The New Samaritan

15 July 2013 | 8th Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 10:25-37 | The Good Samaritan

…Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:25-37)

Tonight I’d like to talk with you about a New Samaritan. There’s a Good Samaritan, and we’re all well-acquainted with him. But we act as if this story of Jesus were about redefining Goodness – giving a new kind of religious law – and I think we are kind of missing the point. The main point, I would suggest, is not that the Samaritan is good because he helps this person whom he doesn’t know; or even that the person who extends the concept of neighbor to a stranger in another locale isn’t a Jew, much less a Christian; nor is the point even that God cares a lot more about good behavior in the world than about religious systems.

It is certainly about all of these things, – but what’s really important is this: The New Samaritan story is about HOW, more than it is about WHAT. That is, – what is different about the Samaritan is his How-to-live: his fluidity, his full readiness, his full intention, his full availability to the life that God sets before him.

Jesus isn’t wasting his time here making one small point about who should be considered a neighbor and how you should treat him, no matter how instructive that might be. And we shouldn’t waste our time tonight either. Life is short. It was short for Jesus. And it was short for the lawyer who was talking to him.

What we are looking for while we are breathing here is to do the best we can to explore and affirm the life God offers us, and brings us into – both for now and for the future. How can we get on the right track? Jesus responds to our request, inviting us into real life now and forever. He doesn’t give just a little teaching. He opens the big door, never to close it. He tells the story of the New Samaritan.

The New Samaritan is some one who is justified, someone who is living the timeless life, someone who is vulnerable to reality – in short, someone who lives with the kind of informed immediacy which is the tasty filling of the message Jesus wraps with Gospel candy.

The New Samaritan is justified;
He is living the timeless life;
He is vulnerable to reality;
He is living a life of informed immediacy.

How do you get to be this person?

1. The New Samaritan is justified.

The story, as you recall, begins with a lawyer asking Jesus how he can inherit eternal life. Jesus asks him if he knows the Torah, and he gives the summary which Jesus uses – love God and neighbor. But then, Luke says, the lawyer wants to “justify himself” — he asks “who is my neighbor?” The story is Jesus’ answer.

That word “justify” is a wild word in the New Testament. It is changing meaning even as it is spoken. You can hear it the old way, or you can hear it the new way. The old way is the way which Judaism taught, and which Christianity too often teaches. To be justified is to be judged right, or virtuous. To justify yourself is to judge yourself to be good and right.

But as you read Paul, and especially as you read Jesus, the light may begin to dawn that we are talking about another, more powerful and authentic sense of this word. It’s the one that appears in English when we talk about “justifying” a line of type in a book by getting the margins straight.

To be justified is not about getting an evaluation of your past deeds. It is primarily about getting in the groove, getting on the right track, getting things straight, beginning again, seeing clearly. I think if we listen carefully to this story of the New Samaritan, we’ll see that this kind of justification is a lot closer to what Jesus is seeking and preaching than the other.

Put bluntly, although the Samaritan, the priest, and the Levite are all on the same road, only the New Samaritan is on the right track. The others are missing it badly.

I don’t know if the lawyer was checking out his heavenly report card — trying to see if he had behaved properly and was all right with God. Maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe he was really yearning for what Jesus was offering. Jesus heard the man asking how to get on the right track. Maybe he really did want to live life; and instead of giving him just one more old, dead, calculated answer Jesus told a story to open his eyes.

In Jesus’ story the New Samaritan is on the right track, showing us what it really means to be justified.

2. The New Samaritan is leading the timeless life.

That’s the lawyer’s question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” It’s a strange question. What is “eternal life” in the lawyer’s question. Is it life that goes on forever? If so, is it an inherited gift for which some set of actions must nonetheless be performed?

The Hebrew scriptures don’t talk about life after death, although we know that the topic was a hot one among people in Jerusalem when Jesus was alive. But Jesus’ New Samaritan story really doesn’t help much if you are trying to figure out what you have to do to finally collect the inheritance. It’s one thing to have a clearly defined Law. It’s quite another to be able to have someone suddenly require an extra credit activity, picking up someone in a ditch, any day any time. How can you ever get the right total?

But eternal life is one of those concepts that seems in the New Testament to be changing under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit too. It’s not an after death reward, a place in the final kingdom, simply. In Jesus’ teaching there is continuity between this life and the next, and almost total invisibility so far as the afterlife is concerned. “We do not know where you are going” Jesus’ disciples say when he is leaving them.

The opportunity, Jesus says, is to lay hold on eternal life here and now. And here’s the paradox, as presented in the story of the New Samaritan. Timeless life is found by being completely present in time. The New Samaritan is right there that evening in that situation, fully present and acting in it to do good and right and bring about the kingdom of heaven on the Jericho Road

Eternal life is recognized by its quality, its specificity, and its timeliness, and it is a pathway which is available every day to a New Samaritan.

The New Samaritan is justified;

He is living the timeless life;

3. He is vulnerable to reality

That evening on the Jericho Road, the New Samaritan’s heart went out to the man he saw in the ditch. In a way, it was an involuntary thing – but he then acted on it. The familiar translation says that the Samaritan saw the man and “was moved with pity.” The Greek word is a strong one, saying that the whole body and stomach feel compassion. It’s the same word used of Jesus just before the feeding of the 5000, — Jesus saw the people clambering after him on the hills and he “had compassion for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd.”

The point here is that the New Samaritan was involuntarily affected by the situation of the man. He felt the shock; but he did not deny his feelings, he acted on them. It was not in his work program for the day. He had not gone along the road looking for trouble. He was pretty severely inconvenienced by what happened. And none of it was planned.

This New Samaritan was ready and alert. He was vulnerable to reality. And he responded with his whole heart.

The New Samaritan is justified;

He is living the timeless life;

He is vulnerable to reality.

4. He is living a life of informed immediacy.

No one should fail to notice how alert the New Samaritan’s response was to the man on the road. He used all of his resources. He made sensible decisions. He worked with others whom he knew, or was able to enlist. There was no half-stepping. This was a thorough-going, thoughtful, intentional man working to remedy a miserable situation.

If this were Richmond in 2013, the New Samaritan would be working now, along with the man he rescued, to get the city and counties to make a public transportation system day and night on the Jericho Road. He is living a life of informed immediacy.

Jesus represents this as an answer to the lawyer’s question – inheriting eternal life, being justified. The New Samaritan is alive. That’s the goal he holds up.

How do you get to be this New Samaritan? Never fully. By mistakes. By accepting forgiveness. Through prayer. Getting on the right track. Deciding what is important. Accepting love, being loved, finding hope, listening to Gospel, learning to love.

This life is not simply of our own creation. We cannot guarantee our own feelings, our own penitence, our own sensitivity, our own presence. But we can, like the New Samaritan, aspire to it.

Justified. Living the timeless life. Vulnerable to reality. A life of informed immediacy. The New Samaritan.

AMEN.

The Rev. B. P. Campbell
Richmond Hill