C, Pent 7 Proper 10 - Luke 10:25-37 "The Good Samaritan"

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the most misinterpreted pieces of scripture in the bible. When taken out of its proper context, one hears the command from Jesus to go and do likewise, as the Good Samaritan has done, lumbering us, the listeners, with a burdensome near impossible task to act upon.

Jesus is right in saying, if one must do the right thing; one must do the same or even better than the Good Samaritan. If you want to earn eternal life by helping your neighbour, you must do the job selflessly and perfectly to be accepted by our Father who demands nothing short of holy perfection.

It’s no wonder many of us are crushed by such expectations placed on us by texts like this, when they’re taken out of their Gospel-centred context. In fact, fear and frightfulness is epidemic in the church today as a result of us, God’s people, missing the Christ-centred Gospel context, when the Gospel is taken and turned back into a law that we must complete for our assurance of salvation.

Also under this same burden are some of us who feel we have to pretend being “Good Samaritans”. Perhaps you have worked so hard to cover yourself with robes of righteousness, feeling you have to appear as if you’ve got it all together. But as quickly as we dress ourselves, these robes of riches turn to rags — filthy and unacceptable to ourselves, let alone God.

The problem we face when confronted by texts such as the Good Samaritan parable, is an identity crisis. Who are we in the text? We assume we must be the Samaritan doing the work! But if that is the case, where then is God in the Good Samaritan parable? If you or I are meant to be the Samaritan, doing the perfectly good thing, then God must be the one watching over us in judgement ready to condemn us for any motive we have that is less than holy and perfect.

Just ponder the scorn you feel for the criminals, who beat the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho; the anger that wells in you against the useless Priest and Levite, who passed by on the other side of the road. Surly God’s anger towards us would be the same, if not greater, if we, being sent as the Good Samaritans, performed less than perfectly! It’s a scary prospect to contemplate; how good a Samaritan do I have to be to be accepted by God as good?

The answer is: I have to be as good as God! You and I have to be as good as God to love our neighbours as ourselves and inherit eternal life! It’s no wonder under the weight of such expectation we stumble and fall every time; our robes of righteousness quickly become dirty filthy rags!

But God is not towering over us looking down waiting for us to fail so he might smash us with his anger. God is with us! In fact, God came down and got his robes of righteousness dirty so he might take us from rages to riches. We can boldly look forward in faith and hope because it is Jesus himself who is the Good Samaritan. He is the only one who can perfectly please God through doing the right thing. Jesus Christ, God the Son, is the only one good enough.

So if Jesus is the Samaritan in his parable, we must be the ones beaten by the roadside. We are the ones who have been wronged by others. In fact we have got ourselves into the many bad situations in which we find ourselves, both as the recipients and as the perpetrators of evil. Our sin and the sin of others make us unacceptable, beaten, filthy and dirty. Left in this condition we too would die outside eternity without a loving God!

Then the law comes along, it must come along, to show that we can’t get up and follow it, and nor will it come and assist us in getting up. Just like the Priest and the Levite who passed by on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, the law passes over us in judgement. It kicks us in condemnation, because we’re not fit to be in the presence of God, who is holy.

However Jesus Christ, the holy Son of God, who resolutely set his face towards Jerusalem and went there to be nailed to the cross in all its dirtiness and filth, comes to us on the road and picks us up.

As Jesus tells us elsewhere, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” (John 14:1-3)

Jesus picks us up along the way, dirty and broken, and takes us to his Father’s house, and prepares the way by way of his crucifixion at Calvary!

The context and the whole point of the Good Samaritan parable is this: to show that we cannot be the Good Samaritans. Jesus told the expert in the Law the parable, to show him that no matter how self-inflated his expertise might seem, it was not enough.

In fact the law comes from Jerusalem and its destination is Jericho. Jerusalem is the holy throne of God, and Jericho is a place of complete rebellion, where one seeks to build the walls of salvation to their own detriment, just as those were cursed by God who sought to rebuild the walls of Jericho in Old Testament times.

However, Jesus is going the way of the Gospel. He is the Good News Samaritan! He went to Jerusalem but surprisingly he was cursed there as if he had gone to rebuild the walls of Jericho. But having been cursed, God raised him in all glory and now he is rebuilding our lives from the curse of sin, he is preparing a place for us with him in heaven. There can only be one, and that one is Jesus Christ!

Where all others failed to pick us up in our dirty filthy broken state, in fact they had no right to pick us up, Jesus our Good Samaritan lifts us up and carries us on his donkey, the church, and resolutely takes us with him to the cross and his resurrection. And there at the cross he takes our filthy rages and exchanges them with his robes of perfect holy righteousness, and because of this his resurrection is the assurance and hope of our resurrection from the dead.

So, now as we travel with he who resolutely leads and carries us towards eternity, we can reach out to others from the donkey, God’s church, doing good works and bearing the fruit of spiritual wisdom and understanding. We can boldly lift others onto the heaven bound mule, but only because Jesus leads us near our neighbours, and it is he who lifts the lost into his way, just as he lifted us up from weakness onto his shoulders at the cross.

We can boldly reach out to others, because Jesus is the Good Samaritan; he has paid the cost for our accommodation and healing. In fact, he has paid the price once and for all, for the accommodation and healing of every person! Jesus Christ, God the Son, holy and blameless, endured the cross and its scorn and shame, to qualify us to share in the holy inheritance of heaven.

So as we leave God’s presence today, carried by Christ on his donkey, having received but a glimpse of the Glory of God enthroned in his holy kingdom, God seeks to boldly use us to pick up the lost on our way through life to eternity.

But let us not forget that we too are still travelling from Jericho to Jerusalem, from the curse of sin and death unto holiness and eternity. Therefore, we’ll still be beaten and battered and left for dead in this life. Our sinful nature will seek to tempt us away from the security of Jesus’ way.

But as beaten and battered as we might become, we will not be overcome, and Jesus, our Good Samaritan, will resolutely continue to pick us up and carry us towards death and through it into his eternal kingdom, our heavenly Jerusalem, our heavenly home. Amen.