Who is My Neighbor? An Exercise in Preaching Christ
The Gospel for Trinity 13, which we (who follow the Historic Lectionary) just heard last Sunday, contains the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and it strikes me that this is a good opportunity to provide an example of what it means to plumb the depths of Scripture to find the pearls of Christ. This Gospel is well-known, but its depths are often missed. Here it is, from St Luke 10:
21 In that hour Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit and said, “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight. 22 All[g] things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”
23 Then He turned to His disciples and said privately, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see; 24 for I tell you that many prophets and kings have desired to see what you see, and have not seen it, and to hear what you hear, and have not heard it.”
The Parable of the Good Samaritan
25 And behold, a certain [h]lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 He said to him, “What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?”
27 So he answered and said, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself.’ ”
28 And He said to him, “You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.”
29 But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 Then Jesus answered and said: “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among [i]thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 Likewise a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked, and passed by on the other side. 33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. 34 So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 On the next day, [j]when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.’ 36 So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?”
37 And he said, “He who showed mercy on him.”
Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
It’s easy to see that this Gospel tears down the preconceptions people (like the lawyer here) would have about their ability to do something to inherit eternal life, which even on the face of the lawyer’s question should have been clearly something he would be unable to do, because inheritance is a gift, not a reward. This lawyer’s own question is fraught with a contradiction, and when Jesus asks him, “What is written in the law?” the lawyer’s inadequate perspective becomes clear. Jesus’ question is not merely about the law as command (as in law-and-Gospel), but about the Torah; that is, What is written in the Torah? Which makes His follow-up question all the more pertinent: “What is your reading of it?” For the Torah is full of laws and regulations, and if your reading of it only sees those things in it, then your reading of it will be inadequate for discovering the way eternal life is inherited. And, as expected, the lawyer responds with a fine summary of the Ten Commandments: Love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself. So here Jesus takes the opportunity to get the lawyer to see his inadequacy by saying to him, “You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.” Jesus knows this man’s heart, that he will hedge when pressed not only to know the law but to do it, and sure enough, he does hedge, for he wants to justify himself: “And who is my neighbor?” It’s an odd question for a lawyer to ask, for one would think that of all people, a lawyer—that is, an expert in the Torah—would know the answer to that question, for isn’t the law supposed to be his specialty? His question here is telling, for it exposes his inadequacy by the very asking of it.
And at this point Jesus takes him further toward having a new, better reading of the Torah. He tells him about the Good Samaritan. On the surface, this parable simply goes into some detail about how we are to love our neighbors, for the impetus in everything the Good Samaritan does for the poor dying man is contained in the opening description of the traveler: “when he saw him, he had compassion.” To love your neighbor as yourself is to have compassion, which leads to various deeds for your neighbor’s benefit.
But here is where it gets interesting, for an astute lawyer ought to know that compassion happens to be a chief attribute of God, throughout the Scriptures, an attribute embedded in the depths of meaning in the Torah. In those depths the Gospel is buried, just as it is also buried in the parable here, waiting to be discovered.
Who is my neighbor? Very technically, and literally, my neighbor is the Good Samaritan. Jesus did not give the lawyer the option of choosing the dying man as his neighbor, which would have been consistent with a parable intended only to highlight the lawyer’s responsibility. Instead, He made him choose from among the three wayfarers, which in effect flips the perspective and forces his answer to be that the Good Samaritan is the “neighbor” that is actually the answer to the lawyer’s question. A surface reading of the parable doesn’t yield such and answer, for we, like the lawyer, tend to think of the question in terms of our own responsibility toward our neighbors. As it happens, “neighbor” is a two-way concept: first, the Good Samaritan is the dying man’s neighbor, and second, the dying man is the Good Samaritan’s neighbor. We, like the lawyer, tend to jump to the second part of the answer, and say, we are supposed to be like the Good Samaritan and consider the dying man to be our neighbor. Indeed, Jesus does say to the lawyer, “Go and do likewise.” But technically, and literally, it is the first part that answers the question, meaning that the Good Samaritan is my neighbor, and that makes me the dying man.
And so we arrive at the deeper meaning of this parable, and for that matter, of the Torah, which is the Gospel itself! The Good Samaritan exhibits the compassion of Christ Himself toward dying men. The heart of the parable, then, is not reached if you have come to the point of seeing yourself as having to be like the Good Samaritan, for then your reading of the law will still be as inadequate as the lawyer’s. You must, rather, see yourself as actually being like the poor dying man. You were traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho (which happens to be in the opposite direction Jesus was headed when He finally came to the end of His journey on Palm Sunday); you, like the lawyer with an inadequate persective, were going the wrong way; for Christ, who is the Way, was heading toward Jerusalem to redeem the world by His blood. It is toward Him and His work that you need to think and walk. But you, travelling the wrong way, fell among thieves: the devil, the world, and your own flesh, and they robbed you of your ability to save yourself, and thus left you as good as dead. And the priest and the Levite pass you by on the other side, just as the laws and regulations God has placed on you cannot help you (as the hymn puts it, “the law no peace can ever give, no comfort and no blessing”). But then comes Christ, your blessed Good Samaritan, presumably journeying from Samaria toward Jerusalem, which evokes the image of Christ’s triumphal entry on Palm Sunday; but where does He come? He comes where the dying man was; He comes to where you were, by His holy incarnation, and has compassion. And His compassion is evident in His bandaging of your wounds with oil and wine, emblems of Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar. And He places you (vicariously!) on His own beast, and so carries you to the inn which is the Church, and instructs the innkeeper, who is the pastor, to take care of you, giving the pastor two denarii, one for each Sacrament, for He must continue on His way to Jerusalem, there to make atonement for all sin, and He promises that He will return (“when I return, I will repay you”). Your neighbor is manifestly the Good Samaritan, for which you owe Him your undying thanks, and a willingness, now that you know this, to go and do likewise, that is, begin a life of compassion toward your other neighbors. That is the deep meaning, the precious Gospel nugget buried in the parable and indeed, embedded in the Torah.
What is your reading of the Torah? It indeed contains the regulations God has placed on you, and more importantly it contains Christ and His compassion toward a sinful dying world unable to do anything to inherit eternal life. Embedded in the prescribed sacrifices is Christ; embedded in the longsuffering of God toward His wayward people is Christ; embedded even in the Ten Commandments is Christ, for they are a perfect description of His lovingkindess toward His neighbors, ultimately all of mankind.
The final answer to the lawyer’s question is this: Eternal life is inherited only by the Gifts bestowed upon the dying by the compassionate Good Samaritan that is Christ our Lord, who is your Neighbor. It is the task of the Preacher to find the nuggets of the Gospel embedded in the Word of God, and lay them before the hearers, so that they, too, might inherit eternal life.