A Sermon Preached by Pastor Paul on July 18, 2010
Title: "Parables: The Good Samaritan"
Text: Luke 10:25-31

We are continuing in a summer series of sermons on the parables of Jesus. We are actually sharing with all of you, the parables we will be teaching all of the kids who come to Vacation Bible School this year.

It's a way of making our VBS outreach something that our whole church is connected to and involved with. As we get the point of these parables into our own lives, we are then inviting all of you to join us in praying that the kids and families who come to VBS will get them into their lives as well.

So far we have looked at the Parable of the Sower, and the Parable of the Lost Sheep. Today we come to one of the most famous parables of all, "The Good Samaritan."

Turn with me to Luke 10:25-31.
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Of all the parables of Jesus, I must confess, this is the one I find the most troublesome. Not troublesome to understand or interpret. But troublesome to live with!

Like Mark Twain once said, "It's not the things in the Bible I don't understand that bother me. It's the things that I do understand!"

This is one of those things in the Bible that is bothersome. It's a story that won't let you go. It needles me, it convicts me, it unsettles me. It's downright troublesome on every level of the story.

1. First, it's troublesome on the level of the man who lies beaten up in the ditch by the road.

The overarching message of the parable, of course, is that like the Good Samaritan, we should stop and help such people in need because they, too, are our neighbors.

We all know that helping people in need is what this parable calls us to do. People broken down by the side of the road on our highways. Street people begging quarters in Boston. Elderly neighbors who can't shovel the snow in their driveways anymore. People whose hurts and needs cry out for someone's attention.

But we also know that we live in a dangerous age, don't we? Some people who stop to help others end up getting hurt themselves. If you stop to help someone who has been beat up or shot or been in a car accident, and they are bleeding, you think twice about touching them at all. When I was a Boy Scout, we were taught to do mouth to mouth resuscitation if we came upon someone who couldn't breathe. How comfortable does anyone feel about doing mouth to mouth on a stranger anymore?

The dangers and diseases all around us make you think twice about stopping to help, don't they? The best we can do is call 911 on our ever ready cell phones and keep on moving.

The only trouble is that this parable keeps needling us. I mean, it wasn't all that different in Jesus' day when he told this parable. The road Jesus mentions that goes down from Jerusalem to Jericho was infamous for its danger. There were all kinds of robbers who hid out along that stretch and attacked pilgrims going or coming from Jerusalem.

Anyone who stopped to help someone else along that road was certainly in danger themselves. The robbers who beat up the man, could have been hiding right behind the rocks waiting for the next victim.

And the guy who was beat up could have been a leper, or something. They had infectious diseases in those days, too.

You see, this Good Samaritan took a risk to show his love and compassion and treat this man as a neighbor. It wasn't easy for him to do this. It's always risky to get involved in someone else's trouble.

We know we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves, but we know we would want someone to stop and help us if we were hurt and in need, but..

But the parable says, "So do it. Just do it." And I don't know,....it's a troublesome parable, isn't it?

2. And then it's also troublesome on the level of the priest and the Levite, who come wandering along the road.

I don't know about you, but these are the guys I all too readily identify with. They have places to go, people to meet, things to do. They are busy and are on their way to appointments. They can't just forget all their other responsibilities to help this poor guy out. He looks like he's just about dead anyway.

And they have good religious reasons for not stopping, too. If they were on their way up to Jerusalem to the Temple, to stop and help this bloody man who might be dead would have made them ceremonially unclean.

They would not have been able to undertake their priestly duties if they had gotten contaminated on the way. So it was out of the question that they should stop and help this man, right?

I can sympathize with that, can't you? We are all busy people and have a hard time altering our plans at the last minute especially for someone we don't even know.

And if it's a Sunday morning and we are on our way to church and there's a person with a flat tire, are we going to stop and help them change the tire and get our Sunday clothes all dirty? Isn't it better to just say a prayer for them as we drive by, and keep on going so we aren't late for worship?

But here's this parable just convicting us like crazy, right? It's troublesome, isn't it?

3. And then it's also troublesome on the level of the Samaritan who comes along.

In fact, this is the real punch line of the parable. Because the Jews to whom Jesus was speaking here hated Samaritans. In their mind, there was no such thing as a "good" Samaritan. Samaritans were half-breed Jews, who were not really Jews at all. And so good Israeli Jews wouldn't travel through Samaria, or eat with a Samaritan, or visit a Samaritan's house. They wouldn't trade with them, or speak to them, or have any dealings with a Samaritan at all if they could help it.

So when Jesus has a Samaritan of all people come along and help the man in the ditch, you have to imagine that there would have been an audible gasp among Jesus' listeners.

They expected a nice, God-fearing Jew would be the one to come along and help. A really good guy. A saintly guy. Someone they could look up to and affirm as the model Jew.

So when Jesus chooses to make a hero out of a Samaritan in His story, they are all shocked. And that's the punch-line of the parable: Jesus has just exposed their prejudice against Samaritans, and is saying: "Guess what? Samaritans are your neighbors, too. How about loving them?"

You see how troublesome this parable is on every level? By the end of the parable, it is not only hurting people in ditches we are called to love and treat as neighbors, it's even people we don't like who we are called to love and treat as neighbors.

This punch line would be like Jesus telling this parable today in Arizona, and having an illegal immigrant be the hero of the story.

Jesus makes a "good neighbor" out of a person that His hearers did not consider a good neighbor at all. And Jesus says in effect, "Following me means you not only love people in need, but you learn to see every human being as your neighbor, no matter who they are, and you treat them as a person whom God loves."

That's the answer Jesus gives to this man who comes to Him asking what it really means to love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself.

This parable is troublesome on every level, isn't it?

We don't come naturally by this kind of love. It doesn't come naturally to us. It is a love we must learn. In fact, it is the content of our discipleship.

When Jesus invites us to come follow Him, this is what He is calling us to actually learn to do. We are being invited to come alongside Him and learn to see people the way He sees them, and to love people the way He loves them.

And everyday life itself is the "School of the Spirit" for learning this. This parable takes place in an everyday life situation. And opportunities you and I will have to love people take place every day from the time we wake up in the morning until we go to sleep at night: our family, our friends, our next door neighbor, the kid at school, our fellow church member, our sister-in-law, our co-worker. It's endless the people that God will send across our path each day.

But if you read the Gospels, this is exactly what Jesus' daily life looked like. He was the Good Samaritan. He was the one who set out every day and loved His neighbors. He walked throughout Judea, and everyday brought a new set of people and situations. And some of the hardest people to love were the religious types. And some of the people Jesus loved and served walked away from Him. And some stuck around and followed. Not everyone was transformed by His love and service. Many stayed just the same.

My friends, on our own, we cannot possibly do this. But there is One who can, and who did, and who continues to do this. And when we catch a glimpse of Jesus, and see how He is the One who performed this parable for each of us personally: He is the one who came and found us bound and beat up by sin, flesh, devil. He is the one who revived us, and carried us to the inn for healing. He is the one who paid the price for our healing. He is the one who treated us more kindly than we ever deserved.

When we get a glimpse again of all that He has done for us, we fall in love with our Good Samaritan all over again. And when He asks us to follow Him, we say, "Yes, Lord. I'll follow." That doesn't mean we instantly know how to do for others what He has done for us, but it means we set the direction of our lives to learning.

II Peter 1 says, "...make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."

You see, that's what we want. We want to keep growing in our love for God and our love for our neighbors. We want to keep persevering. We want to keep asking for help. We want to keep looking to Jesus, who has been such an amazing "good Samaritan" to us.

He is the master. We are the disciples, the apprentices, the learners.

Let's pray.