copies of the Scriptures by hand. Unlike most people, these men were educated; they could read and write; and through constant exposure, they became very familiar with the Old Testament. But they weren’t just copyists; they were scholars and teachers. Because of this expertise, they were looked upon as authorities in the interpretation and application of the law. They were respected as men of wisdom, and had great influence in matters concerning the regulation of Jewish civil and religious life.
Now, why does this expert in the law question Jesus? He stood up to "test" Jesus. Perhaps he was hostile to the teaching of Christ; or perhaps he just wanted to see what how Christ would respond. But fundamentally, he wanted to prove something. We’re told that "he wanted to justify himself." In other words, he wanted to establish that he was righteous; that his knowledge and wisdom and law-keeping were sufficient to make him acceptable to God.
Now, is it possible to be judged righteous by God through keeping the commandments? Can our efforts to do the right thing ever make us holy in God’s sight? No. As the apostle Paul teaches, "[We] know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ." (Galatians 2:16) The scribe was attempting to be justified by his works. He was seeking righteousness in knowing and keeping every rule and regulation. He wanted to go to heaven, to "inherit eternal life." He understood that the requirement to do so was love – love of God and love of one’s neighbor. But what he didn’t understand was that we all fall short of that love; that we fail to love God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our strength, and with all our mind. We fail to love our neighbor as fully and completely as we do ourselves. And therefore, the only way we can be saved is to have someone else’s righteousness – the perfect righteousness of Christ – credited to our account.
You see, the only way to convince yourself that you can keep God’s commands is to redefine the commands to make them attainable. For instance, God says to love him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. But we fail at that, and so we redefine the command to mean that we should love God to the best of our ability. Most of the time. With exceptions for extenuating circumstances. That way, we don’t have to repent, or confess our sin or ask forgiveness. We don’t have to depend on the righteousness of Christ; instead, we can trust in our own self-righteousness. And that’s why the scribe asked, "who is my neighbor?" He wanted to define and limit his obligations. He wanted to restrict as narrowly as possible the number of people he was required to love. He wanted to make up a list of his neighbors, so that he could love only those people and ignore everyone else. And that’s just what people do today. It’s what you and I do. We want to know who we’re required to serve, and who we can bypass. We want to know the minimum requirement; what’s the least we can do and still consider ourselves good Christians. Now, some of us may set that bar high, and others may set it low. But it doesn’t really matter. Because when we operate from that mindset, we’re missing the point. That’s not love; it’s legalism. It’s empty law-keeping. It’s a kind of "service" which serves mainly our own ego.
Here’s the difference between true Christianity and false Christianity, between heart religion and works religion. Works religion wants to put a box around what God expects of us. It says, "this much God requires of me, and no more. If I do these things, then I’ve satisfied my obligation to God." Works religion is very much me-centered, because its primary concern is not with the need of the other person, but with me meeting my quota of good deeds. Heart religion, on the other hand, is motivated by love, a desire to serve and bless others as much as we possibly can.
Take serving in the church, for instance. I’m not saying that you should do whatever anyone asks, or that you shouldn’t set boundaries on your involvement. My point is that the motivation for your service, whatever you choose to do, must be one of love. Your fundamental desire in unloading the trailer, or teaching Sunday School, or singing on the worship team, should be to express your love to God and to others. But if that’s not the case, if you’re serving just to do what’s expected of you as a church member, then you’re missing the point. How do you tell the difference? Attitude. A grudging, reluctant, complaining attitude indicates that what is going on is merely the fulfillment of duty. Constantly making comparisons between how much you’re doing versus others shows that the motivation for your service is primarily obligation. Doing what’s expected. Love, on the other hand, produces an attitude of thankfulness. It’s grateful for the opportunity to serve God and his people. Serving out of duty alone produces resentment, but serving out of love produces joy.
Take home life as another example. If you’re cooking, or doing laundry, or paying the bills, or cleaning the garage, or mowing the lawn, or doing anything else, because that’s what’s expected or demanded, or because you want to think of yourself as a good wife or a good husband, then you’re not operating according to love, you’re operating according to law. Love does all those same things, but out of a desire to bless and care for the other people in the family. The point is not to fill some role labelled "husband" or "wife". If that’s what you’re doing, then when something comes up that doesn’t fit your job description, you’ll either refuse to do it or do it grudgingly. But if your goal is to act in love, the question becomes not, "what do I have to do?" but rather, "what can I do for you"?
