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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Generally I am somewhat reluctant to joke about religious and other similar very-serious matters, but you probably already have heard this “one”, and it helps make an important point. As the joke goes, someone was trying to decide what to do, randomly opened the Bible, and stuck a finger on the verse that says that Judas “went and hanged himself” (Matthew 27:5); not wanting to do that, the person tried again and landed on the last verse of today’s Gospel Reading, in which Jesus says, “You go, and do likewise.” Both are true statements from the Bible, but there obviously is a wrong way to read Holy Scripture and a right way to read Holy Scripture. Rightly considering today’s Gospel Reading, this morning we realize that “The Lord has compassion on us”.
In today’s Gospel Reading, an expert in the Old Testament law put Jesus to the test by asking essentially what one thing the man had to do in order to inherit eternal life. Jesus asked the man what was written in the law, how he read it, and the man answered with the need both to love God, the summary of the First through Third Commandments, seemingly quoted from Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 6:5), and the need to love one’s neighbor, the summary of the Fourth through Tenth Commandments (Leviticus 19:18), seemingly quoted from today’s Old Testament Reading (Leviticus 18:1-5; 19:9-18). Jesus told the man that he had answered correctly, and Jesus commanded the man to do that—to love God and neighbor—continuously or repeatedly in order to live eternally. But the man, perhaps thinking that he had done or was doing all that he needed to do (or maybe in order to make it more do‑able), asked Jesus just who his neighbor was, and Jesus replied with what is often called “the Parable of the Good Samaritan”, though we note well that the Divinely‑inspired St. Luke does not explicitly call it a “parable”. Yet, regardless of whether it is a “true report” or a “realistic illustration”, Jesus seemingly uses the account to shift the focus from a neighbor as an abstract concept to a neighbor as a person who helps one in need, even a hated enemy.
The man in the Gospel Reading certainly needed to shift his focus from his loving his neighbor as something he could do in order to receive eternal life to his neighbor as God’s helping him in his need by giving him eternal life. And, the man recognized that the Samaritan, by showing mercy, was a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers, but the Divinely‑inspired St. Luke does not tell us whether the man ever recognized that he himself had not, was not, and could not ever always perfectly either love the Lord His God with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength and with all his mind or love his neighbor as himself. That open-endedness of the inspired account can prompt us to ask whether we like the man in the Gospel Reading try to justify ourselves or whether we let God justify us. We may think that we have done, or are doing, or can do all that we need to do to receive eternal life. We may try to make what we need to do more do‑able by re-defining or otherwise lessening God’s absolute Commandments. We may make what we think are acceptable excuses for our failing to do what we need to do, as some people sometimes try to make what they think are acceptable excuses for the priest and the Levite in the Gospel Reading, who, even if they had schedules that they had to keep or if they had to preserve their cultic purity in order to fulfill their religious callings, still at least could have arranged help for the man who they left half dead. At times, we may fool the people around us, and we even may fool ourselves, but God knows our hearts (Luke 16:15). As with Jesus and the man in the Gospel Reading, the Lord knows whether or not we are sorry for our sins, trust Him to forgive us, and want to do better. When, enabled by God, we do so repent, then God delivers us from the eternal death that we deserve on account of our sinful nature and all our actual sins and instead gives us eternal life for Jesus’s sake. In short, “The Lord has compassion on us”.
When we are not trying to receive eternal life by anything that we do, then the account of the compassionate (or, “merciful”) Samaritan illustrates well what God has done for us in order to give us eternal life in His and the Virgin Mary’s Son, Jesus Christ. More than a teacher as the man in the Gospel Reading called Him, Jesus is the Lord, God in human flesh. The right question to Him is not, as the man in the Gospel Reading asked, about our actively saving ourselves, but the right question is about our passively being saved by God (Acts 16:30‑31; confer 2:37-39). By nature we are spiritually completely dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1, 5), and, as the Jews treated the Samaritans, we are enemies of God (Romans 5:10). Yet, when He sees us, Jesus does not pass by on the other side, but He comes to where we are, and He has compassion, the kind of gut-wrenching mercy that the Bible only says God has. God’s compassion and mercy, His steadfast love, sent Jesus to the cross bearing our sins and the sins of the whole world, to die for us, in our place. Even as Jesus died, He loved His enemies and prayed for those who persecuted Him (Matthew 5:43-44; Luke 6:27, 35; 23:34). As we heard in the Epistle Reading (Colossians 1:1-14), in Him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. We are forgiven by grace for the sake of Christ, Who is a neighbor to us; we are forgiven through faith, and even that faith is not our doing but a work of God (John 6:29) and so His free gift to us (Ephesians 2:8).
In the Gospel Reading, the Samaritan had compassion on the man who fell among the robbers and bound up the man’s wounds and poured on oil and wine. Similarly, the Lord has compassion on us and releases our sins through means. The oil in today’s Gospel Reading may remind us of Holy Baptism, water and the Word that works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe the words and promises of God about Holy Baptism. At the Font, God makes us His children and heirs. The wine in today’s Gospel Reading may remind us of the Sacrament of the Altar, where bread is the Body of Christ given for us and wine is the Blood of Christ shed for us and so give us forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. At this Altar and its Rail, Christ incorporates us into His “testament” by which we inherit all of His blessings.
In the broader context of the book of Leviticus, today’s Old Testament Reading notably comes after the book’s treatment of the Day of Atonement, what God does through His appointed means in order to make His people holy (Penhallegon, CPR 32:3, p.22), which order is said to make clear that God’s transforming us by forgiving us through His Word and Sacraments leads to our doing such things as loving both God and our neighbor. We are made alive and so are completely devoted to God and so also to our neighbor, from the closest neighbors in our families to the most-distant neighbor on the other side of the world, even an enemy, like the Russians to the Ukranians, or someone in a polarized opposing political party. Christ opens our eyes to see and leads us to live our lives in service to our neighbors in need all around (Penhallegon, CPR 32:3, p.5). As we are in Christ, we love God and our neighbor as we should (Scaer, CLD VIII:54, 76), and, where we fail to be in Christ and love God and our neighbor as we should, then, with daily contrition and repentance, we live each day in God’s forgiveness of sins and so in His peace and joy.
It’s no joke: a right reading of today’s Gospel Reading leads us to realize that “The Lord has compassion on us”. In today’s Psalm (Psalm 41; antiphon v.1), we appealed to the Lord for grace on account of our sin, and He answers us and heals us with His forgiveness. As we sang in the Psalm, so we say again: Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting! Amen and Amen.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +