Luke 10:23-37; Galatians 3:15-22; 2 Chronicles 28:8-15
In the Name
of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
There are
many ways to understand and to speak about sin. Sin can be defined as
disobedience or rebellion, the breaking of moral rules or “missing the mark,” or
simply falling short of God’s commands and expectations for your behavior and life.
However, there is another way to understand and to speak about sin that, I believe,
gets straight to the heart of the matter: Sin is a failure of love. We love the
wrong things, or we love the right things in the wrong way. Either way, sin is
a failure of love.
This
understanding of sin gets straight to the heart of the matter, because it gets
straight to the heart of the First Commandment, “You shall have no other gods.”
Luther explains the First Commandment in his Small Catechism in this way: “You
shall fear, love, and trust in God above all things.” Concerning fear and love,
St. John writes in his first epistle, “There is no fear in love, but perfect
love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has
not been perfected in love.” Likewise, concerning trust and love, St. Paul
writes in his first epistle to the Corinthians, “Love bears all things,
believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Even Luther’s use
of fear and trust in God in his explanation of the First Commandment directs
you to love, the fulfilling of the Law.
That you love, what you
love, and how you love is directly connected to what you believe about
God, what you think about God, and whether you trust in God above all things. That
you love, what you love, and how you love is what is at the heart
of Jesus’ teaching today in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. For, what you
fear, what you love, and what you trust in will permit, or prohibit, you from
loving your neighbor. Fear, love, and trust in God above all things frees you
to love in any, and all, situations, any, and all, of your neighbors, without
fear.
Jesus had
just sent out the seventy-two before Him to proclaim peace and that the kingdom
of God was near. He sent them with this promise alone, “The one who hears you
hears Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me, and the one who rejects Me
rejects Him who sent Me.” The seventy-two returned with joy at their success
proclaiming, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your Name!” Jesus
acknowledged this truth and rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, but He exhorted them
to not to rejoice in the subjection of spirits, but to rejoice that their names
were written in heaven. Then, Jesus prayed, “I thank you, Father, Lord of
heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and
understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was
your gracious will.”
This prayer
of Jesus leads you directly into today’s Gospel. Turning to His disciples,
Jesus said to them privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For
I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did
not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.” But, what was it
that Jesus’ disciples could see that the prophets and kings of old did not?
Well, to put it plainly, they saw Jesus, the fulfillment of the Law and the
Prophets and the covenant promises of God. More to the point, however, Jesus’
disciples saw that God was not their enemy, that they should fear Him, not as a
cruel master, but as a loving Father, and that they were not slaves of
legalism, but free to act in the same love they had freely received from their
loving God.
Immediately,
a lawyer, a student of God’s Law, stood up to put Jesus to the test. The lawyer
asked Jesus, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” The lawyer’s
question exposed his misconceptions about God’s Law and of how men are saved.
You cannot do anything to merit inheritance. An inheritance is something that
you receive freely because of your relationship with the giver of the
inheritance. However, the lawyer was not interested in a relationship with God.
Instead, he desired to merit eternal life by his works. He did not fear, love,
and trust in God above all things, but he feared, loved, and trusted in himself
and in his works. Therefore, Jesus answered the lawyer’s Law question with a
Law answer: He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”
The lawyer answered, “You shall 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 your
neighbor as yourself.” Jesus replied, “You have answered correctly; do this, and
you will live.”
However, the
lawyer was not satisfied. Jesus had pricked his conscience by saying “Do this,
and you will live.” The lawyer knew that he did not properly love God or his
neighbor, and Jesus’ command to “Do this, and you will live” let him know the
Jesus knew that he did not properly love God or his neighbor too. The lawyer’s
sin was a failure of love – He did not love God above all things. Instead, the
lawyer loved himself, and he trusted in his works. He despised God’s Law and
saw Him as a cruel master instead of a loving Father. And, because he did not
love God, he could not love his neighbor.
Thus, seeking
to justify himself, the lawyer asked Jesus, “And, who is my neighbor.” Since he
did not love God, but feared Him as a cruel master and despised His Law, the
lawyer sought to find a loophole, a way around the Law’s demands so that he
could justify himself. This is kind of like an employee doing only the minimal,
perfunctory duties his job requires, and doing them spitefully and full of loathing
for his vocation and his employer. Because he did not love God, the lawyer could
not love his fellow man. However, knowing this, Jesus answered the lawyer’s
question this time with a parable, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, so that
seeing, he would not see, and hearing, he would not hear.