All right. With that as the background, understanding that the purpose of the story is to illustrate the difference between heart religion and works religion, let’s look at the parable. Verse 30 says, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead." Notice first, that we are told nothing about this man; not his nationality, or his occupation, or whether he was rich or poor. Which points to an important principle. Love doesn’t depend on any characteristic of the one being served except their need. If the man had been wealthy, he might have been able to reward the person who helped him. Is that the case? We don’t know. It doesn’t matter. If he had been a person of high status, the motivation for rescuing him might have been respect to his position. If the injured man had been a Samaritan himself, you might explain the response of his rescuer as an example of ethnic solidarity, helping out one of your own. But we don’t know, because it doesn’t matter. None of those things were the reason for the Samaritan’s response. The only thing the injured man had to offer was his need. And of course, that’s how Christ responds to us. We were broken, ruined by sin, unable to help ourselves, and he saved us – not because of anything we had done; not because of anything worthy or attractive in us, but only because of his love for us.
Continuing on, we see that both a priest and a Levite pass by the injured man. Both of them, Jesus tells us, saw him, so there is no possibility that they simply failed to notice him lying there in the ditch. They saw him, they saw that he was hurt, and they chose not to offer assistance. Not only that, but both of them passed by "on the other side," that is, they got as far away from him as they could! How can we explain such apparent callousness, such heartlessness?
1. Well, first of all, this stretch of road between Jerusalem and Jericho was notoriously dangerous. The priest and Levite might have persuaded themselves that he deserved what he got. "Why should I go out of my way to help just because this man was too foolish to take a safer route? Why should I be inconvenienced because of his bad choices?" Perhaps they even convinced themselves that his misfortune was due to God’s judgment – and after all, who were they to interfere with God? Let me ask you, have you ever done that? Refused to help someone because their trouble was due to their own sin or foolishness? Friends, that’s not a Christian response. We don’t help others because they deserve it. We help because we love them. Yes, there may be times when withholding aid is the most loving thing to do. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about refusing to help just because the person in trouble got there due to their own fault. We need to remember that there is no "worthiness" test for Christian love, because Christ, our example, loved us without cause. He saved us because of his love and mercy, and for no other reason. Were we guilty of sin? Yes. Did we deserve God’s judgement and condemnation? Yes. Did we deserve to be saved? No. But he saved us anyway.
2. Here’s another possibility. The priest and the Levite might have been afraid that the men who robbed this fellow were still hiding in the vicinity, ready to attack the next person who happened along. Better not to take chances. Better to be on their way, lest the same thing happen to them. Again, let me ask you, have you ever held back from helping someone for fear of being dragged down by their problems? Have you ever refused help for fear that whatever "got" them might "get" you as well? Perhaps that’s why the priest and Levite kept moving.
3. Or perhaps they convinced themselves that he was dead already. No use wasting time stopping to help if there was nothing they could do.
4. Maybe they had urgent business to attend to. Priests and Levites were important men, after all. They had responsibilities, obligations. People depended on them. Stopping to help this man would delay them and upset their schedules. It takes a lot of time to bandage someone’s wounds, load them onto the back of a donkey, and take them to an inn. It would slow them down tremendously. They would never be able to make their afternoon appointments.
5. Consider this: they might have expected that someone else would come along and take care of the problem. Someone less important. Someone who isn’t in so much of a hurry. Someone with more time and more resources. I can imagine the train of thought in their minds: "It’s not as if I don’t care at all. I’m just relying on someone else to do what needs to be done. I know, I’ll pray for him as I walk by, and ask God to send someone else to help. After all, I’m a priest, and that’s what priests do. They pray. They don’t go around acting like emergency medical technicians."
6. And obviously, there was the man’s physical condition. Naked, wounded, possibly with broken bones or internal injuries. Caring for him would be very unpleasant. Messy. Smelly. Expensive. And who knows, trying to help might even make his injuries worse! He might even decide to sue! Better to leave him to someone with the proper training, and adequate liability insurance.
