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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.
The subjectivism and pluralism of today’s society often make their way into discussion and study of God’s Holy Word. For example, when we talk about the Bible with people we know or maybe even in Bible study, we might hear other people say (or we ourselves might say) such things as, “I take that to mean this” and “You can interpret that that way, and I will interpret it this way”, as if even diametrically opposed interpretations both can be equally right. At first glance, one might even wrongly think that Jesus in today’s Third Reading sets a precedent for such subjective and pluralistic approaches when He asks, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” This morning we paraphrase those two questions into one question for the theme, “How do you read what is written?”
“How do you read what is written?” Jesus in the Third Reading essentially asks the “lawyer”, who is not a “lawyer” as we think of “lawyers” but is what the other Gospel accounts call a “scribe”, an expert in interpreting and applying the Law, the first five books of the Bible, the books Moses wrote by divine inspiration. Such a “lawyer” had stood up to put Jesus to the test, saying “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And, Jesus had masterfully responded in such a way as to put the “lawyer” to the test, essentially asking “How do you read what is written?” Perhaps Jesus meant, “Quote for me your authorities and give me your exposition” or “What do you say about it in your regular worship?” Regardless, when the “lawyer”, paraphrasing such passages as today’s First Reading (Leviticus 19:9-18), answered correctly—You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind and your neighbor as yourself—Jesus told Him to do what the Law required. But, the “lawyer” desired to justify himself and so asked Jesus to define “neighbor”, and so Jesus took up the discussion and told what we usually call “The Parable of the Good Samaritan”, though the Third Reading calls neither what Jesus said a “parable” nor the Samaritan “good”. At the end, Jesus again questioned the “lawyer”, and, when he again answered correctly, Jesus again told him to do what the Law required.
Like others who came to question Jesus, the man in today’s Third Reading apparently thought that he had to and could do something in order to obtain eternal life. The man fundamentally misread the books of Moses by thinking that those books were primarily about what people had to and could do. Then the man apparently wanted to lessen God’s demands on him by limiting the definition of who his neighbor was. So, Jesus told the so-called “Parable of the Good Samaritan” ultimately to show the man both that the man had failed to love God and his neighbor and that he could not do anything in order to obtain eternal life. This morning we could go on and on about the various details of what St. Luke writes by divine inspiration and about what Jesus said, but we do not want to miss the ultimate point, namely, that the man, who stood up to put Jesus to the test and desired to justify himself, misread the holy writings by seeing them as primarily about what he had to and could do to obtain eternal life.
How are you and I like that man? How do we put Jesus to the test? How do we desire to justify ourselves? How do we misread the Holy Scriptures by seeing them as primarily about what we have to do? How do we think we obtain eternal life? Like the man in today’s Third Reading, we fail to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind; we fail to love our neighbor as ourselves; and, on our own, we cannot do anything in order to obtain eternal life.
God calls us to repent of our failures to love Him and our neighbors. He calls us to turn in sorrow from all our sin, to trust Him to forgive all our sin, and to want to do better. This morning with the psalmist we confessed, “O Lord, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against You”, and, in the same psalm, we heard that the Lord delivers us in our day of trouble (Psalm 41:4, 1). When we repent, then God forgives us. When we are sorry for our sins, when we believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave to save us from those sins, and when we want to do better than keep sinning, then God forgives our sin—He forgives our failures to love Him, He forgives our failures to love our neighbors, He forgives whatever our sin might be. He forgives it all for Jesus’s sake. In Him, St. Paul wrote by divine inspiration in today’s Second Reading, we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1:1-14).
Four verses come between last week’s Gospel Reading, in which we heard about the sending and return of the Seventy-two, and this week’s Reading, in which we hear about the lawyer’s question and Jesus’s answer. Those four verses are arguably relevant to today’s Reading. In those verses, Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and thanked the Father for revealing Him, the Son, to “little children”, such as the Seventy-two, and for hiding Him from the wise and learned, such as the “lawyer” in today’s Reading. And, Jesus blessed the disciples privately for seeing and hearing what many prophets and kings desired to see and hear but did not (Luke 10:21-24). Perhaps the “lawyer” in today’s Reading objected to what Jesus said; regardless, at least initially, he did not see and hear Jesus for Whom He was, namely, the Son of God and man, revealing the gracious will of the Heavenly Father to save all people by grace through faith in Him. To be sure, we could allegorize what Jesus says about the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among robbers to be about Jesus Himself, for Jesus was crucified with such men (Matthew 27:38, 44; Mark 15:27) and was Himself stripped and beaten, but such an allegory moves beyond the main point of the “parable”.
Similarly, we could move beyond the main point of the “parable” by allegorizing what Jesus says about the Samaritan to be about both Jesus and us. For, out of the greatest love for God and neighbor, Jesus had compassion and mercy on us, who are by nature more than half‑dead, and He takes care of us both directly Himself and indirectly through the care of others. Jesus entrusts us to the care of the Office of the Holy Ministry, which He instituted to preach His Gospel and administer His Sacraments. As the Samaritan poured oil and wine on the man’s wounds and bound them up, so through pastors Jesus pours water on us in Holy Baptism and serves us wine that is His blood in Holy Communion. At the time of the Third Reading, oil and wine were used not only in medical treatments but also in connection with religious sacrifices, and today they can point us to the Sacraments, means connected with God’s Word by which He gives us the forgiveness of sins, and so also eternal life. Over time, the Church certainly has “read” such things in what “is written” in today’s Third Reading.
Over time, society, too, has read some things in what is written in today’s Third Reading. The Samaritan in the Reading is thought to have put himself at risk by helping the man who fell among the robbers, and so society has passed measures protecting people from liability for helping those in need and called those measures “Good Samaritan laws”. The same “Good Samaritan law” name is sometimes used for measures requiring people to offer assistance to those in need. (Such a “duty to rescue” law notably was passed in Massachusetts and provided the premise for the 19-88 series finale of the TV show “Seinfeld”.) Of course, as we have seen, God’s law requires such love of neighbor, and by nature we do not carry it out on our own. Yet, as He is in us, we do love God and our neighbor. His love and our love are of one kind, and His love for us brings forth our love for Him and for those half‑dead people He puts across our roads in the various vocations He gives us in our lives. And, when we fail to love them, as we will, He forgives us.
“How do you read what is written?” Jesus asked that question of the “lawyer” in today’s Third Reading, and, in a sense, He asks that question of us, too. St. Luke’s Gospel account does not tell us what eventually became of the “lawyer”, perhaps inviting us to consider what eventually will become of ourselves. To be sure, the objective one true message of the holy writings is consistently clear, both about the demands of the law and the gift of the Gospel. Yet, to some extent, what is written today’s Third Reading can be read as both law and as Gospel as the Holy Spirit sees fit to apply it. We realize that, according to our fallen nature, we cannot love God or our neighbor, but God, in the person of Jesus Christ, loves us and forgives us, and, according to our redeemed nature, He brings forth in our lives the fruit of repentance and faith, namely in this case, our loving Him and our neighbor as the law prescribes. God grant that we live every day with repentance and faith, until Jesus returns and, more than binds up our wounds, resurrects and glorifies our bodies for eternity with Him.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +