Trinity 13 The Sunday of the Good Samaritan August 26, 2018
Trinity 13 The Sunday of the Good Samaritan
Luke 10:23-37
August 26, 2018
“Like Our Good Neighbor”
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
TV has given all of us a little window into the world of policemen. The show COPS has been around forever. Now we’ve got Live PD. Whenever these policemen catch a criminal that’s clearly guilty, such as they’re intoxicated or they have drugs, a very common pattern emerges. Do the criminals simply and quietly admit their sins and walk over to the police car, calmly getting in the back seat? No. They go in with the excuses. The lies. The amazingly ridiculous stories. Often the police officer will say right away, “Just tell us the truth and we’ll do our best for you.” But it hardly ever matters. Those arrested will do everything they can to try to justify themselves. To give reasons why they’re not really guilty.
And that is the fatal flaw of the lawyer in the Gospel reading today. Jesus knows he’s a sinner. Jesus will make it right if this lawyer will let Him. But no. The lawyer wants to justify himself. He wants to give excuses. He wants to make a case for himself.
Here’s how it starts. The lawyer asks Jesus, “What can I do to get heaven?” Jesus replies with another question, “What does the Law say?” The lawyer answers, “Love God. Love your neighbor.” Jesus says, “Good. Do that.” And then comes this key verse we’ll hone in on today. Verse 29. “But [the lawyer], desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor’”?
That word justify is at the heart and center of the whole Christian faith. It’s what we Lutherans call the center of all doctrine. Justification is the most important. The teaching that holds every other teaching together. Or, as our Formula of Concord says it, justification is the article on which the church stands or falls. In other words, if we get justification right then we stand firm. If we get it wrong, then the Church falls over.
Justification is how you are made just. How you’re made right. It’s how you’re saved. How you get to heaven. It’s the reason that God accepts you.
So here’s the key distinction. You can try to justify yourself (as the lawyer does). Or God will justify you. Like in the cop shows. The criminals are guilty. They have two choices. Let the cops do the justice. OR they can try to justify themselves by offering up a hundred thousand excuses and lies.
So you and I have two choices. We are guilty. We are sinners. We haven’t loved God. Haven’t been a good neighbor to everyone. So we can try to justify ourselves. We can offer excuses. We can lie about what we’ve done. We can try to hide it. We can make empty promises about how we’re going to change from now on and make up for it. We can blame others. We can blame God.
OR we can be justified by God. We can calmly take our seat in the back of the police car while God, the judge of heaven and earth, makes it all go away. While He lets His Son Jesus Christ be arrested for us, go to jail for us, suffer the death penalty for us, and rise from the dead for us. He covers up all our crimes with the blood of His Son Jesus. He washes us clean in Holy Baptism and opens the door to set us free to live a new and better life in the Holy Spirit.
Those are the two ways of justification. The two ways of making things right and just. The two ways of making peace for us. The two ways of getting eternal life. Either you try to justify yourself. Or God justifies you in Jesus.
So Jesus tells a story to help you and I get this right. He tells a story about us lying half dead on the side of the road after being robbed and stripped and beaten. Maybe that isn’t the way you’ve always heard this story. Maybe you’ve thought this story was about how we’re the Good Samaritan. That’s a nice quaint thought. But stop trying to justify yourself. You’re not the good Samaritan. Neither am I. The whole point to the lawyer is that he has NOT been the good Samaritan. He has NOT been the good neighbor. There’s only one Good Neighbor. One Good Samaritan. And that’s Jesus.
We, on the other hand, are the half-dead man on the side of the road. We’ve been attacked by sin, death, and the devil and we’re hurting. We’ve been robbed of our pride. We’ve been stripped of all our self-righteousness and we’re lying naked in our guilt and shame.
The priest and the Levite are no help to us. They would stop and talk to us if we weren’t so obviously helpless. If we were doing just fine, then the priest and Levite would stop to talk to us about how we can justify ourselves with their laws and purity. But we’re too far gone. That’s a joke now. We can’t justify ourselves. We can’t make ourselves right. We can’t solve our problems of guilt and shame.
But there is One who can help you and me. He’s the Good Neighbor. The One who truly and fully loves you and me as He loves Himself. He comes to you and says, “Don’t worry about a thing, I’m going to make this all right. I’m going to make you right. I’m going to heal you and take care of you and justify you.” And you and I, we don’t try to give excuses. We don’t try to make up stories about how we got into that ditch. We believe in this Good Neighbor. We trust Him. And we let Him pick us up and carry us to the place of healing and refuge.
Like a Good Neighbor. In the State Farm commercials, whenever someone’s in need, they sing the jingle and, poof, the insurance agent miraculously appears. And, pray tell, how will the super State Farm agent solve the problem? With money. Insurance money. The money you’ve been paying to them for the last 20 years.
Now that’s fine for advertising. But the true Good Neighbor, Jesus, doesn’t fix your problems with insurance money. He’s not an insurance plan for when you can’t handle your own problems or justify yourself. He comes to fix you and your problems of sin by taking your place. By getting into the back seat of that police car with you and saying, “I’m the guilty one. I’ll pay His price.”
He takes you to the inn, to His Church, to Holy Baptism, to the Lord’s Supper, and He says, “I’ll pay whatever they owe.” You don’t have to sing a jingle for Jesus to come. He’s already with you. You are baptized into Christ. Just like little Jonah this morning. You all live with Christ. And He is your Good Neighbor who justifies you and makes you right all the time.
Just consider some of the sins you are guilty of. Pride? Love of money? Telling lies? Hatred? Lust? Adultery? Pornography? Gambling? Jesus comes and says, “No, I did those. I’ll take her place. I’ll pay what she owes. What he owes. I’ll make him or her right.” And He does. He justifies you. He makes you right and just. So that you don’t have to try and justify yourself. And give your excuses and your empty promises. Jesus will take care of everything.
And like our Good Neighbor, we are to love others as Jesus has loved us. And that means that our love doesn’t need any justification. We don’t love our neighbor because somehow they deserve it. We go and be a good neighbor to anyone who’s in need. The answer to the lawyers question, “And who is my neighbor?”—the answer is Jesus. Jesus is our neighbor. But because He’s our neighbor, we can be a neighbor to others. Love as we’ve been loved. In Jesus’ name. Amen.