The Parable of the Good Samaritan 7-11-10

A teacher of the Law came up and tried to trap Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to receive eternal life?" Jesus answered him, "What do the Scriptures say? How do you interpret them?" The man answered, " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind'; and 'Love your neighbor as you love yourself.' " "You are right," Jesus replied; "do this and you will live." But the teacher of the Law wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus answered, "There was once a man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when robbers attacked him, stripped him, and beat him up, leaving him half dead. It so happened that a priest was going down that road; but when he saw the man, he walked on by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also came there, went over and looked at the man, and then walked on by on the other side. But a Samaritan who was traveling that way came upon the man, and when he saw him, his heart was filled with pity. He went over to him, poured oil and wine on his wounds and bandaged them; then he put the man on his own animal and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Take care of him,' he told the innkeeper, 'and when I come back this way, I will pay you whatever else you spend on him.' " And Jesus concluded, "In your opinion, which one of these three acted like a neighbor toward the man attacked by the robbers?" The teacher of the Law answered, "The one who was kind to him." Jesus replied, "You go, then, and do the same."

(Luk 10:25-37)

            Tonight we’re looking at one of the most well-known parables of the Gospels, called the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  The parable has had a large impact on our language and culture. When someone helps out a total stranger, they’re often called a “good Samaritan.” There are hundreds of hospitals around the world called “Good Samaritan Hospital.” There are even groups with names like the “Good Samaritan Club.”

            The story strikes a chord with a lot of people. It’s a good story. Let’s look at the background a little bit. First, there’s the teacher of the Law, a Levite, who was trying to “trap Jesus.” Now, what does that mean? This was a frequent occurrence for Jesus. At this point in his ministry, Jesus has pretty much shown where He’s at, what He’s about. Not only that, but, just prior to this story, Jesus had sent out seventy of His disciples as representatives to spread his message in the countryside.  With all of this hoopla going on, the Priests and the Levites, like this guy, had pretty much decided where they were in regards to Jesus as well, and they were against it.

            Now, given that they were against Him, they had begun to move towards finding ways to get rid of Him. Now, as this passage tells us, a Levite was an expert in the Law, the Jewish Law. Now, according to the Old Testament, the Jewish Law was not put in place so that people could earn favor with God. The Jewish people already had God’s favor, God had already made what’s called a “covenant” between Himself and the Jewish people, an agreement that He would bless them with special favor. The Law was, in a sense, the terms of the contract. If they wanted to show God that they were grateful for this favor, if they wanted to maintain that favor, they had to abide by these rules.

            So, this expert in the Law knew these rules very well, this was his job, to know them. And given that he and his people want to get rid of Jesus, he decides he’s going to do what he does best, he’s going to debate the Law with Jesus. And if he can show that Jesus is teaching a way or a lifestyle which is contrary to the Jewish Law, then he can accuse Jesus as a heretic, someone who’s preaching something contrary to God’s word. If he can’t get Jesus imprisoned for it, he can at least persuade people to stop following Jesus, because if they follow someone teaching things contrary to God’s Law, then they’ll have violated that covenant which God had made with them and lose God’s favor.

            And he’s pretty slick about it, he tries using what’s called the Socratic Method. That’s when you start by assuming that whatever the person is saying or teaching is true, and then, rather than openly stating where you disagree with them, you ask them a series of questions to try to get them to contradict themselves or expose something wrong with their thinking. In this case, the Levite knows that Jesus is preaching on the subject of eternal life. So that’s where he starts.

            As I’ve mentioned before, when first century Jews heard the phrase “eternal life,” they didn’t think, as we often do, strictly in terms of “going to Heaven when you die.” Eternal life meant a whole lot of things, but primarily it related to a.) the resurrection, and b.) the coming rule of God over all the Earth through the nation of Israel. This coming rule of the of God, referred to as the “Kingdom of God” meant God overturning evil and it’s affects upon the world, everything that has come to be as a result of the actions of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This is important to keep in mind when it comes to understanding the overall mission of Christ, as well as when it comes to interpreting this parable. God’s mission on Earth is to confront and destroy evil.

            Thus, the teacher of the Law, the Levite, comes up to Christ and asks “how can I be a part of this Kingdom of God? What must I do to inherit eternal life?” But Jesus turns the Levite’s own tactics back on him and answers his question with a question: “Well, what do you think, what do the Scriptures say about it?” And, of course, the teacher of the Law gives the expected answer, the answer everybody knew, that a person had to love God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength and love their neighbors in the same way they loved themselves.

