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Today's parable is the "God Samaritan." It isn't about you or me, or our works of obedience and love. This Gospel is about Jesus and what He did, does, and will always do for you. That's why it's called "Gospel."

This morning the Christ turns towards you. His disciples, and says: "blessed are [your] eyes which see the things you see."

By nature you are a "lawyer." Your (ever-present) sinful "self" delights in asking endless questions, posing interminable paradoxes and refusing all decisions save those which can be verified empirically. You are not trained in English common law or continental code law, but you are schooled by your fallen nature in the art of self-righteousness. You daily "cross examine" the Lord's will with weak faith, doubts fueled by laziness with respect to the Scriptures, and hypocritical self-justification. Your "old Adam " "tests" the Savior constantly by denying just how bad you really are. "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" The question wouldn't be so bad but for the two little words: "I DO."

The Lord attempted to steer the lawyer away from "self" to "Savior" by asking for a summary of the Torah. Jesus wanted him (and you) to see how impossible it was to keep the perfect will of God by oneself, apart from an existence in Christ by faith. On the surface, the young man answered perfectly. You do the same thing when you pull out your long-forgotten and dust-covered blue Catechism and orally read the 10 Commandments. It's not hard to say the Law. But to speak Torah is different than to "DO" Torah. The lawyer said nothing that a 14 year old doesn't say when being examined prior to confirmation. The summary of the Decalogue is correct: Love the Lord and Love your neighbor as yourself. The lawyer in all of you is quick to articulate these "religious" precepts, but then smiles smugly to itself thinking that it's doing a pretty good job. You come to church every Sunday. You don't worship Allah or pray with Sikhs. You pray "come Lord Jesus" before every meal---even those in public at Applebee's. Read the Law again. Hear it thundering from Sinai, lightning flashing, smoke bellowing, rocks quaking: "Love God perfectly..." fear love and trust in God above all things...all the time...even when you and your loved ones are sinking beneath the waves...even when the diagnosis is cancer...even when the pink slip has been placed in your hand or the sheriff's at the door to inform you about your child's fatal automobile accident. Love God perfectly. You fail. The punishment is death. Hear it again. "Love your neighbor as yourself." Don't ever lose your temper, covet, steal money, time or affections, harbor an illicit sexual thought, utter a slanderous word, talk about a friend behind his back, disobey a parent or fail to help anyone in their time of need. You fail here too and you know it. The lawyer in Luke chapter 10 didn't. The Lord said to him, "do these laws and you will live." The tragedy is that the lawyer, like the Pharisees and Sadducee's, thought he was "loving" at the appropriate level to "live."

It's much easier to "appear" to keep the first table of the law---loving God perfectly. One can go through the appropriate outward actions. Nobody can read one's mind; nobody except God; except Jesus. Our Lord knew what was in the heart of this young lawyer. He knows what is really in your heart.

It's harder to fool people with regards to the second table of the law---loving one's neighbor. It's here where the lawyer begins to feel the "bite" of the law. He knew what Jesus meant when the Lord said, "Do this and you will live." He had been caught. He had been "found out" as law-breaker, so he began to explain, excuse, and release himself: "wanting to justify himself, [he] said to Jesus, 'and who is my neighbor?'" "It depends on what you mean by 'is'." Or how about "did God really say?" We always try to lie and "wheedle" our way out of responsibility, trouble, accountability and the penalties for not obeying the law. Define "down" whom the neighbor is and it becomes easier to comply. Do I really have to love the atheist, Palestinian militant, pan-handling street person, abortionist, homosexual rights activist, pentecostaloon, Hollywood pervert, and the noisy and disruptive resident of Faith Village? You know the answer. The Lord's parable had the lawyer admitting that even a despised and ceremonially "unclean" Samaritan could be one's neighbor.

Jesus leaves this hard hearted unbelieving lawyer with the law: "Go and do likewise."

And that is the point. He couldn't and you can't. You cannot love God the way you are required to. But Jesus could, and did. You cannot love your foul and stinking neighbors, because in reality you are just like them, sinner. But Jesus could, and did. His perfect love for God meant that Jesus kept all the commandments on your behalf. His perfect love for all of you meant that Jesus allowed Himself to be humiliated, tortured and executed on the cross as a criminal on your behalf. That's the point. Jesus is the Good Samaritan. He is the God Samaritan; the God/Man; the Suffering Servant.

In reality, our Lord can represent both characters in the parable. He is the one who for your sake was stripped, beaten and bloodied. To purchase you back from sin and death He suffered rejection, abandonment, and paid in blood. His own people. Scribes, Priests and Pharisees, "scurried" past Him. He came not only for the stiff necked Jews but for the Samaritans; for the Greeks, Romans and even the Germans.

The real point is that Jesus is the finder, the helper, the rescuer of all those who fall afoul of the bandits in this life of sin. When the devil, your flesh, and the world leave you dying in the ditch...dying because you can't keep the law, neither table, any of it...Jesus comes to you humble and lowly, riding on a donkey, a Man of Sorrows, still as despised today as the Samaritans were 2,000 years ago. He cleans your festering wounds with water from His side, with the Wine which is His blood. He gives you the oil of His word, the salve that creates faith and seals it in for eternity. He carries you to His Church where He entrusts you to the under-shepherd, the innkeeper of His New Testament Temple. He provides the two denarii of Law and Gospel which will keep you until He comes again.

Come Lord Jesus.