Samaritan Ethics

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

God does not need your works, but He commands you to do good works. Your neighbor needs your good works, but cannot command you to do them. This is where the love of God and the love of your neighbor intersect, as we see in today's Gospel lesson.

A lot of ink has been spilled about Law and Gospel, and the Law/Gospel turnabout in this passage, generally focusing on the account that Jesus tells, rather than the discussion in which it happens. You have heard it before: you are the man beaten and left for dead, Jesus is the Samaritan who picks you up out of the ditch, the Church is the inn, and the oil and wine and so forth are the Means of Grace.

However, this passage, in its greater context, is a discussion about the Law and about ethics, before one ever lays on the typological interpretations. Ethics is generally understood as determining, and then doing, the best good thing. Ethics is about knowing and doing the right thing, whatever the circumstances.

And so this passage starts with a question about knowledge. “What must I do to be saved?”, the lawyer asked. So Jesus asks him what the Law of Moses says, and he quotes the statutes correctly: Love God, and love your neighbor. So then Jesus tells him to go do it. Knowledge begets action. If you know what the right choice is, then you have no excuse about why you have not done it. This lawyer knows what the Law says, but he does not want to do it.

How do you love God? How is it that one goes about this business of loving the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind? What does this mean, in real life?

For a lot of people, love is a feeling. Warm fuzziness in your heart. Burning in your bosom. Affection for someone you only marginally know. Of course this is not limited to God as an object – this is the way people regard love toward their fellow man also. Which is why relationships – and even people themselves – become disposable. If the warm fuzzies go away, it is time to find something new that generates them. With respect to God, it means that you must continually find ways of generating a spiritual high, a mountaintop experience, in order to maintain that feeling that defines your relationship to Him.

You will find that quite a few people in this world pay great lip service to loving God, and maybe even to loving their neighbors. They talk the talk, they say things that sound nice and spiritual and kind. Sometimes they even say things that are true, at least in a general sense. But their words are empty – clanging gongs and blaring horns.

You may hear these sorts talk about spirituality and the Christian life in private terms. Doing your devotions. Private prayer. Quiet time with God. Feeling Jesus in your heart. Hearing the voice of the Spirit inside you. It does not matter about the assembly of the saints, the crowd of the poor and the sick and the downtrodden who show up to be healed and fed and clothed.

But what does the Law say? “You shall 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 your neighbor as yourself.” This is the whole substance of the Law. Do this, and you will live.

The priest and the Levite thought they were keeping the Law. They were keeping themselves holy and pure, so that they could do the spiritual things they were assigned to do.

They skirted wide around the half-dead man in the ditch, not wanting to get involved, to get their hands dirty, to get potentially defiled and become unclean. You might almost hear them say to themselves, I don't know this guy. If he is dead, I will not be able to do my job, to eat in my own house. It is not my problem. I don't owe him anything. Maybe I can tell someone about him when I get to the next town, and they can help him. I have more important things to worry about, like the Temple sacrifices and the synagogue.

The lawyer knows that Jesus is turning the screws on him, and he tries to wriggle away, asking, “And who is my neighbor?” This betrays his hard-heartedness. He tips his hand and shows that he really does not love God with his whole being, nor does he love his neighbor as he ought. For the question is not “Who is my neighbor?”, but “Who is not my neighbor?”

If you loved God with your whole heart, you would not need to ask this question, because you would love and serve anyone in need. You would feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, visit the captives, heal the sick, bind up the broken-hearted, and so on. There is no one who is not your neighbor, because every person is your fellow man, your brother from the seed of Adam, and a child beloved of God.

The love of God is not shown in warm fuzzies or in the amount of devotions you read. Your love of God is shown in whether you do what He commands. And what does He command? He commands you to love your neighbor, to serve him in his need, to care for him in body and soul, to provide for him out of what God has given to you.

Of course, sometimes it is easy to think that you have done this. You pay your taxes, so the poor can get welfare and Medicaid and food stamps. You give a few pennies here and there to the Salvation Army or the Goodwill or Lutheran World Relief. And so you think that you have helped your neighbor.

But when is the last time you encouraged a pastor who was wrongly driven from his congregation? When is the last time you prayed for your pastor? When is the last time you thought about the over 200 men in our Synod willing and able to serve, but languishing without calls? Or the seminarians who graduate each year with tens of thousands of dollars in student debt? Have you considered them among “the least of these” whom the Lord commands you to help and support?

Indeed, the Law will leave all of us in the ditch. The Law will beat you up, take your money, your spirit, your possessions, your good will and name, your so-called piety and devotion, your warm fuzzies – anything and everything. For that is what the Law demands – your everything. And it will leave you dead, because that is the price of the Law upon your sinful flesh and blood.

But do not despair! For Christ Jesus our Lord has come to bind up the broken in body and soul. He has come to pull the beaten and dead from the ditch, put them on the donkey, and carry them to safety. He has come to you, to bring you back from the dead, to heal your wounds and to make you whole again. He has come to do all this by dying for you. He has died upon your cross, so that you might live His life eternally.

He has come to you and poured the wine of gladness into you – His own true Blood, shed for you, for the forgiveness of your sins and the strengthening of your faith. He has come to you and poured the oil of healing and the oil of gladness upon you, that you might be anointed with the Holy Spirit, who will keep you in all truth unto life everlasting. He has come to carry you away from the Law's death sentence, setting you free from its curse by your share in His death. He has come to seek and save the lost. He has come to heal and comfort and strengthen the sick and lonely and oppressed and needy.

This is what it means to love God with your whole heart. Do unto the least of these your brethren the kindness which God commands, and so fulfill the law of love in the flesh. Show forth the Lord's death until He comes by showing forth His love and mercy and grace to those who are suffering. Live the life of the Baptized, loving and serving those who are in need.

God does not need your good works, but He commands that you do them. Your neighbor needs your good works desperately, but he cannot command that you do them. As St. James says, show that your love for God is genuine by showing your love for the brethren, even the least of these. And the God of peace will strengthen you to do all good works whatsoever He has prepared for you to do, that you may walk in His ways.

Lord of glory, You have bought us

With Your life-blood as the price,

Never grudging for the lost ones

That tremendous sacrifice.

Give us faith to trust You boldly,

Hope, to stay our souls on You;

But, oh, best of all Your graces,

With Your love our love renew. (LSB 851.4)

In the name of Jesus. Amen.