(Note: This blog entry is based on the text “Inheriting Eternal Life”, originally shared on July 6, 2022. It was the 224th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Literature is full of stories that take
place on the road. The Bible story we’re going to look at today takes place on
a dangerous and notorious one, the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. It’s also
our journey. Today we’ll find out why.
Remember the story of Joshua and the battle
of Jericho? It was fought when the Israelites returned to the land God had
given them after hundreds of years in slavery in Egypt. Their land had been
occupied by others, and they had to take it back.
By the time of Jesus, many of hundreds of
years later, the road between Jerusalem and Jericho was known mainly for crime.
Lots of things can happen on the road to
someplace else.
Have you ever seen an RV with a sticker on
it with a red background showing the smiling head of a guy with a gold halo
over him and the words “Good Sam” underneath it? It’s the logo for the Good Sam
Club, which began as a group who said that they were willing to help fellow
RV’ers in need on the road. It takes its name from the parable of the Good
Samaritan, as in Luke 10:25-37, which begins,
25Just then a lawyer stood up to test
Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
He
wasn’t a lawyer, like we understand lawyers, but he was an expert in the religious
laws, the 613 commandments in the Old Testament, and all the ways in which they
were to be interpreted. Jesus answers him, starting with verse 26,
26He said to him, “What
is written in the law? What do you read there?” 27He 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.”
That’s Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18.
Augustine, one of the great theologians of the Church and one of the
giants of Western literature, who lived from 354-430 A.D., expressed almost the
same when he said, “Love God and do what you will,” because loving God means
doing what pleases God, and the laws of God are given for human good.
Jesus approved of the man’s answer and said, in verse 28,
28And he said to him, “You have given the
right answer; do this, and you will live.”
If
only the man had stopped while he was ahead. We see at verse 29,
29But wanting to justify
himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
This man didn’t want to stop at knowing how to collect his inheritance.
He wanted to believe that he had earned it himself.
The
man only wanted to make sure he was keeping the letter of the law, but in doing
so only showed concern for himself. He wasn’t thinking about what to share with
others.
He
wanted to know what he had to do. Jesus was about to teach him what he needed
to be, starting with verse 30,
30Jesus 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.
The road between Jerusalem and Jericho was
winding, it was mostly what we would call a dry gulch. A great place for
robbers to hide and ambush travelers and merchants.
I once walked inland from the west to Mt. Sinai in Israel. My friend and
I had taken our map at face value but found that there was actually no city and
no road. We had to walk in over the desert.
We
met a Bedouin, a native of the desert, who agreed to guide us over night. Have
you ever spent a night wondering if you were about to be robbed? At one point my
friend quietly pointed out that, culturally, the Bedouin believed that
everything on the desert belonged to them. They might rob a traveler of
everything, including the clothes on their back, without remorse. And their
brother might find you on the desert and bring you to his village and equip you
with everything his brother had stolen and brought home, out of a cultural
hospitality, and see no contradiction.
The robbers in this story were a bit more brutal.
Have you ever been robbed at gunpoint? I have. It’s no fun. One of our
dogs had jumped our fence one night, many years ago, and I had gone out to
bring it back. We had indications that we lived near a crack-house and we think
the robbers might have been on their way there, desperate. One robber said that
he didn’t want to kill me, and I replied that that was good because I didn’t
want to be killed. He took my watch, wedding ring, and all my cash that Sally
passed through the back door. I think the other recognized me. He held back and
kept telling the other guy to leave. They were satisfied with what they got. But
it was traumatizing for us. It was a night when some help would have been very
welcome.
The first two possibilities for help for the victim in Jesus’ parable
were not at all helpful, starting at verse 31,
31Now by chance a priest was going down
that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32So
likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other
side.
Two potential helpers appear. We see a priest of Aaron who served in the
Temple in Jerusalem and a Levite who served in a helping role in the Temple such
as being a musician, a Temple official, a guard, or as a craftsman. They may have been concerned that
victim was dead, knowing that if they touched a dead body they would have been
considered “unclean” and unable to carry out their service until they completed
a time-consuming cleansing ritual.
