Pentecost 6                        Luke 10:25-37                                7/11/04

                                "They Think They’re So Smart!"

Lawyers! They think they’re sooo smart! They have a quick answer...or a tricky question to cover every situation.

Why, just look at the exchange between the lawyer and Jesus. You just know the lawyer is trying to trap Jesus when he asks "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" I’m sure he was hoping he could catch Jesus out in some violation of the law. Maybe, he hoped Jesus would say something like, "Do whatever I tell you." or "Bow down and worship me."

In good rabbinic form though, Jesus shows He is the smarter one by turning the test back on the lawyer. In fact, Jesus gets the lawyer so twisted up in questions the lawyer doesn’t even catch on that his initial question just showed how stupid he was. You can’t do anything to gain an inheritance. An inheritance is a gift and the receiver is determined by the giver. Eternal life is God’s to give; not man’s to earn.

The uselessness of trying to earn this inheritance is shown even more clearly in the next exchange. Jesus asks what the law says, and the lawyer trying to show he’s not only a brilliant attorney, but also an exceptional theologian, draws together the two principle laws of the Old Testement:

Deut. 6:4,5 "Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength."

And

Lev. 19:18 "Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord."

He conflates them into one, "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 actually affirms the lawyer for his answer (even with the quotation errors and conflation). But, as I said earlier, "Lawyers think they’re sooo smart." He just can’t leave well enough alone.

If only he had taken a moment to think about the answer he’d just given, he might have realized that his initial question had been shown to be faulty. If loving God with heart, soul, strength and mind - the absolute totality of one’s being - was necessary to inherit eternal life, then obviously no one could earn eternal life. NO human being can love God with his/her total being for even a millisecond, much less long enough to earn eternal life. Only God can love that perfectly and thus eternal life can only be a gift from a totally loving God.

The lawyer just must try another angle, another question though. And this leads to Jesus’ little parable of the helpless guy in the ditch.

I realize that 99.9% of the time we read this parable from the Samaritan’s point of view, and thus make it a "here’s how to live a Christian life" story. But, Jesus may have intended it to be a lesson about God’s unfathomable love and grace instead.

The readers of Luke’s gospel would have been Jews. Jews and Samaritans had a long history of disdain for each other. During an ancient war, most of the Jews living up north in Samaria were killed or taken into exile. However, a few Jews, who were so unimportant that nobody wanted them, were left in Samaria. Over time these Jews intermarried with other races. Upon their return from exile the "true Jews" considered the off-spring of these people to be half-breeds. And to make matters worse these people, now called Samaritans, developed their own places of worship centered on Mt. Gerazim rather than Jerusalem and they interpreted the Torah (the five books of Moses) differently. This disdain was so great that Jews would travel many miles out of their way rather than set foot on Samaritan land. Thus, there is a certain shock value in making the hero of the parable a Samaritan. And Jewish readers of the gospel, even those living in a Greek culture, would not have identified with the Samaritan. They would identify though with someone who had been victimized.

From this perspective then, the parable answers the first question as well as the neighbor question. "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" NOTHING! You can’t do anything; except lie there all beaten up by sin and the law, and let grace bring you back to life.

"Who is my neighbor?" Why the person you’d least expect, a person you normally wouldn’t expect anything from according to the old way of thinking. And here is the twist...the neighbor to the guy in the ditch is Jesus. You see, the priest and the Levite couldn’t help him because they were probably on their way to the temple (the symbol of the old Law) and if they came into contact with the man’s blood, they would be ritually impure and unable to perform their duties. Ritual purity and the law were all important to them.

The Samaritan, scorned though he was by good Jews, was free of those laws. Jesus who would shortly free all people from the yoke of the law by His own disgraceful death on the cross was the Samaritan.

It was Jesus who out of pure love, sees (truly sees) us in all our hopelessness, pain filthiness and helplessness, and does not turn away. It is Jesus who though He has no obligation to us, cares about us. It is Jesus who pays the full cost of our care and promises to return again.

We, of course, would rather not be the victim. Oh, we don’t want to be the priest or Levite. We can’t imagine seeing someone so obviously in need and ignoring them. We would much rather imagine ourselves as all giving, like the Samaritan. But, I would maintain that we can’t possibly be the all-giving Good Samaritan until we have fully lived out our role as the victims.

It is only after we acknowledge our utter helplessness, our mortal woundedness, our shear inability to save ourselves that we can be healed. It is then from this experience of having been the guy in the ditch that we can become healers to others and to the world. It is only then that we can show true mercy. It is then that Jesus can say, "They are so smart." Amen.