Several years ago I was asked to present a seminar dealing with the How-To’s of youth ministry to the summer missionaries who were assigned to serve in Maryland and Delaware. Now, summer missionaries are college students from across the U.S. who give up their summer break to do ministry of all kinds. They work at inner city mission sites like the Canton Center in Baltimore. They help churches like Ocean City Baptist Church with resort ministry. They do religious canvassing to help with new church starts. And many of them end up as youth ministers for the summer, working with small churches who can’t afford this staff position on a full time basis all year long. These college kids are almost always maturing Christians. They are exciting to be around because they take their faith very seriously.
Each summer missionary attends a week long retreat at the beginning of the summer to help them get ready for their various ministry assignments and like I said, my job was to be a part of this training retreat…conducting a 60-minute session to prepare them to work with teens.
Well, I want you to know I was thrilled to be asked to do this. To me it was a great honor and I looked forward to this as a wonderful opportunity. I knew these kids would be eager to learn what I had to teach and if you’ve ever taught then you know how thrilling it is to teach to pupils who actually want to learn what you have to say. I also should confess to the sin of pride for I felt sure that my future students would admire me as THE youth minister chosen from all other youth ministers to teach this seminar. So for weeks I worked hard to prepare for this coveted assignment.
I studied. I made handouts and overheads. I polished my presentation. And finally on the Saturday I was to teach I loaded my stuff in the car and headed north to SKYCROFT where the seminar was to take place. I left well-ahead of schedule and so when I approached the rest area on I-270 just south of Frederick, I decided to pull off and read through my presentation one final time. I found a parking place and rolled down the window for a little fresh air and set to work.
I had been studying about 15 minutes when a man walked up to the window and said, Nice day isn’t it? I gave him a curt but affirmative reply and looked back at my manuscript hoping he would walk away. I didn’t have time for this. But he continued…and said, What are you reading? I told him I was to speak to some college kids at a retreat center not far from there and that I was honing my presentation hoping he would take the hint. But He went on and said something like, I went to college for a while. I replied, Well that’s great. Gee, look at the time. I better be going. And I rolled the window up and drove off. As I did I noticed he had one of those Egyptian ankhs hanging from a chain around his neck. I remembered that I had just written an article in THE CHURCH MOUSE informing our teens here at Redland that these popular amulets were a cultic symbol that represented eternal life and at that moment I had one of those nudges from the Holy Spirit that told me I was leaving too soon.
This man had questions about eternal life — questions that I could have answered. But I shrugged the feeling off and told myself I didn’t have time for that man’s needs. After all there were college kids up on the mountain waiting for me.
Now, I have regretted that missed opportunity ever since. And maybe tucked away in your memory you too have experiences like this — times when you ignored someone’s obvious need — incidents in which you were not proud of your behavior as a disciple of Jesus Christ. This morning I want us to study a parable Jesus told that I think will help us deal with this issue. It contains principles that will aid us in our understanding of how Christians SHOULD respond to the needs of the people around us. Take your Bibles and turn to the 10th chapter of Luke’s gospel….and let’s read this familiar parable together. It is recorded in verses 25-37.
25 – On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. Teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
26 – What is written in the law? He replied. How do you read it?
27 – He answered, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
28 – You have answered correctly, Jesus replied. Do this and you will live.
29 – But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, And who is my neighbor?
30 – In reply Jesus said, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.
31 – A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.
32 – So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
33 – But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.
34 – He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him.
35 – The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
36 – Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?
37 – The expert in the law replied, The one who had mercy on him. Jesus told him, Go and do likewise.
Okay, let’s begin our study by taking a closer look at this story. Verse 25 says that the Lord’s interrogator that day was an expert in the law and this would of course refer to Jewish law and not Roman law. This man was a theologian not an attorney. And the QUESTION he asked that day was a great question but his MOTIVATION in asking it was not so great. His was not the inquiry of a SINCERE SEEKER but rather that of an ADVERSARY inspecting our Lord.
He didn’t want to find an answer to his question as much as he wanted to find fault with Jesus. And he wasn’t alone in this quest. No, he represented most of the current religious establishment who were troubled by the growing popularity of this unorthodox and unapproved Teacher. Now, look at his question. In verse 25 he asked, What must I DO to inherit eternal life? Luke records that Jesus didn’t quibble by pointing out the contradiction in this inquiry. I mean, you and I know that we can’t DO anything to inherit a gift and eternal life IS God’s gift. No, INHERITANCE is based on RELATIONSHIP not ACHIEVEMENT.
