Luke 10:25–37

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

²⁵And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" ²⁶He said to him, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?" ²⁷And 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." ²⁸And he said to him, "You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live." ²⁹But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" ³⁰Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. 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. ³³But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. ³⁴He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. ³⁵And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.' ³⁶Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" ³⁷He said, "The one who showed him mercy." And Jesus said to him, "You go, and do likewise."

A lawyer stood up and asked Jesus, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" (v 25). Nothing against lawyers, but sometimes when they ask questions, they're looking for the answers they want, the answers that serve to prove their case. So it is with the lawyer who stands up before Jesus in our Gospel today. There's nothing wrong with discussing the Law. The Law is good. It paints a beautiful picture of how loving our lives are meant to be.

We heard a lot of good Law from Leviticus today. Most people would like what it says (Lev 19:9–18). It talks a lot about love. For example, it says that when you harvest the crops, leave some in the fields for the poor and the foreigner who is passing through. Do not reap the fields right up to the edge or pick up that grain that falls to the ground, but leave it there for the poor and sojourner. It says you should not oppress your neighbor or rob him or steal or deal falsely or lie. One thing we especially like, it says that the employer should not withhold wages from the employee, and he should pay a fair wage. That one suits most all of us quite well. You shall not go around slandering people, talking about them behind their backs, or posting confidential things on social media about other people. And then we have the verse that Jesus quoted to the lawyer in the gospel reading today: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

We would have a hard time not agreeing that it's a good thing to take care of poor people. In fact, some who oppose helping the poor sound absurd and are seen as fools. We would also agree that the Samaritan man in Jesus' parable is a good example for us to follow in being people who care (vv 33–35). In fact, the Good Samaritan is held up in honor and esteem around the world, not just among believers in Christ, but in all religions and philosophies of the world. Even among atheists it is held up as a noble and laudable principle.

Holding back wages, cursing deaf people, putting obstacles in front of blind people, lying in court are universally considered bad. The principle of love is transcendent for all times and societies, since the creation of man, and indeed is the core of what philosophers and theologians know as Natural Law. We all agree that this is a good way to be. We don't want to be like the robbers in Jesus' parable.

This Law of love your neighbor is on the lawyer's mind. He knows it well. It's on all our minds too. It is written on our hearts (Rom 2:14–15). God says, "For when Gentiles, who do not have the [written] law [of God], by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the word of the law is written on their hearts..." We know this is how we should be.

But the lawyer uses the Law unlawfully. So do we. We ask the wrong question. The problem is in the premise. "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" As if eternal life were something we achieve by our own efforts, our work, our obedience to the law. But even the question was worded wrong. The only way to inherit anything is to be born to someone who has it and wait for that person to die. When we mix up our doing with God's giving, we have a big problem, and that's exactly what he was doing, and that's exactly what we do so often. So often we see someone receiving a blessing and wonder what he did right to deserve it. So often we receive a blessing in our lives and give ourselves the credit for having earned it or having been good enough for God to love us so.

Then there is another problem in the purpose of the question: "But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor?' " (v 29). He knew he had not loved everyone as himself, not the Samaritan, a foreigner, not his enemies. So, he had better find a legal loophole that eliminates these people from the legal requirement to love. His premise is still that to gain eternal life he must do something; he must obey the law. And he was trying to redefine the law so that it fit his life and actions.

But this too was unsuccessful. The Law describes the life of love, according to the will of God, not according to this man's or our purpose. When we take the Law and use it as guidebook to discover how we can skip loving some people or show how some unloving actions, words, and thoughts were not really our fault (and so should not count against us in front of God), we then have a problem with the purpose. He was defining the neighbor as the person we are required to love, and then trying to alter the definition so as to exclude those he didn't love and didn't want to love.

But, Jesus straightens out the lawyer's question. Jesus by his questions moves us away from how we can prove ourselves right and instead moves us to see ourselves as wrong. Jesus shows us that we have not been a neighbor to those in need. Our compassion has been lacking in so many ways. Oh, yes. We love our spouse, our children, our parents. We love our friends and the people we like. We even contribute to charities that help the poor and volunteer at the food pantry or homeless shelter. So we feel we are loving people and that God must certainly be pleased with us. But, have you been a neighbor to the poor? The homeless? The undocumented immigrant who lives next door? No. So, in the end, the law accuses us. Not one of us has fulfilled the law of love. Every one of us, like the lawyer, has tried to define the neighbor we are to love as the person we want to love and we have tried to define out those we don't want to love. According to God's terms of the law we have sinned and every one of us deserves God's wrath and eternal punishment. We all need to repent of our sin and pray that God would not count our sin against us on the Day of Judgment.

But that too misses the point of the parable. Fact is, this whole parable is not about who we should and should not love, but about the one who loves us. The one who has been a neighbor to us and so has turned God's wrath away from us.

Jesus turns us to asking the right question: "Who was a neighbor to this man?" The fact is, the man beaten and lying alongside the road is us. We are knocked down, beat up, ripped off—by life, by sin, by our own desires, by the opinions of others. Nobody is perfectly a neighbor to us . . . except Jesus.

In fact, Jesus is the right answer to all the questions. Jesus is the Good Samaritan (vv 33–35). He is the neighbor who comes to us, to each man, woman, child, beaten up by sin, by the devil, half dead, and awaiting death. He touches us with his words; Jesus heals us with the oil of Baptism. And Jesus provides us with shelter (his Holy Church) and food (his Holy Supper) until he returns on the third day.

Turns out, Jesus is the Neighbor to us all. Jesus does not pass by anyone. The proof of his compassion is in his life of loving service and in his sacrificial death. On the cross, he paid all it cost to nurse us back to life. Jesus is risen from the dead and still having compassion on us. Jesus is also our new Lawyer. He is our Advocate with the Father (1 Jn 2:1).

When Jesus stands up to speak, it is not to test anyone, but to defend us, the guilty ones, with his blessed innocence. Jesus does not ask us what we've done to gain life. He tells us what he has done to give us all eternal life.

When all is asked and answered, said and done, Jesus has said everything we need to hear and done everything we need done to inherit eternal life:

Don't Try to Justify Yourself,

Because Jesus Already Has Welcomed You

as His Neighbor in the Kingdom.

Amen.