            Jesus tells him he’s right, that’s the way to do it, “do this and you will live.” And I can almost picture Jesus stepping away at this point, getting ready to move on to someone or something else. But the lawyer can’t leave it there. Why is that, I wonder? Luke tells us it was because the lawyer wanted to “justify himself,” but what does that mean? I think, at that moment, when Jesus turned the tables on the Levite and confirmed that he had to love God with his whole mind and whole heart and whole soul and whole strength, and love his neighbor just as much as he loved himself, something changed in the Levite.

            All of the sudden, perhaps he realized that he didn’t always love God that much, and even if he came close in that respect, what was this business of loving his neighbor? Which ones? How do I do it? He’s worried that maybe he’s not lived up to the standard.  But instead of doing what he ought to of done when he felt convicted this way, instead of turning and repenting, he seeks to sooth his conscience. He wants to believe that the way he does things is really alright in the end, nothing to worry about. He wants to justify himself, justify himself before God. He wants to continue believing that he is blameless.

            So, he asks for Jesus attention for just one more question: “But who is my neighbor? How can I tell when I’m around a person I must love as much as I love myself, how can I distinguish between them and the people it’s ok to hate?”

            And that question simply won’t do for Jesus. So, to answer the lawyer, he tells a story.  He says:

"There was once a man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when robbers attacked him, stripped him, and beat him up, leaving him half dead. It so happened that a priest was going down that road; but when he saw the man, he walked on by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also came there, went over and looked at the man, and then walked on by on the other side. But a Samaritan who was traveling that way came upon the man, and when he saw him, his heart was filled with pity. He went over to him, poured oil and wine on his wounds and bandaged them; then he put the man on his own animal and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Take care of him,' he told the innkeeper, 'and when I come back this way, I will pay you whatever else you spend on him.' "

            Now, this road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a long, steep, winding road, full of big rocks and twists and turns. In fact, up until relatively recently, this road was still famous as a “robber’s road.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described having driven on this road with his wife in his speech “I’ve been to the Mountaintop.” This is what he had to say:

I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable." It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about twelve hundred miles, or rather, twelve hundred feet above sea level.  And by the time you get down to Jericho fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about twenty-two feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the "Bloody Pass." And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking, and he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure.  And so the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"

However, King continues:

But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"

           

            There are a lot of points to be drawn from this very short story. First, there is the issue of good guys and bad guys. The idea when Jesus told this story was that the audience would assume that the Priest and the Levite in the story would be the good guys, because they were so devoted to the rules laid down in the scriptures. But their devotion to the rules lead them to violate the heart of Scripture’s message, love others. The rules, the Law, said that if you touched a dead body, that made you unclean. If you were a priest or a Levite, that meant you served in the Temple, and you couldn’t serve in the Temple and be unclean. But, deeper than that, it’s likely that these men were terribly scared of what might happen if they stuck around and helped this guy. They masked their lack of faith in God, their fear, with what looked like faithfulness to their group, to their rules, to what they believed God had said.

            The Samaritan, on the other hand, would’ve been viewed by the audience as the bad guy. The Samaritans and the Jews hated each other. A Jew wouldn’t cross the street to spit on a Samaritan if he were on fire. And yet, while the Priest and the Levite were covering their fear by pretending to be faithful to their rules, the Samaritan had actual faith in God. He trusted that though he was in a dangerous spot, God wanted him to help the beaten man, probably also a Jew, a man whom might have even hated him, and so he shows his faith in God by helping the man.

            So, this is what they call the moral interpretation of the story, that God calls us to a love for others that doesn’t see boundaries, whether they’re ethnic, religious, cultural, or of any other type, but only sees the needs of those around us and moves us to meet those needs. And so I ask you, do you see beyond your own boundaries? Can you love others whom you’ve been taught to hate, or people you’ve simply grown to hate? What are your boundaries? Who do you exclude, who do you refuse to love? Is it defined by skin color? Is it defined by how much money someone makes? Is it defined by where someone lives, a different state, a different town, a different block? Is it defined by who they run around with? Is it defined by how they live their lives? Whatever it is, I beg you to look beyond those boundaries and prepare yourself to love those people too.

            To close with, I wanted to address what is called the allegorical interpretation of the story. This interpretation doesn’t concern itself as much with the context in which this story is given, the question of who is my neighbor. Instead, it sees the man beaten and robbed on the road as us, any human being. We’ve gone down a road we shouldn’t have gone down and we’ve been beaten and robbed by sin, evil, and death. We lay half-dead on the road, receiving no help from a religion of rules, and religion of standing up and doing things for yourself, the Priest and the Levite. But the Good Samaritan, a type of Christ, sees us in our helpless state, risks his own life, and carries us to safety, and pays for everything we need to become well again.

            Have you gone down a road you shouldn’t have gone down? We all have, the road of sin. But Christ will come along and, through your faith in Him, will carry you to safety and healing. He has paid the price for you, He will make sure that you too are healed.