We should also note that Jesus didn’t answer his question. Instead He turned the mans’ question back on him by asking him what the law had to say on this issue. By using this tactic, the Lord reversed the roles here. The questioned became the questioner.
Well, this theologian provided a brilliant answer to Jesus’ question. First he quoted Deuteronomy 6:5 and said, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. And he combined this with Leviticus 19:18, where it says: Love your neighbor as yourself. This was a great answer. In fact it is the same answer Jesus had given His critics in Matthew 22 . This linking of these two O. T. verses is not found previously in the rabbinic tradition, so I think there is a good chance that the theologian may have been simply repeating what he had heard Jesus say.
Combining these two texts reminds us that genuine biblical faith isn’t ritual, but rather it is a heart relationship with God, that shapes every facet of life. Our relationship with God is inseparable from our relationships to the people in our lives. We can’t be in a love relationship with God and not act in love toward other people. I John 3:17 says, If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Love for people is an overflow of our love for God. So when we don’t have enough love for those around us in need….this is an indication of an even greater lack. Martin Luther once said, Faith alone justifies, yet faith is never alone. It is never without love; if love is lacking, neither is there faith, but mere hypocrisy.
Well, Jesus gave this theologian an A+ on his answer. In verse 28 He said, You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live. But Jesus’ response didn’t satisfy this man. He wanted the law to be cut down to manageable size. What he wanted was a list of RULES that people could keep. Instead Jesus described a RELATIONSHIP to God that shapes our lives.
Well, perhaps in the hopes of GETTING a list of rules, the man probed further and asked, Who is my neighbor? In other words he was saying, Do I have to love everyone? If there is a neighbor that I must love, is there also a non-neighbor I do not need to love? Where do I draw the line Jesus? This man thought he could put up fences limiting his neighborliness. And, his fellow rabbis had already spent a great deal of time exploring this very issue. Leviticus 19:18 uses the term neighbor as a synonym for brother or people and so many rabbis taught that one’s neighbor was really only a fellow Israelite. And most Jews followed suit.
They never considered that anyone could be a neighbor BUT another Jew. They thought of the 10 Commandments in this way: Thou shalt not steal (from a Jew); Thou shalt not kill (a Jew); Thou shalt not bear false witness (to a Jew). Part of the Sabbath law said that if a wall should fall on someone on the Sabbath, enough could be cleared away to see if the injured man was a Jew or Gentile. If he were a Jew, he could be rescued-if a Gentile…he must be left there to suffer. The Pharisees went so far as to exclude any non-Pharisees from their definition of neighbor. And in Matthew 5:43 when Jesus said, You have heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy… He was referring to the current philosophy that personal enemies-even other Jews-were also excluded from the circle of people I should think of as my neighbor. So this budding young theologian raised a familiar issue out of current debate. Perhaps he brought this up that day to show that he was upon all the current denominational issues.
And you know, its easy to be critical of this kind of attitude, but it is far more common even today than we care to admit. You and I are very good at limiting our neighborliness. We ride on crowded metro cars every day and never make eye-contact with the people around us. We can live next door to people and they are like strangers to us because we never involve ourselves in their lives. We never even make it our business to know about their needs. Like many of you I was shocked last year when the elderly woman was found murdered in a house right across the street from our missionary furlough home. I didn’t even know this lonely woman lived there….a stone’s throw from our church. So, if we were honest with ourselves this morning we would have to admit that just like this man in today’s text, we tend to pick and choose who we will be neighborly. Again and again we put our own needs and lives first. In our busy-ness we all struggle from time to time with what has been called the disease of me. Even today, like this theologian, we wonder, Certainly there are limits to my love. I mean how far does my responsibility go? Who is my neighbor? Who don’t’ I have to love?
Well, in answer to this theologian’s question, Jesus told this parable, this story of a man beaten, robbed, and left for dead on the ROAD that winds from Jerusalem to Jericho. This road is 17 miles long and plunges 3300 feet. It was referred to as the way of blood no doubt because of the vast amount of blood that had been shed there by robbers over the years. It was a notoriously dangerous highway. It traversed rugged, barren, lonely terrain with lots of bends in the road….perfect for robbers to hide and attack their prey. The audience would have been familiar with the setting for, in a day when all travel was hazardous, the Jericho road was especially so. In other words, this story was drawn from real life. In fact there’s a good chance that Jesus was standing on or near this road as He told this story since He was on the way to Bethany to visit Mary and Martha and that is the same path one would take. So it was kind of like telling a scary story in a scary place, like putting a big movie screen up on the beach and showing the movie JAWS to people floating in the ocean. At that point I can imagine someone saying , Hey, Jesus, it’s bad enough to BE here; don’t REMIND us of the danger!
