Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?" He 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." And he said to him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live." But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, "Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.' Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise." (Luke 10:25-37 NRSV)

The Parable of the Good Samaritan ...
Oh Brother,
Very few passages from the Holy Scriptures have received as much attention
as has the story of the Good Samaritan.

Most of us have heard sermon
after sermon
after sermon
on how we’re supposed to imitate --
on how we’re supposed to be like the Good Samaritan.
And, probably like many of you,
when I think I’m about to hear another moralizing sermon on the Good Samaritan
I promptly close my ears
shut down my brain
and catch forty winks.

Yes ... preachers sometimes sleep during sermons too.

Only, this morning I ask that you not shut down your brain,
that you not close your ears,
and that you listen as God’s Word,
Jesus Christ our Lord,
gives us an illustration of what true love is.

And we begin with a simple question--
“What’s a Samaritan?”

Would you Pray with me?

Gracious God, move among us this day so that we may always know that we are never alone; and speak to us so that we may always hear, understand, and remember -- give us your word by which you mold and shape our living; in Jesus Name we pray. Amen.

It happened in a downtown section of New York City,
Where numerous people were on the streets,
especially in the lunch hour.

A man was lying on the sidewalk,
partly in an alley,
next to a Church building.
He appeared to have been severely beaten
and was left to die there by the muggers.

They must have caught him when he was by himself
at a moment when the sidewalks were deserted.
They knocked him down,
They took his wallet and watch,
and they left him there to bleed and, perhaps, even to die.

A newspaper reporter happened to see him from across the street
just as someone came out of the church;
that person stepped over the mugged man and quickly went his way.

Next, a woman walked by the entrance to the alley;
she looked at the unconscious man
and quickly walked on by.

Five more people who had been in Church saw the man
and did nothing to help him.

It was the eighth person,
a young man with long hair and a beard,
a young man who had not been in church and,
frankly,
probably wouldn’t have been welcome had he tried to enter,
it was this man,
the one least likely to be expected to help
who stopped, took the man’s pulse, saw that he was alive
and then went to a nearby telephone booth to call 911.
This man stayed there until the paramedics arrived and,
only then,
did he go his own way.

A modern parable of the Good Samaritan.
It’s a true story,
straight from the pages of the New York Times,
and I find it very interesting that its author,
who ends the article by judging all those people
who left the Church, stepping over the man, but doing nothing,
himself simply stood by and watched,
for many minutes,
as the man lay in the alley,
dying.
The reporter missed the very point he,
himself,
was trying to make.

None of us --
not even that self-righteous reporter --
is innocent.

“What’s a Samaritan?”

To be literal about it,
a Samaritan is someone who comes from the territory of
the Northern Kingdom of Israel during the time of Jesus.

They were not Jews, but they were part-Hebrew.
They were descended from the mixture of people whom the Assyrian Empire
had relocated to Israel in the 700s BC,
as well as of those few Hebrew Israelites who had managed to remain behind
when most of their brethren were deported by those same Assyrians.
In short, they were the distant half-brothers
of the Jews in the Southern Kingdom.

The Jews, however, looked upon the Samaritans with disdain.

One coudln’t expect anything good to come from a Samaritan.
Afterall, they didn’t even worship at the Temple in Jerusalem!

It is striking, therefore, that Jesus chose a Samaritan
to be the good guy in this story.

As in the modern version of the parable,
all the people you would expect to help a person in distress:
a priest
a levite
the good and holy people of their day
they all passed him by.
Only the Samaritan stopped to help.
Only the Samaritan expressed the love we are supposed to have for each other.
Only the Samaritan showed the kind of love that God gave to the world in his Son,
Jesus Christ.

This is the point of the story,
is it not?

“Teacher!” cried the lawyer, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What does the law say, since you’re a lawyer?”
“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.”
And Jesus said: “You have given the right answer.”

That’s it.
Love God with everything that you are
Love your neighbor with the love that you love yourself.
What could be simpler?
And, as the Parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates,
what could be more difficult to accomplish?

The good news is that Christ accomplished it for us.
You see, this morning I’m going to try something that I’ve never done before.
My exegesis of the passage discovered an interesting parallelism
between the Parable of the Good Samaritan
and another story in the Bible which we all know very well.
I’ve never seen the Good Samaritan preached this way.

“What’s a Samaritan?”

A Samaritan is Jesus Christ.

--Bare with me for a moment --

Jesus was a Jew.
In the eyes of the Gentile world, Jews were
just about the most unsavory,
just about the most unlikeable people in the Roman Empire.
One of the worst things you could be was a Jew.
And, yet, Jesus was a Jew.

Not only that, but he was the son of a carpenter,
not a king
not a scholar,
not any kind of important merchant
nor a political ruler,
but a carpenter’s son --
Jesus came from just about as close to the bottom of the Jewish social ladder
as one could be and not be a slave.

Not only that, but he wasn’t even a member
of any of the important religious parties
which dominated the Jewish scene at the time.

He wasn’t a Sadducee
He really wasn’t a Pharisee
He wasn’t an Essene

He was a loner.
Even in the eyes of the Jewish establishment,
Jesus was a no-body.

And, adding insult to injury,
Jesus was crucified on a cross.
Nothing could be more horrifying to either a Jew or a Gentile,
than to die on a cross.
It was the death which was reserved for run away slaves and political criminals.
To put it in our context ... what if Jesus had been executed in an Electric Chair?

What’s a Samaritan?
From the point of view of the Gentiles AND the Jews,
Jesus was.

Man is fallen.
He had eaten some poison fruit.
He had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.
He had been struck down by the powers and forces of darkness.
He was spiritually dead, and physical death was fast approaching.

No one else could help him.
He couldn’t even help himself.
Anything he did only made his situation worse.
All he could do was lay there, lay there and die.

Until Jesus came along.
A Crucified Jew,
whom his own people rejected,
saved all of fallen humanity.

The last one the Jews expected to be the messiah
--a suffering servant--
came along and did what the priests and levites--
what the law--
couldn’t do.

He saved us.
He bound up our wounds.
He took us to a place of safety.
And then he went away, promising us that he would return.

And in his coming,
in his suffering,
in his dying
in his rising
in his saving
Christ expressed the love that God has for us all.
A love which the Good Samaritan had for that mugged Jew in the parable,
A love which the long-haired hippie had for that mugged man in New York City
A love which we are all called to have for our neighbors--
here
and out there.

This is a parable which we cannot miss,
For it illustrates the radical love which God has for us
and which we are all called to have for each other.

We have all been called to be the Samaritan,
and it is only through the love,
it is only through the presence,
of Christ Jesus
that we can be.

“What’s a Samaritan?”
I hope that you are willing to be one.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
--Amen.