“JESUS COMPASSIONS YOU”
Saint Luke 10: 23-37
13th Sunday after Trinity: 6 September Anno Domini 2020
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
You are not the “12.” You weren’t there. But blessed are the Saints living now in 2020, and blessed are your ears which hear the things you hear.
Peter and the others were spoken to privately that momentous day. Every day In The Lord is a momentous day. Rejoice!
This morning The Christ turns to you, not privately, but publicly; not just you and your Gideon Bible and your heart, but to His family, His flock, His Church Catholic!
Do you not know that the Prophets Elias, Esaias, Jeremias, and Daniel have not heard the things (which they desired to hear) which you hear? You hear the Evangels, Saint Luke. You hear the Epistle of the great Saint Paul. You hear Saint’s John, Peter, James, and Jude. Do you not know that the “apple of God’s eye, His anointed, King David longed to hear, but did not, the very Words of THE Anointed. You hear the verba of Messias in the Sacrament and are graced to see The Peace of God which passeth all understanding elevated at the New Testament Altar. You are favored and gifted to taste The God of David—The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in way that the great Patriarchs, the Greater Moses, and the King were not so privileged to do.
God tells a parable. Jesus uses a story of truth to show Himself as truth—the only answer to your falsehood.
A lawyer stood up to The Christ and did not recognize or believe that He was The Christ. He challenged Jesus; tried to trip up the Rabbi from Nazareth. The question itself is really the only question that matters. So, in that sense, the lawyer asked the only thing worth asking. “What shall I do to inherit eternal life.” The goal of an eternity with God is the only goal. It can only be achieved, not by achievement, but by inheritance. But then he goes and ruins his question by including the clause “what shall I DO.”
The answer is of course nothing. There is nothing a dead man can do to become alive. There is nothing an enemy of God, a pagan, an unbeliever, can do to become a follower and friend and believer in God.
Our Master tries to help the lawyer by asking him what does Moses say, what is written in the Law? But for the hardhearted, even for the Lutheran who deals every day with his/her own hard old-Adam heart, the Law as mere verbiage does not always instantly produce contrition and repentance. It didn’t with David when caught in the web of his own Bathsheba affair. It took Pastor Nathan telling a parable about a sheep, a little lamb.
So, David and Nathan’s God tells another parable, this time about a Samaritan.
Dispensing with the details of the story which all speak to man’s sin and The Lord’s gifts of Church and Sacraments…of His Word of promise and completion, we will simply reiterate that all parables are about Jesus and/or His Kingdom. You are not the subject of the story, nor the hero, nor even the student who learns a valuable and proverbial lesson which will allow you to “do what needs to be done.” You can’t do what needs to be done. You, if you have to put yourself into the parable, are the half-dead (though you were really full-dead) man on the way to Jericho that winds up beaten, bloody, naked, and lying in a ditch—a hellish ditch. You are the ones that walk by and ignore the victims. You are also the lawyer at the end of the story that still doesn’t quite get it. Jesus’ final words are again words of LAW: “Go, and do thou likewise.”
The lawyer could not love unconditionally. The lawyer could not love God perfectly nor love his neighbor perfectly. Neither can you. This is not a positive morale-boosting Sunday School lesson to motivate you to outreach, soup kitchen volunteering, or greater stewardship giving.
The Good News from Saint Luke is Jesus The Good Samaritan coming and finding you the dead fatality of Satan, Sin, and The World, and saving your life.
A Samaritan was an undesirable; outside the hypocritical Pharisaism of the 1st century; barred from the synagogues of the Jews and the Temple of the Sadducees. Jesus came keeping the Real Law of Loving with all His heart, His soul, His strength, and His mind. You see that when He spoke with gentiles, Samaritans, women, cripples, lepers, and whores. You hear about His love and compassion for all those who are without love, compassion, family, health, and peace. Jesus touches the diseased and infected. Jesus raises the dead from death. Jesus gives His strength to the cross, His soul to suffering, His mind to death, and His heart to a Roman spear head.
“Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among thieves; that fell to sin, death, and Satan?”
“He that shewed mercy on him.”
That’s it! That’s the parable! That’s the Gospel! That’s Jesus: Mercy. Mercy for you.
The story, the truth is over 2,000 years old. The first telling of it is ancient—past. But the actual mercy is right now. The compassion for you is this morning. Your wounds have been cleansed in Holy Baptism and sealed with the oil of constant Absolution in Jesus’ Word. You will now be given the Wine of Peace and Strength in The Very, True, and Real Blood of Jesus.
Blessed are you which see and hear and taste these things.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
Email the webmaster.Contact Augsburg Lutheran Church: (913) 403-6194