I remember traveling this road a few years ago myself when I was in the Holy Land and it is still a haunting path. As we pulled out of Jericho onto this road, heading literally UP to Jerusalem, we came across several burned out cars and places where their had obviously been gunfire. As we saw all this talk on our bus ceased and the only child in our group, little Megan Ward, began to cry and we could all sympathize with her. It was and still is NOT a road you travel alone. Well, somewhere on this nefarious highway a lone, foolhardy Jewish traveler was set upon by a band of robbers. He was not only robbed but brutalized and left bloody, naked, and dying. Along the road came a priest. In that day priests served in the temple on a rotational basis. Most of them lived outside of Jerusalem, and many lived in Jericho. In fact Jericho had become a priestly CITY where priests and other temple personnel resided when they weren’t fulfilling their duty in the temple in Jerusalem. Perhaps priests and Levites had immunity from attack due to some superstition surrounding their calling because they constantly traveled up and down this road.
Now, the fact that this man was going down indicates that he was moving away from Jerusalem. He had probably just been involved in some form of temple service. But suddenly he encountered this fellow Jew lying in a pool of blood, his life ebbing away. And, his reaction was instinctive. Carefully circling the situation as you would a cowpie, verse 31 says he passed by on the other side. The Lord doesn’t tell us why he did this. But it’s easy to IMAGINE what was going on. He was after all, a priest. And, according to Leviticus 21:1-4, contact with a dead body would be ceremonially contaminating and this victim was at least NEAR death. The priest has ALREADY been away from home for a period of time pulling his shift in the temple and the ritual of cleansing was costly and time consuming. At the very least, involvement with this half-dead man would require a return to Jerusalem and the interruption of his plans.
And all of us can understand the entanglement that involvement with needy people causes. Helping other people can force us to face difficult, even dangerous, situations. We may not feel good about choosing the other side of the road, but we do feel a lot safer. Besides, others are usually better qualified at this kind of thing. This priest probably thought, I’m a priest not a paramedic. Remember who came next? ANOTHER religious figure-a Levite-and Levites had important roles in the service of the temple although they did not serve at the altar. We don’t know why but, his response duplicated that of the priest. Perhaps he feared for his own safety (the robbers might still be in the vicinity), or maybe he too was afraid of being defiled…but understand, it wasn’t because he couldn’t afford to. Due to the position that religious leaders like priests and Levites held in the nation, they both would have been men of above-average wealth and would have had the financial means to help. But we should not make the mistake of thinking these two were bad men. They were not necessarily bad. They were just busy. They were too busy working FOR God to care LIKE God.
For them and too often, for us, people in need are problems, interruptions, nuisances. They intrude awkwardly on our privacy. They pull us from our duty and distract us from our responsibility. They keep us from our pleasures. We agree that they need help and we hope that someone does help them but not us…not now…not here.
Well, by this time, the Lord’s audience was no doubt caught up in the hearing of His parable.
Like us, they love it when the clergy turn out to be the bad guys…which is why Jim Bakker and that PTL scandal got so much press back in the ’80’s. And they could probably already guess who would be the hero of the story. No doubt it would be a layman, an ordinary citizen, one of them. Certainly they could never have expected the twist the tale took in verse 33 with the words …but a Samaritan… When Jesus used these words He touched a raw nerve and put electricity in the air, for you no doubt remember that Samaritans were a mixed-race. They were the descendants of people from other nations imported to Israel during the exile who intermarried with the local Jewish population. As such, the Samaritans enjoyed the lowest rung on the Jewish social ladder of the day. They were hated by the Jews of pure blood. We call this the story of the good Samaritan but to the first century Jew there was no such thing. This was as unthinkable as a good PLO member to an Israeli or a good IRA member to a North Irish Ulsterman. So, with the introduction of a Samaritan, Jesus deliberately and carefully shocked His audience, for this unlikely hero did not pass by even though the pillars of Jewish religious society did. The question Jesus asked the theologian at the end of His story required him to put together two impossible and contradictory words in that culture, Samaritan and neighbor. For, in Jesus’ story it was not the Samaritan’s NATIONALITY that set him apart. It was his COMPASSION. He didn’t SEE anything the other two didn’t, but he FELT something they didn’t. Verse 33 says, He took pity on the man lying in the ditch. All of the normal hostility between Jew and Samaritan was swept away as he allowed what he saw to affect his emotions.