The parable
goes like this: A man was attacked by robbers. They stripped him and beat him
and left him for dead by the side of the road. First a priest, and then a
Levite, a member of the priestly tribe, passed by. Neither man went to the aid
of the man alongside the road. However, next, a Samaritan passed by. The
Samaritan helped the man, pouring wine and oil upon his wounds and binding
them. He placed him upon his own animal and took him to an inn, providing the
innkeeper money to cover for the man’s care with the promise that he would
return and pay whatever additional costs were incurred. When Jesus asked the
lawyer, “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man
who fell among the robbers?” the lawyer had no choice but to answer, “The one
who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”
The parable
is really quite simple. The priest and the Levite could not help the man who
had fallen among robbers because they were in slavery to the Law. They, like
the lawyer, were students of God’s Law, experts and teachers of the Law, and
yet, they did not see the spirit of the Law, love, but they saw the Law as a
cruel master and they obeyed it out of fear of punishment for breaking it and
out of pride in what they deemed to be their own meritorious works. Like the
lawyer, the sin of the priest and the Levite was a failure of love – they did
not love God above all things, therefore they could not love their neighbor,
the man who had fallen amongst thieves.
However, the
Samaritan came to the man’s aid. Now, the fact that the hero of Jesus’ parable
was a Samaritan was not lost on the lawyer. Jews in Jesus’ day considered
Samaritans to be corrupted in terms of ancestry from Abraham and, therefore,
outside of God’s covenant with Israel. And yet, the Samaritan quite obviously
loved his neighbor and had mercy upon him, even as the most respected and
revered religious leaders of Israel passed by and did nothing. The Samaritan
could love his neighbor because he rightly loved God. He believed God to be
loving, gracious, and merciful. He himself had received such love from God.
Therefore, he did not view God and His Law as a cruel master, but as a loving
Father. The Samaritan was not enslaved to the Law of God, but he was free to
love his neighbor and come to his aid.
You see, the
Law of God, the moral law of the Ten Commandments and the ceremonial laws that
guided the worship and day to day practices of the people of Israel, was given
430 years after the covenant that God made with Abraham. That covenant was not
a covenant of Law, but of grace. And, though the Law was given later, it did
not annul the covenant of grace. As God once looked upon Abraham with favor and
blessed him because Abraham feared, loved, and trusted in Him, still you are
saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh, and
not by your works of obedience under the Law.
And, as you
have freely received, so must you freely give. Jesus’ command, “You go, and do
likewise,” is not a command of the Law, but it is an exhortation, even a
promise and an empowerment of the Gospel. Just as He sent out His seventy-two
to preach the Gospel equipped only with His gift of the authority of His Word,
so Jesus sends you out to love your neighbor with His love. However, like the
Parable of the Good Samaritan, how you hear Jesus’ words – as a commandment of
the Law, or as a promise of the Gospel – is directly related to how you view
God and His Law: Do you fear, love, and trust in God above all things? Or, do
you fear and despise God and His Law as a cruel master and tyrant? Jesus would
have you see Him and His Father the way the disciples and the Good Samaritan
did: “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see!”
What do you
have to do to inherit eternal life? You don’t have to do anything, but you do
have to be something – You have to be a child of God, a recipient of His love,
and a bearer of His love. You are His child, born again of water and the Spirit
in Holy Baptism. You are the recipient of His love poured out for you in Jesus’
holy, innocent blood for the forgiveness of your sins. And you are a bearer of
His love when you love others as He has loved you. Such love is not a work, but
it is a fruit – Jesus’ fruit. Therefore, it is perfect and holy and pleasing to
the Father. When you fear, love, and trust in God above all things, you need
not fear God and His Law as cruel master, but receive Him as a loving Father
who daily reaches down to you in your death to heal and to bind up the wounds
inflicted upon you by sin and Satan. He has carried you here, to this inn, to
this hospital, the Church, upon the burdens of His Son Jesus who has paid all
that was necessary to heal you, to care for you, and to preserve you until He
returns to save you and to take you to His Father’s home in heaven. Come, eat
and drink His saving love that you may love God and neighbor and live.
In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.
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