We all know the story of the Good Samaritan. The moral of the story is that we too should be like him. We too should be a good neighbor to those people who need a neighbor. If we ask "who is my neighbor," the answer is, "the person who needs a neighbor is your neighbor."
Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan. Let's look at the characters in this story and see what they might be in today's society. First there is the unlucky guy who was attacked by robbers on the road to Jericho. Today he might have been attacked in a parking lot by thugs. He may be a taxi driver attacked by a customer. Modern robbers use different methods to steal our money. The robbers could have hacked his computer or stolen his credit card number and run up horrible debts. He could have been laid off his job and now might be homeless and lying by the side of the road waiting to die. The victim might be a child, a teen, or a mother. It might be someone worried or someone abused. The victim might even be yourself. We might not be beaten and robbed, but we might be sick and worried and feel helpless. Maybe there is no one who will help you. Maybe you do not even have any neighbors at all, much less the people who just pass your by and refuse to help you. You might be the person who needs a helpful neighbor, a Good Samaritan. And while you are waiting helpless by the roadside, what shall we do? We should pray. That is what David did in Psalm 121.
I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and for evermore.
Because there is no one to help us, we pray that God will be the Good Neighbor to help us in our time of need. We pray that Jesus will be our Good Samaritan and help us.
In the story there are the Priest and the Levite. These are the religious people. They are the ones who should know who their neighbor is and who should stop and love their neighbor in his time of need. Who are they today? First, they are the religious people, the pastors and all lay believers in the church. They are us. We too have passed up opportunities to help where we should have. Oh, we give excuses. "I am too busy to help." "I do not know what to do." "I do not have enough money." "He should get a job." "Someone should call an ambulance. Someone else should call the police." Some of that might be true. But this is a parable, and no matter what the excuses might be, it accuses us of not stopping to help those in need. These are the so-called "sins of omission." Or as the confession of sins says, "We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves."
And who are the modern day robbers? They are the cold-hearted people who use you and abuse you. They are thugs, terrorist, greedy employers, false friends, betrayers, liars, etc. They are the ones who lead us astray and leave us in the ditch. Whenever we hurt someone and then abandon them, that is us.
How often are we really a Good Samaritan? In the parable, he helped a person without considering their status or worthiness. It was a complete stranger, not the same nationality, not the same religion, just someone who needed help. Christian charities do not work in order to convert people to Christianity. If people do convert, then praise the Lord. But charity is done because some human being needs charity. Some Child of God needs help. So for example, when the Lutheran World Relief Agency gives aid to tsunami victims in Indonesia, where most people are not Christian, it puts no religious strings on the aid. And neither should we. In the Gospel lesson, Jesus tells us the same as he told the lawyer, "You go, and do likewise." Before we consider the enormity of those words, there is one more character to look at.
The last character is the innkeeper. He is the one who supports the work of the Good Samaritan. It is a very important role. We might feel more comfortable with this role. We give to charity, we pray for the work that others do, and we help them. The innkeeper might also be the church which takes care of those who have been saved by Christ the Good Samaritan. Maybe another character in this story is the donkey, a supporting role, but very important.
The trouble with the story of the Good Samaritan is that it ends with a challenge. "You go, and do likewise." The lawyer had come to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" The question is bad, and Jesus tries to show him how bad it is. He asked "Teacher, what shall I 'do' to inherit eternal life?" The thing is, he can do nothing to inherit eternal life. God does everything. Jesus does everything. The Holy Spirit does everything. Keeping the law is not the way to inherit eternal life because it is the free gift of God without our work. The lawyer asked what he should do, so to correct him, Jesus asked him what the law says to do. The law says to love God and to love the neighbor. But the man does not want to love every neighbor. He hears the parable and discovers that loving every neighbor fully is something that he could never do. It is something that none of us can ever do.
The bad question is "what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" The proper question is "what has Christ done for me so that I might have eternal life. The answer is that Christ is the Real Good Samaritan. He has found us when we desperately need him. We have become his neighbor. He has loved us. He has washed our sinful wounds with the water of baptism and the wine of His Holy Supper. He has anointed us with the soothing oil of the Holy Spirit and faith. He has carried our burdens to the cross and forgave them. The words spoken to the innkeeper are a promise to us. 'Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.' Jesus is coming back and will pay, that is also a promise that we will not be over burdened when we are acting like the Great Good Samaritan. Jesus is coming back, and that will be the time when he will give us the "inheritance of eternal life."
Amen.