Now, its very interesting to note that the word translated here as pity is used elsewhere in the gospels but only to refer to the feelings of Jesus. He above others, is the model of compassion.
And please note that it was not just a feeling. The Samaritan allowed his feelings to lead to action. He bandaged the man’s wounds-probably tearing up his own garments for this purpose. He poured on wine to cleanse his wounds and oil to soothe the pain. Both of these elements were highly prized and expensive remedies in this day. Then he placed the man on his own donkey and led the animal down the hot, dusty road to an inn. And we should note that this was an act of great COURAGE. After all, this was Jewish territory and a Samaritan transporting the Jewish victim of a mugging would be subject to all kinds of misunderstanding and misinterpretation. It would be like an American Indian riding into Dodge City with a scalped cowboy draped over his horse, saying, I found this guy on the road. I’ve tried to help him. Where’s the doc?
Well, once at the inn, the Samaritan continued to look after the man. Understand — this victim was a total stranger-a man of another race and religion…stripped and penniless. Yet the Samaritan’s compassion led him to assume responsibility for the mans’ future needs. Look at verse 35. He told the innkeeper, When I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you have. All this was with no plausible reason to believe there was any hope of recovering his expenditures. He was freely expressing undeserved and unexpected love to a person in need. This should remind us that GENUINE neighborly love means interrupting our schedule, expending our money, ruining our property…even for a stranger. Godly love is the compassion that feels, the care that involves, the commitment that endures.
Well, what OTHER lessons can we learn from this story that will help us to better understand how a Christian should respond to the needs of the people around us?
1. First of all I think this parable shows us that Christians like you and me must learn to not be AFRAID to help people.
You see, in life often we pass by on the other side when we encounter people who obviously need our help because we are afraid that their needs will be greater than our resources. We know that being a neighbor is costly. Our experience has taught us that there is risk involved. And, we think we don’t have the time. We don’t have the money. We fear that meeting the needs of others will make us needy ourselves. As you know we just returned from our summer vacation. The last week of that vacation we spent in Ocean Isle, North Carolina. Ocean Isle is a small island about 7 miles long, north of Myrtle Beach and it is covered with condos and hotels that people rent for a week or two in the summer. As we walked to and from the beach and the pool every day Sue and I noticed that there was almost no interaction between vacationers. Oh, there were plenty of polite waves and even a few Hellos but no one got any deeper in conversation than that. I mean no one gave their name or invited others to share a meal. And this is because of this instinctive knowledge that doing so is costly and when you are on vacation you and I tend to be especially selfish. We don’t want to interact. We want to concentrate on ourselves, OUR rest, OUR recreation. Well, this is somewhat understandable on vacation but the problem is many Christians live that way all year long. We NEVER get involved in meeting the needs of others. We pass by on the other side because we know that if we stop it will cost us something and we fear it will cost us more than we can afford to pay.
In Langdon Gilkey’s book, SHANTUNG COMPOUND, he shares his reflections on what it was like to be in a Japanese internment camp for three years during WWII. Gilkey was attending a preparatory school in China during those years and, after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese placed all Allied citizens in the region in internment camps. Gilkey was sent to a former Presbyterian mission in the coastal province of Shantung where the living space was cramped, the food supply unpredictable, and the future uncertain. He was astonished that the pervading fear and insecurity which haunted some 1,500 American, Canadian, British, and European citizens, most of them highly educated and socially sensitive …this fear could turn even missionaries into raging survivalists. When it was a matter of their own welfare or that of their children, those individuals lost all concern for the COMMON good. A dramatic example occurred when the American Red Cross succeeded in sending 2100 food parcels into the compound. The Japanese guards decreed that each prisoner would receive one parcel, and because the shipment had come from their country, the Americans could share the remainder which meant the Americans would have 600 extra food parcels to share — three parcels each. Well, when this decision was announced, the Americans caucused and formally protested. They proposed that each of the 300 Americans should receive seven packets and that the remaining 1200 prisoners should receive none! This taught Gilkey that in life there are two extremes…LOVE and FEAR….and each has the power to negate the other. As I John 4:18 says, Perfect love has the power to cast out fear. But Gilkey saw that the reverse is also true. Fear has the power to cast out love. And he was right, for we can become so afraid of our own needs not being met that we walk by others who have needs.
