May 10, 2009 Sermon

The Good Samaritan
Luke 10:25-37

I crested a hill and saw an odd sight. Half a mile ahead an SUV was turned sideways, motionless and straddling the center line. I hit the brakes. As I neared, it began slowly to back off the road. It inexorably backed toward the steep bank and a cherry orchard maybe ten feet below the grade. Its back end started over. The front end lifted up like a ship sinking and down it slipped. I skidded to a stop on the shoulder and jumped out. By the time I had scrambled down the embankment the SUV had miraculously backed through the entire orchard—without hitting the trunk of a single tree—and come to rest. I ran up to the driver's door and opened it.

The driver was passed out, drunk from the smell of him and unhurt. I knew him and I disliked him. He had been on sports teams with my son. The young man was mean, a gifted athlete but lazy and destructive of the team. No matter how positively supporters cheered him on, his only response was an arrogant sneer. Their coach, a friend who occasionally confided things to me, suspected the young man abused alcohol and possibly other drugs. He was a bad example for younger teammates and the coach could not wait for him to graduate.

Now here he sat, unconscious behind the wheel of a vehicle at the bottom of a cherry orchard. I shook him and called his name. He opened his eyes. In a deeply slurred voice he asked, “Where is this?” I told him what I had seen. His only response was to close his eyes again and appear to drift back to sleep.

I found myself in a dilemma. I was on my way to the summer early service at the lake and I had only a couple of minutes before it was supposed to start. I used my cell phone to try calling our music director, who would be at the park with her guitar, waiting to help lead it, but she did not answer. I called 911. After the dispatcher assured me an ambulance would arrive within a few minutes she asked me to stay. I said I would. I did not. I left almost immediately. I told myself I had a job to do for God. But the truth was far uglier: I did not care enough for the young man in the truck to stay and make sure he did not wake up and try to drive away.

When I read the parable of the Good Samaritan and ponder what I did in that situation, I realize how profoundly my salvation depends on the grace of God. The message of this parable is quite clear. A lawyer approached Jesus and asked what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus asked what he thought. The lawyer gave Jesus the approved Old Testament answer: love the Lord with all your being and love your neighbor. Jesus gave him a gold star. But the lawyer made a tactical blunder. He asked Jesus who his neighbor might be. Surely (he might have thought) those who break God's laws do not qualify as our neighbors. Surely unlikable young men who have given our sons a hard time do not qualify as our neighbors.

Yes, they do. Jesus made it plain. He told the parable of the Good Samaritan. He chose the most objectionable hero possible for a Jewish audience. For us, the parallel parable might be the Good Black Man from Detroit. Think of the group of people you most fear, most dislike, trust the least. Those are the neighbors we must serve. Those are the people we must stop to help even as we pass along the busiest highways of our lives. Those are the people we must help by paying their needs from our own pockets. Those are the people we must touch. Those are the people, as Jesus and the lawyer defined their terms, we must love.

We need to insert a caution at this point. The lawyer asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. This almost sounds like he asked how to earn salvation. But the Bible calls that idea “works righteousness” and labels it as impossible. We cannot earn eternal life. The lawyer interrogating Jesus wanted to “justify” himself. He wanted to make sure he was square with God, that if he did x, y and z (and no more) God would reward him, as though they had a contract (a most lawyerly attitude). As it happens, we do have a contract with God. God has given us this covenant. Here are its terms: in Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. In Jesus Christ I am forgiven for having left that drunken young man sitting passed out behind the wheel. But what did Jesus mean with this parable of the Good Samaritan?

Martin Luther pointed out that the parable of the Good Samaritan demonstrates how impossible it is for us, on our own, to satisfy God. Not one of us is righteous, or perfect. Luther admitted he had decided that since he could not stop sinning, he would at least sin boldly. The Apostle Paul called himself “chief among all sinners”. We do not earn God's love, we return it. We help our neighbors not in order to enter eternal life but to thank God that we already possess it when we confess our sins and believe in Jesus. The lawyer asked what he had to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus told him a parable that illustrated how impossible it is for us to earn this inheritance.

Yet the parable of the Good Samaritan also serves to inspire us to love our neighbors with the love of Christ. We cannot earn eternal life, yet we can receive it as a gift from a loving God. Now go out and love God by loving your neighbor. Even your worst neighbor. Open your heart as Jesus opened his for us. Touch that neighbor. Pay his or her needs. We live in a society made great in part by insisting on personal responsibility. But sometimes our neighbors genuinely need help. Sometimes we do, too. Do not rationalize. Do not tell yourself it is more helpful for our neighbors always to help themselves. Do not tell yourself you can drive away from the drunken young man behind the wheel.

Here at Northern Lakes Church we have not yet become all that God calls us to be when it comes to helping our neighbors. We have gotten involved in the Safe Harbor ministry. This housing of the homeless during winter perfectly fits the call of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Safe Harbor puts the helper (in this case, us) in uncomfortable proximity with the helpee (in this case often an abuser of alcohol or other drugs and almost always a person who does not smell daisy fresh). Good for us—and good for the people we have helped through Safe Harbor. Our youth group has done hard labor for one week each summer helping people who often do not seem like our neighbors—at least not until we really think about it.

But we have not entered into sustained, serious helping of neighbors. Let us change that immediately. Gene Adams has spoken of starting a food pantry in our new basement for our own members and friends. Let's do that—and let's support the Interlochen Food Bank more generously. This is one of the first ministries we became involved in back in 1998. But it seems to me we have gotten a bit bored with it. Let's change that. How else might NLCC help its neighbors? How else might we as individuals? Pray about that. Take action. These are tough times. Let's see what we can do to bring the love of Christ to light and to life for people around us—especially those whom we have struggled to accept. Jesus did no less for us.