Or, they might have passed by thinking that “it’s
not my job”, or they didn’t want to be late for work, or were afraid that
someone would mistake them for the robber, or that they might get blood on their
clothes, or were afraid that they themselves would get robbed. Or who knows?
But they did not stop to render aid. Who did? We see in verse 33,
33But a Samaritan while traveling came near
him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity.
Let’s just take a pause here to think about who the Samaritans were and
how outrageous it would have seemed for Jesus to make the Samaritan the good
guy in this story. Samaritans were what was left of the mixture of local and
foreign peoples that followed the Assyrian Conquest of the 10 northern tribes
of Israel in 722 B.C. They were considered foreigners occupying their own
territory in the middle of Israel, and bad influences. And the Samaritans felt
the same about Israel. And what does the Samaritan do? We see in verse 34,
34He 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.
Margaret Meade, the
anthropologist, was once asked what she thought was the first sign of human
civilization. She answered, “The first evidence of civilization is a healed
femur.” (thighbone)
Evidence of a healed thighbone
means that someone had to set the bone and provide security, food and water for
the wounded while they healed, all at a personal expense to themselves. Prior
to that, if you broke a femur, you died.
Civilization begins when we
put the need of others ahead of our own.
That is a very Christian
concept, perhaps at the beating heart of what it means to be a Christian. It is
rooted in the central event of the Christian faith. The cross.
It’s what the expert on the religious law needed to learn. The teaching
continues in verse 35,
35The 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.’
A
denarius was equal to a day’s wage for an unskilled laborer. Two denarii were
two days wages. That was his down payment. He offered to contribute whatever it
took to restore the wounded man.
Last
week, I asked that you pray that God would open your heart to someone who needs
reconciliation with God, someone to whom God is sending you to bring the Good
News of God’s love for all people in word and/or deed.
Did
you do it? Prayer doesn’t cost anything, and it can lead us to those in need
who we can serve. Did anyone come to mind? Did you follow-up. Jesus asked, in verse
36,
36Which of these three,
do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 37He
said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
How does God’s mercy come?
A neighbor is anyone in need of what we can
give. It’s not our status or appearance in the world that matters. What counts
is that we who have been healed express our gratitude in love for others. We
who have received mercy, show mercy.
The one who was helpless was restored.
Living as a Christian requires sacrifice. It
requires concern for others, not for the sake of appearances, but because it is
a natural expression of the love and grace and mercy we have first received
from God. The expert in the religious law was only concerned with his personal
salvation by his own works.
He pushed Jesus a little further because the
man only wanted to justify himself.
The Good news, the gospel, is that God has
done that for us at the cross.
The message of this parable is not just to
be nice to people. The message is to live the love that we have first received
on the cross, the love that has made us whole, restoring us to the living
relationship of faith in the one true living God for which we were created from
the beginning of human history and to share the hope of eternal life, not in
ourselves, but in Jesus Christ.
Near the end of the movie on Mrs. Rodgers, “Won’t
You Be My Neighbor?”, Fred Rogers, who was a Presbyterian minister, is speaking
to a crowd and says,
“From the time you were very little, you've
had people who have smiled you into smiling, people who have talked you into
talking, sung you into singing, loved you into loving. So, on this extra
special day, let's take some time to think of those extra special people. Some
of them may be right here, some may be far away. Some may even be in heaven. No
matter where they are, deep down you know they've always wanted what was best
for you. They've always cared about you beyond measure and have encouraged you
to be true to the best within you. Let's just take a minute of silence to think
about those people now.”
Who has “loved you into being”? Who made
those people into who they were and are? God.
And we can be that kind of neighbor because
God has first loved us into eternal being.
We can’t earn this inheritance. It is a gift
of the loving and gracious and merciful God.
Heaven is coming and it will be full of all
kinds of people. Declare the inbreaking of the already but not yet fully here
Kingdom of God by word and deed to everyone in need who God places in front of
you. That is, your neighbors.
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