But, as Christians, we must mature to the point that we realize that we can trust God to meet our needs…even as we expend our own resources to meet the needs of others. We must learn to trust in the promise of Jesus in Matthew 6:8 when He said, …your Father [in heaven] knows what you need before you ask Him. And as Paul wrote in Philippians God will, …meet our needs according to His riches in glory. The dynamic that led the Christians in the early church to hold all things in common (Acts 4:32,34-35 ) undoubtedly resulted from the security that they came to feel in God’s care. So, one thing this parable can teach us is that we will be more likely to reach out to the needy people around us if we learn to trust in the provision of God. We don’t need to be AFRAID to minister to a neighbor God puts in our path.
And then, the second thing this parable can teach us is that as Christians we must learn to…
2. ….see each and every person in need as our neighbor.
As I referred to earlier, the word neighbor has lost much of its meaning these days. Usually we don’t even know our neighbors…the people who live next door to us. We tend to spend our precious time with people we enjoy and end up defining a neighbor as someone whose company benefits us in some way. But this parable overhauls this philosophy. It teaches that our neighbor is someone we see with needs, not someone who offers us something. In fact, I think the main reason Jesus told this story was to point out that as Christians (as His followers) we are automatically neighbors to the whole human race. It doesn’t matter whether we know the person, or whether his race or lifestyle is like our own. It doesn’t even matter whether the person appeals to us or repulses us, if they like us or hate us, if someone inhabits this planet and has a need, he or she is automatically our neighbor.
In his book, Opening Blind Eyes, John Claypool defines morality in this way,
The fewer persons you are concerned about as you consider what to do with your life, the less moral an action is; the more people you take into consideration as you consider the impact of your action, the more moral it becomes. We see this principle in this parable. The thieves who robbed the man going from Jerusalem to Jericho represent one end of the continuum. They cared only for themselves and used their power without regard for the harm it did others.
At the other end of the continuum is God Himself, Who is described in John 3:16 as loving the WHOLE WORLD so much …that He gave His only Son. You see, God takes the whole of creation into account in the exercise of power. And in this parable Jesus is teaching that the goal of each of His disciples should be to love the WHOLE WORLD in this same way. God became inextricably involved in meeting the needs of all mankind and He calls us to do the same. Like Him, He wants us to feel the pain of ALL those around us as if it were our own.
In his book on the parables, Gerald Kennedy writes,
When I was in Liberia I talked with a man about that country’s head, President Tubman. The President has wielded power for a long time and I inquired as to the secret of his influence. ‘They have a saying here,’ my friend reported, ‘that if a little boy out in the bush stubs his toe, President Tubman says Ouch.’ Well….It is this quality that the world needs to see in all Christians.
So, the question this parable should initiate in us is not Who is my neighbor? but rather, Whose neighbor am I? Our need is not to DEFINE neighbor but to BECOME the kind of people who cannot pass by on the other side.
You know, just like the old hymn text says, Out on the highways and byways of life MANY are weary and sad. In other words you can’t go about your life without encountering hurting, needy people: on the metro, in the grocery store, even in rest areas off of I-270. And when you do you must learn to…give as was given to you in your need…love AS THE MASTER LOVED YOU…Be to the helpless a helper indeed…unto your mission be true. This IS the way God has loved us for just like that foolish traveler on the road to Jericho you and I travel down a highway of sorts: the road of life. The journey we make from birth to death is a road of great peril. In fact we can’t make this journey without being attacked from time to time by thieves.
Any one who has traveled this road knows these thieves well. Their names are despair, loneliness, fear, lust, anger, defeat. Whatever the name, they are part of the kingdom of sin. They spring upon us when we are least ready and eventually they beat us and leave us half dead…and their attack is such that, unless help comes, we surely will die. But, the wonderful news is that Someone has come to our aid! He has helped us when we were unable to help ourselves. Like the Samaritan in this parable, our Rescuer was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows, and well-acquainted with grief, yet He saw our need and has made it His own. He did not pass by. Even now He stops and offers to bind our wounds and pay the debt that we cannot.
This morning if you have never met the Real Good Samaritan. We call him the Good Shepherd. You can right now. He stands ready and waiting. All you need to do is invite Him into your heart and life. I encourage you to do so because it would be foolish to travel on the road of life any farther alone. Prayer:
GOD help those of us this morning who are Your followers to remember Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf. Deepen our understanding of Your love.
Stretch our hearts and fill us till we are running over with the grace and compassion of Christ. Give us the courage to risk ministering to the neighbors we will encounter in life. And if there are people here today who don’t know You personally then I ask that right now You would knock on their heart’s door. I pray all this in the name of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, A-MEN.