The Good Samaritan

We Lawyers Are Good For Something
by Raymond A. Foss, Esq.
July 15, 2007
Wesley United Methodist Church, Concord, NH
Luke 10:25-37

I guess it is type-casting, or that is how Byron called it when I reminded him that I needed to do the sermon on the story of the Good Samaritan. After all, it started with an attorney… Again.

It began in Disciple I, with Pastor Joel presiding. He said he had never spent that much time in the Old Testament with an attorney. We would have discussions on the meaning of the law, how our current law flows from the Old Testament laws, rules, etc. A lawyer was of good station, as they were experts in Mosaic law and the law of Moses was central to a people governed by a theocracy for much of its history.

When we got into the New Testament, the role of the law and the role of lawyers got a little different, [Pause] and Jesus had a few things to say about it.

In Matthew 22, we read: the story of The Greatest Commandment

“34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"
37 Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

Okay, so Jesus is using the lawyer to teach. I can handle that.

Further on in Luke, Luke 11:46-52, he does get a little in the face of attorneys.

46 Jesus replied, "And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.

And in verse 52, the Lord said,

52 "Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering."

Okay, so that was a little harsh; but I think today’s reading shows how lawyers can be useful, in the spreading of the Gospel, at least in the good hands of the Shepherd.

The Good Samaritan

Unlike Matthew, which is a simple statement on the greatest commandment, Luke does it a different way, with the story of the Good Samaritan; but the agent of the questioning is an expert in the law, an Attorney, again.

Last fall, I wrote this poem, A Lawyerly Question, after reading of the story of the Good Samaritan, which may be part of why he asked the questions he did.

A Lawyerly Question

It always seems, wherever I turn
we are the bad guys, the ones in the way
the ones asking Him questions, pressing for
the new law, testing the assertions,
learning the edges, the words,
“Who is our neighbor”, a logical question
Hardly worth casting aspersions over.
It was just the definition of the term of art,
the nuanced word thrown by Him into the mix
a new test of faith, of living the law of Moses,
of living the good life, the life well blessed
earning passage from Sheol, beyond the grave
the end of their days. It wasn’t a test so much
as a questioning for knowledge, learning what
He meant by the two commandments, replacing
the older ten and the laws, regulations, rules
for life, layer on layer, parsed and teased,
as they are still. Rabbinical interpretation,
the lawyers, the scribes, just doing their best
to live the life of a religious man
asking to know, the bargain, the balance,
the other side of the equation
words to live by, words of power

And today in the lectionary again, we have that story of the Good outcast, that helpful pariah once again teaching us about what Jesus meant, to live the synthesized commandment, the boiling down of all those commandments, codes, laws, regulations, rules, etc. We need to be a good neighbor.

You see, that lawyer was doing what we do. He was peeling the onion, layer by layer, to understand the meaning of the law, this new commandment. There is always more than meets the eye with the law, because the plain meaning of the words on the page are the starting point; but they are hardly ever all that there is to know.

Luke 10:27 is the heart of the Jewish faith, the foundation of the law, for it combines Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, quoted with assurance by the expert in the law.

27 He answered, " '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, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

The next part of the scripture, the parable itself, raises questions on the understanding of the religious leaders, the people of Israel, on the true meaning of these words of faith, for Jesus responds,

28 "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."

In Jesus’ first answer, we are given but the starting point. Sure, it sounds all well and good; but that isn’t how the law works. We all know who our neighbor is, right?

Where does the neighborhood end? Would your answer be different if we lived in the age when people walked? What about some streets? Do you go to them? Are the people who live there really your neighbors?

This lawyer had been tested. He knew the score. He needed to know more, where those fine lines were to be drawn. So, he asked the follow up question, that next line of questioning, as any good interrogator would.

He knew the story of Job, that righteous man so tested by the Devil, at the Creator’s acquiescence. He knew of the challenges to follow every law. He knew of the Messiah, the fulfillment. So, he asks:

29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

Jesus, here in Luke isn’t quite as clear and in your face as he is in John. No, he isn’t quite as direct. He speaks in Parables in the synaptic gospels, in Matthew, Mark, Luke. So, we get a lesson, a story, maybe so we can understand it. Maybe so we can ponder it over time, so its truths can speak to us as they can whenever we pick up the text, at whatever place we are at in our life’s journey.

There is real meaning, depth of discovery in the choices Jesus makes in telling the tale. He could have had three ordinary Jews as the actors, He could have had two leaders and a Jewish man; but he adds a Samaritan, an enemy, to the parable, to give it universal meaning.

A Jew was on the road and he hurt.

A Priest went by and didn’t help.

A Levite went by and didn’t help.

These were countrymen. These were leaders of the Temple, of the theocracy, the people set apart to serve the Chosen People. But they couldn’t stop, crossed to the other side, away from the sick, beaten, injured Jew.

No, it was the outcast, the foreigner, the Samaritan, a member of a people who hated the Jews, who came to his aid. Their holy mountain was not in Zion; their beliefs were much like those of the Jews, the believed in the Torah, the Pentateuch; but they were like the Shiites to the Jews being like the Sunnis. Enemies, brothers, these are the source of the worst kind of fighting.