And so there are at least half a dozen reasons for passing by. They sound disturbingly familiar, don’t they? But the problem isn’t that the priest and Levite couldn’t somehow justify their actions (or inaction). I’m sure they could. The problem is that that was their goal in the first place – that their goal was to justify themselves, rather than to act in love. Their goal was to "do the right thing," or at least persuade themselves that they were doing the right thing. Their goal was to conform their outward behavior to some code of conduct. And the welfare of the man on the road was simply not their main concern. In general, that’s the way it works. If self-justification is your goal, then love doesn’t really enter into the equation. Other people, and their needs, don’t matter that much. Because it’s not about them; it’s all about you, and establishing that you did the right thing.
That’s what Jesus meant when he rebuked the scribes and Pharisees. They were doing all the right things; they were scrupulously following all the rules, but for the wrong reasons. And so they weren’t acting out of love; they were acting out of self-righteousness. They were missing the point entirely:
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices–mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law–justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean." -- Matthew 23:23-27
On the outside, they looked good. They were doing all the right things. But on the inside, it was a far different story. Because their acts of so-called righteousness weren’t motivated by love; they were motivated by pride and self-interest. Friends, I pray that we will not be like the scribes and Pharisees – doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons; or even doing evil, while convincing ourselves that we are justified in doing so. Remember, the only godly reason to do anything is love. Love for God and love for people. Is that your motivation? Is that why you get up every morning? Is that why you’re here today? I hope so. And if not, I pray that you’ll repent and ask God’s forgiveness.
How then should we act? Like the Samaritan. I don’t have time to comment much on his ethnicity, except to say that this is another case in which Jesus reverses the expectations of his hearers. Priests and Levites were respected and honored, while Samaritans were despised. They were the descendants of Jews who had intermarried with foreigners during the Babylonian captivity of Israel in the sixth century B.C. As a result, they were outcasts, rejected as ethnic and religious half-breeds. They were not permitted to worship at the temple in Jerusalem, and so they constructed their own, alternate place of worship on Mount Gerizim. They didn’t worship in the right place; they had disobeyed the law by intermarrying with non-Jews – and yet, it was the Samaritan, and not the priest or Levite, who acted in accordance with the true meaning of the law. They used the letter of the law to justify their lack of love. He, on the other hand, lived out the spirit and intention of the law by loving sacrificially.
What did he do? He took pity on the man, where the others thought only of themselves. He cared about the man’s condition. But that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t sufficient merely to feel sorry for him. He took action. And he took action, not in order to assuage his own guilt, or to satisfy himself that he had done what was expected. The action he took was to meet the need of the injured man. He bandaged his wounds. He poured oil on them for healing, and wine for disinfectant. He took him to an inn. He paid for his care, and promised an unlimited amount for whatever additional care might be required. You might say that he did more than he had to do, more than was required, but that misses the point. The point is that he wasn’t concerned with doing what was "required" or "right". He wasn’t thinking about meeting his obligations. Because those kinds of concerns are fundamentally about self. They’re about whether my actions conform to a code of conduct. Instead, his concern was focused on the injured man – on his needs, and his wounds. And in showing love to that man, he more than fulfilled his obligations.
You see, the lawyer asked the wrong question. He asked "who is my neighbor"? In other words, "who am I obligated to serve"? "What are the limitations on whom I have to love?" But the question Jesus answered was, "who can I be a neighbor to?" Who can I love? And the answer to that question is, anyone. Everyone. If you’re concerned with justifying yourself, your primary questions will be questions of obligation. Who am I obligated to serve, and how? What are the limits on my obligation? How will I know when I’ve done enough? But if you’re concerned with showing love, as Christ was, then your focus won’t be on yourself at all, but on those who need you, those God has given you the opportunity to bless and care for. That’s the difference between false Christianity and true Christianity. And the obvious question, in closing, is this: which kind of Christianity is yours?
(For an .rtf file of this and other sermons, see www.journeychurchonline.org/messages.htm)
