There's
something about the parable of the Good Samaritan that I bet you
didn’t know and that’s because I’m making it up. It is
actually one of the earliest recorded lawyer jokes in existence, if
not the earliest. It’s a lawyer joke and in the Bible. Go figure.
Amazing book, the Bible is. There's actually some humour in it.
Everybody likes a good lawyer joke and I won’t go into the reasons
why because that would entail telling a few and I wouldn’t want to
offend (i.e. slander) any lawyers from the pulpit for fear of getting
sued for appearing to be guilty enough of being responsible for what
my own actions appeared to do though untenable in a criminal court
under section so and so of the banality code. Did that make sense?
I think I might be moving from the area of law into claims adjusting.
But anyway, I think that here in the Parable of the Good Samaritan
we’re looking at a lawyer joke. It may not seem funny to us
because the sense of humour comes from a culture different from our
own and nearly 2,000 years old. Nevertheless, it definitely has a
punch line that we should get.
Now
this lawyer joke seems to revolve around a trick question that the
lawyer asks. He says, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Well there you go, this is your typical lawyer up to the typical task
of asking a typically tricky question to try to throw us off. Those
tricky lawyers. The trick is that there is nothing a person can do
to gain an inheritance—nothing. Inheritances are granted and
usually along bloodlines. You can’t earn them. Actually, it’s
the other way around. There are things you can do to loose your
inheritance. You can’t earn it, but you can loose it. Actually,
that is the punch line of the little joke about the Priest, the
Levite, and the Samaritan that's also in this text.
Let's
have a look at that joke first. The two people who were doing their
best to earn their inheritance from God—the Priest and the
Levite—are actually the ones who stand to loose their inheritance
because of what they neglect to do. They didn't show compassion
because they were afraid of breaking the “dead clause” in the
Temple Law. The “Dead Clause”was that if you touched a dead
person, you could not go into the Temple for several days because it
made you impure, unclean, or unholy. One did not bring death before
the LORD God. Helping this man would complicate things for the
Priest and the Levite because they worked and lived in the Jerusalem
Temple. They weren’t willing to risk being put out of their home
and work for a few days to save a man’s life. So, here’s the
first punch line: Though the inheritance is free, it comes at a cost.
Trying to earn your inheritance by being obedient to laws rather
than acting merciful, compassionate, and just can actually lead to
loosing it. Now this little joke would have made our lawyer friend a
little uncomfortable because like most of the things Jesus said it
hit too close to home. As an expert on the Law, the lawyer would
have been associated with the Priest and the Levite and would have
done exactly what they did in walking on by.
Well,
the punch line is going to grow here a bit as the lawyer begins to
justify himself. In Jesus day a lawyer or scribe was an expert in
both the general themes and the details of the rules of the Temple
Law. These folks knew what you could and could not do and they also
knew the loopholes. This leads us to another thing we are supposed
to find funny in this joke: how Jesus turns the expertise of the
lawyer back on the lawyer. As I said a moment ago the lawyer asks
Jesus a loaded question of “How can I earn my inheritance?”
Well, Jesus being smarter than the lawyer (Ha. Ha. Joke. Get it.
Jesus is smarter than a lawyer.) refuses to answer the question and
instead makes the expert answer it himself. “What does the law
say?” Jesus asks. Well, of course the lawyer has the right
answer. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength,
and mind and your neighbour as yourself. “Right answer,” Jesus
says. “Do this and you will live.” Well…our lawyer just has
to go and be a lawyer. He has to determine the extent of the Law by
asking, “Who is my neighbour?” He’s working with the loophole
of “Who deserves compassion and who does not?” If he can
qualify a group of people who do not deserve compassion, then he’s
off the hook.
Well,
Jesus has a field day with that bit of banistering. Jesus turns the
question around on the lawyer too. He makes it go from being “Who
is my neighbour?” to “What kind of a neighbour are you?”
That’s a real knee slapper. I think I might roll around on the
floor here and bust a gut. Jesus doesn't stop there he keeps going.
He compares the lawyer to a Samaritan—a Samaritan. You know what a
Samaritan is? They lived down the hill from Jerusalem. They were
mixed along the bloodlines, if you know what I mean. Now, this joke
of Jesus' has become an outright insult to our lawyer friend because
Jesus is suggesting to the Lawyer that a Samaritan was a better
neighbour than a Priest or a Levite and therefore this lawyer.
That’s
an insult if I've ever heard one and since it's Jesus “meek and
mild” who didn't cry when he was a baby who's doing the insulting
we might ask why. Well, Jesus wants to make clear what his kingdom
is all about. It is about the inheritance of eternal life. It is a
free gift. God the Father grants us this inheritance freely in and
through Jesus Christ the Son by means of him becoming human as we
are, living and dying as we do on account of sin. “He became what
we are by nature to give us what is his by nature” and he had to go
through death and out the other side to do it. Thus, God the Father
in the power of the Holy Spirit raised him from the dead and in so
doing defeated sin and death once and for all. Jesus is now ascensed
into heaven where he ever-intercedes for us until his return. And it
doesn't stop there. The Father and the Son send us the Holy Spirit
to live in us in humanity that we may share in the risen humanity of
Jesus the Son as adopted children of God, the living signposts of the
new creation coming. As children of God by adoption we freely share
in Jesus' relationship with the Father—a life of faithfulness,
hope, and compassion rather than a life of uncertainty, anxiety,
despair, and self-absorption.
It
is impossible to earn what the Trinity has freely done for us. Our
only possible response to this grace is to love God the Father back
with the love of Jesus Christ the Son that he has also implanted in
us by the Holy Spirit coming to live in us. It is Christ Jesus'
love in us that makes it possible for us to love the Trinity with all
our heart, soul, mind, and strength and our neighbours as ourselves.
We can’t do this of our own capacity. Without the power of the
Holy Spirit living in us we can’t love God the Father rightly in,
through and with God the Son. Instead, we try to manipulate "God"
for our purposes. We try to make "God" work for us. “God,
I’ll do this for you, if you’ll give me my inheritance.” God
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is not like that. The Trinity just
simply loves us and wants to be a part of us and want us to be a part
of Him. And that is the healing to our brokenness that the Trinity
freely gives. It’s just there. We need only get on with living in
it.
This
little thought of God’s healing presence being given to us freely
necessitates a question—“If we can’t earn it, then how do we
know we got it?” Well, there’s a real and wondrous sense
awakened in each one of us that God the Trinity really does love us.
The declaration that the Gospel makes is that we of no act or effort
of our own have been made God's children by adoption through the
faithfulness of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. We
need only begin to pray that the Trinity will cause us to know this
personally, to know who are in Him. Paul
says, “your
life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3).
Just start praying and following and the Trinity will let you know
who are are in Him.
The
personal knowledge of the Father's love for us gives us a sense of
trust, of peace, a calmness that really only comes from beyond us.
It also makes it much easier to be kind, patient, and compassionate
and to forgive. And, this is where we find the real punch line of
the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Showing mercy to others is the
only appropriate response to the Trinity's grace. Showing mercy is
how we love each other and how we show our love for The Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit. If we have this inheritance of eternal life which
is Christ living in us, then mercy is the fruit which comes from it
which we must nurture and bear forth. When Jesus says, “Go and do
likewise” he means for us to discipline our lives to let the
Trinity's grace and mercy shine through us, to let his Spirit destroy
all hate and heal all hurt that is in us. Showing mercy is not how
we earn our inheritance. Rather it is how we keep it. Go and do
likewise. Amen.