And this Samaritan didn’t just aid him on the road, send this piteous Jew onto his feet and send him on his way, no this person from below the Jewish caste system had mercy for this injured enemy, took him to an inn and paid for his stay.

At the end of the lesson came the test. The Savior asked the lawyer the pivotal question, that would change the paradigm of who your neighbor is. He asked

36 "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

37 The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."
Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

Ah, now we are given the orders of the Savior, the servant-king, the man who would walk those steps to the cross. It is not the actor on the ground, we are not looking at the injured man as our neighbor, whether he is one of us or not. No, we are to understand that even an enemy in need must be comforted. The test of who the neighbor is is within us.

We are to be the good neighbor, not by station, not by earning, not by piling offerings, not by birthright. By being a neighbor, to whoever needs our help. It isn’t the neighbor that defines who your neighbor is, it is your action in the face of need of anyone. Everyone is your neighbor, if you are to live the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself.

I wrote this poem, Parsing the Parable, on Friday morning, July 6, 2007.

Parsing the Parable

“And who is our neighbor?”,
a lawyer asked so long ago,
testing the Teacher,
to know the meaning of the
law, the actors in the words.
Needing the definition section
of the law, to understand the limits,
the bounds, of the command,
the scope of the edict,
“to love our neighbors as ourselves”.

An answer in a parable,
itself needing context,
interpretation, to understand
the ancient law, and
the changed message,
the Good News.
A broadening of the
bounds, the limits,
who is our neighbor
How we act, not who we are,
that defines the term,
and that makes all the difference.

Transition / Conclusion

We have touched on this lesson of reversal, of inclusion, in the sermons of the pastors here in church recently. I would highlight but two of them.

Acts 11:1-18

The first is the story of Peter’s vision on the foods he could eat. We visited that scripture in May. How telling is that scripture, because again it is the changing of the rules, who we are to associate with. The Jewish believers were complaining because the Gentiles were being saved.

Who is clean and unclean; who is our neighbor? It starts with the Levitical dietary rules; but it is so much more than that. Who a Jew could dine with was another measure of who was there neighbor. Again, through Peter’s Vision, we are told that the ancient law has changed. “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” All of us have been made clean by the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ. All are our neighbors.

Galatians 5:1 & 13-25

I think another way to think about all of this is to think about the lessons Pastor Lori helped us learn two weeks ago, in her sermon, “The Pursuit of Freedom: License of Liberty”, that she shared with the congregation on July 1.

The whole passage is boiled down in verses 13 and 14 – “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters;* only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence,* but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’”

We are to use the freedom that we earned through Christ’s saving grace to become our neighbor’s keeper, and not just our good neighbor next door.

We are to be the good neighbor around the world, far and near, black or white, young or old, Jew and Gentile, until none of those distinctions mean anything at all. To be the good neighbor that Jesus is calling that single attorney to be, is to be as my poem is entitled (using Paul’s letter to the Galatians, “Slaves to One Another”).

Slaves to One Another

Agape love, that is what Paul
calls us to exhibit, to live
to fall as servants, to meet
the needs of our neighbors.
as we would love ourselves,
so must we be to them,
if we all did so, what,
oh what would be
the state of this troubled world.
If we used our freedom,
given by the Creator, by the Savior
to reject our own desires,
and became slaves to one another.

It is our enemy who we must see as our neighbor, to truly understand the love for those in need that Jesus was talking of. He wasn’t talking about a simple love, of our neighbor next door, down the street, in our circle. We were taught to love our enemy in need just as our friends, just as ourselves. This made me think again of the choice our country made to use torture. We too see ourselves as a country set apart. As Ronald Reagan said so many times, we are that shining city on the hill. That is part of why we got out of the malaise of the late 1970’s, seeing us that way. That is all the more troubling that we have chosen to use torture. I wrote the following poem about that.

We Have Become What we Abhor

Murderous madmen, willing
to abuse, to torture,
to inflict pain, indiscriminate
heartless, oft calculated
Unlike us, held up for ridicule,
sanction, censure, until now

We have changed, because of our hurt,
our anger, our loss,
become what we abhor;
become the madmen
committing atrocities
become that which we hate

To follow the example of Jesus Christ, we must love our enemies. They are our neighbors too. We must love them, even when they are hurting us, just as he said while he was on the cross, “forgive them, for they know not what they do.” So must we; we must do likewise, and live.

Ending

So, maybe, just maybe, by asking that winning question, to try to earn his way into heaven, to avoid eternity going down to Sheol (as I wrote of in the first of the poems), that lawyer in Luke really did serve a purpose, because he didn’t just ask one question, he asked two, and Jesus spoke to all of us through him in answering them both. The single commandment to love our neighbors becomes the Great Commission, to create unity throughout the world, to be good neighbors to all. To truly love all and to help all in need.

AMEN.

All of my poems are copyrighted by Raymond A. Foss, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015. All rights reserved. Contact me at Ray Foss for usage. See all 35,240+ of my poems at www.raymondafoss.blogspot.com Poetry Where You Live.