Sermon preached at St. John’s Church
Stamford, Connecticut
July 10, 2022 / Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 10:25-37
In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
The story of the good Samaritan suffers a bit from overexposure. Who here has not heard this story told over and over again, and not only in church? This is one of Jesus’ stories that is well known by all Christians, and by more than a few nonbelievers as well. It seems that the story of the good Samaritan is always particularly well known by those who don’t get exactly what they want, and then throw the good Samaritan back into the face of whatever good Christian person they’re trying to swindle.
This story, like much of what Jesus’ had to say, is an intensification of the old law of Moses by which the people of Israel organized their lives and society. A person’s neighbor was not just the guy next door, and a person’s neighbor was not just a member of his extended tribe of kinsmen: a person’s neighbor could even be a member of a group with which historic relations were poor. The Samaritans and the Jews were, as many of you will know, historically all part of the same people of Israel, but the Samaritans over time had married and mixed with the oppressors and captors of Israel, and yet they still lived very close to the Jews of Jesus’ day, and they did not like each other. That there should have even been such a thing as a “good” Samaritan would have been actually offensive to Jesus’ listener, particularly to the righteous lawyer who stood up to question him. For in the story it was not the Jewish priest or Levite who followed the law; it was the Samaritan, a person beyond the bounds of the law, who obeyed God’s commandment.
The Samaritan was not only not a Jew, he was a seen as a member of a historic tribe of traitors by Jesus’ friends and interlocutors. That he should have been the bearer of mercy and even righteousness to the man left half dead in a ditch was a stinging rebuke to lawyer who stood up to question Jesus.
The story poses a challenge not only to the conventional wisdom of Jesus’ time, but also to the conventional wisdom of our own as well. But that challenge does not come in the form you might think.
I grew up with a girl, let’s call her Peggy. Our mothers had grown up together, and we all went to church together, and just a few years ago my mom encountered Peggy in town, and somehow they struck up a conversation about God and church and good works. Peggy had by that point long since stopped going to church or believing that God was in any way useful, but she was still engaged in some charity and was at the time of the conversation raising money for a local cause. As the conversation wound down, she said to my mother, “You know, you don’t have to go to church to do good.”
That’s probably true! You heard it here. You don’t have to go to church to do good works in the society. That’s the conventional wisdom of our time. I’m sure if we stopped almost any person walking down any street in Stamford this morning, they would agree.
But doing good works and being a kind neighbor is not the only thing that the story of the good Samaritan is about. The challenge to the conventional wisdom is the setup to the whole story, the inquiry that triggers Jesus’ whole teaching, the simple question brought by, of all people, a lawyer: “‘Teacher, he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’”[1]
But this is not just a story about helping a man left half dead in a ditch. It is a story about the means of grace and the hope of glory. It is a story about what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.
The reality of the situation is that left to our own devices, we too would be half dead in a ditch, or worse, and that’s true whether we’re speaking literally or metaphorically. There is nothing any of us can do to outrun death, or avoid the moral failings that are part and parcel of our imperfect – but free – wills. Those with position and authority among us in this world are very much in the same boat, so even if they do not pass us by, there is little that can be done.
And yet from the unlikeliest of quarters, using the least promising of tools, God has come among us to rescue us from the precipice. The scandal of the Cross is that an instrument of torture and shame should have become the very mechanism of our salvation. And what is more, a person who Isaiah foretold would be “despised and rejected” was also the Word made Flesh who himself was the instrument of the redemptive love of God for his creation.[2]
In our second lesson this morning, we heard Paul’s prayer for the Colossians, that they “may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.”[3] When we hear the story of the good Samaritan, we are not listening merely with the ears of helpfulness, but with the ears of faith. As Paul reminds us, leading lives worthy of the Lord, bearing fruit in every good work can come only through the knowledge and love of God which leads to the eternal life which the lawyer sought from Jesus.
My prayer for you this day is the same as Paul’s prayer for the Colossians, that through hearing the story of the good Samaritan this day, you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
AMEN.