St. Paul Lutheran Church
The 13th Sunday after Trinity
August 24/25, 2013 a.d.
St. Luke 10:23-37
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
God doesn’t want you to be religious and keep rules. He wants you to be repentant and look to His Son. He has given you His commands that you should walk in them and live according to them, chiefly you are to 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. But you cannot justify yourself by the law of God. You cannot be righteous before God by attempting to do this. The lawyer in the Gospel actually knew this because he understood the complete demands of God, there had to be an out of some kind. He wanted to justify himself, and so he asked Jesus, “and who is my neighbor?” See if he could simply narrow down a list of those he had to love perfectly then maybe he could do it. You want to do this, make a list. Narrow down who you are supposed to love and who you believe you should be merciful toward. You want to think you bear no responsibility for those that are outside your immediate circle, but how ridiculous you are, because you want to wash our hands of responsibility of those you are in your immediate circle and because of their weakness, frailty, actions, unbelief, foolish decisions and sins get yourself off the hook from loving them. It doesn’t work, you aren’t off the hook. You never will be.And this is why you need the Good Samaritan – who is Jesus of course. You are beaten up, and rightly because the law, which is good, shows you your sinfulness, shows you your incapability of justifying yourself. The law is sent to knock you down from any delusions that you could justify yourself. Everyone is your neighbor, and you have not been merciful, not to those near to you, to those related to you, and not to strangers either. This is the thing about the parable, you are the one who walks on by the hurt one on the side of the road and you at the very same time are the one who is hurt. We are all in this sinning together, abandoning one who is in need and being abandoned. Not showing mercy and in need of mercy, the preaching of the law gets at all of this in your life, reveals it, brings it to light. And all of it because of the greatest commandment not being kept, not loving God with all of your heart, and soul and strength and mind, not desiring Him and His Word over anything else, letting all pride and self-love, delusions of self-sufficiency go because right around the corner are the thieves waiting to strike you down and they will; devils fill the world seeking to devour you. And they will and the flesh will help them right along. Even the people of God are wounded and hurt. And this is why you need the Good Samaritan – who is Jesus.He comes, unexpected, like a thief in the night, not to steal or kill or destroy but to give life and to heal wounds of body and soul. You cannot justify yourself by keeping the commandments; He keeps the commandments and then is wounded Himself to bring you healing through his wounds. What do the pierced hands and feet deliver to you? Justification, the righteousness of God apart from your works of the law, but by Jesus’ works of the Law through faith alone. From his wounded side come blood and water, cleansing you of all sin, the fountain of blood that is poured out. The oil of gladness the Samaritan puts on sealing your wounded soul with forgiveness, the wine put in your wounded body to cleanse you of all sin. He bears all your burdens; whatever you owe, it is charged to His account. At the end, Jesus asks the tricky lawyer who was neighbor to the one who fell among thieves. The answer, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus responds by saying, “Go and do likewise.” Does he really mean that? If like the lawyer you ask a question of the law, you will get an answer of the law. If you seek to make yourself righteous before God, go ahead and try. You will fail and you will die. But if you seek mercy, if you know that you are broken down, beaten up in need of a merciful Savior who will take you from death into life. Well, you’ve got him. Jesus, the Good Samaritan.In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
