This passage indicts people like me, who like to study and quote the Bible.

I’m a scholar, like the scholar of the law who questions Jesus.

This person questioning Jesus is basically asking: Do I really have to DO what the bible says?

His question is familiar: “What must I do?”

Others have already asked this question sincerely in Luke’s gospel—at the Jordan river, John the Baptist preaching about transformation (Luke 3). The soldiers, the tax collectors, the multitudes asked John the Baptist, “What shall we do?” They were sincerely wanting to transform their lives.

But this scholar…not so much. His question is more a hypothetical. He wants to justify himself, checking all the boxes without really changing anything.

Maybe like the rich ruler in chapter 18 whose question is the same: What must I do to inherit eternal life? But, when he realizes what it takes, he walks away sorrowful.

He clearly doesn’t want to help the poor.

Today’s story is more open ended. We don’t know how the story ends. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”, the scholar asks, testing Jesus. So Jesus threw the question back at the scholar: “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” The lawyer correctly recites, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.”  Jesus says “good.” “If you do this, you will live.”

Both Jesus and this scholar know the Bible, they have studied the Bible. They know the commandment: love of neighbor, love of God. Do this, and you will LIVE. This is eternal life, true life. You will live.

But the problem is the scholar apparently doesn’t seem to want to know how to live it out. He can’t bring himself to see that eternal life means DOING what the Bible says– Reaching out to the concrete neighbor in need right next to you.

I turn to Preacher and visionary Clarence Jordan who lived in the 1950’s-‘60’s in the segregated South. He started Koinonia Farms, a radically inclusive community. He inspired Millard Fuller who started Habitat for Humanity, and much more. Clarence Jordan knew biblical Greek, he retranslated the New Testament into what he called The Cotton Patch version—when Jesus is born he is laid in an apple box instead of a manger, for example. This is what Clarence Jordan writes that the scholar’s response in Luke 10:

This young lawyer has just got out of law school and he had that question on his final exams, and he wanted to see if Jesus knew it. And Jesus said, “Well Colonel, how do you read it?” Jesus kinda threw it back at him. And this lawyer started spoutin’ it off. He’d learned it in class.

Jesus responded to his recitation by saying, “You’ve got it right, Colonel. You’ve got it right. You live that way and you will have life.”

‘Oh . . . now, I didn’t mean I was gonna live by it. I just love to quote it.’

“You know how some people quote scripture. They don’t mean any harm by it; they love to hear it. They just don’t want to live by it. (Clarence Jordan and Bill Lane Doulos, Cotton Patch Parables of Liberation, pp. 133–134)

That hits me hard. Quoting scripture, studying it, but not necessarily wanting to live by it. Yikes.

Then the scholar has a second question for Jesus, seeking to justify himself:

“Who is my neighbor?” This time, instead of throwing it back to the guy for another question, Jesus answers with a story. “Once upon a time….”

Stories grab us. Good stories stay in our minds. Or as Dan Erlander says, describing why he wrote picture books, “Most people had a trap door in the back of their head and that stories and pictures—and humor, but not necessarily doctrine or dogma— could sneak through this trap door into people’s hearts.” And then the story hooks us.

I hope the story persuaded the scholar, but we don’t know. It’s open-ended.

You know this story well.

In the story of the victim of a terrible mugging the first two people see but they don’t really see. The first two deliberately cross the road so as not to see him.

Only the Samaritan really saw. And that kind of seeing moves him to compassion.

The Greek word here for compassion is “splanchnizomai.” A very visceral word. Your splanchna are your guts, your “bowels.” In the King James translation,” the bowels of compassion,”  Your stomach feels it when you see someone in need, and have compassion.

In the Bible, it is first of all God who is moved with compassion. Jesus too is “moved with compassion” when he sees people in need: the desperate widow in need in Luke 7, and so many others. From the very outset of Luke’s Gospel, God is a God of compassion and mercy, who doesn’t look away from a world in need.

God is moved with compassion for us. This is what moves the Samaritan man also: Compassion.

The other key word here is “mercy,” what you sang in the liturgy, “kyrie eleison.” Eleison means “have mercy.” Mercy me. a favorite word of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. I love that in Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus doesn’t’ say “Be perfect” but rather “Be merciful.” Jesus doesn’t expect us to be perfect, but he does expect us to be merciful. God’s very name is mercy, writes Pope Francis.

We are here to mercy one another. In little and big ways Jesus in Luke’s gospel loves mercy. I think of Marvin Gaye’s song from 1971, “O Mercy mercy me.” lamenting the ills of our world: And then the refrain, “O Jesus Mercy mercy me.”

The good news of the whole Bible, of Jesus, especially of Luke’s gospel is that Jesus mercies us: God is merciful. And God teaches us to mercy one another, including a neighbor in need.

So Jesus tells a story, to try to help the scholar see what really is needful.

Clarence Jordan called these stories or parables, “Trojan horses,”

“A parable is something you use when the situation is very dangerous. You hide your truth in it; it’s sort of a literary Trojan horse. . . . Jesus used that kind of Trojan horse technique under certain circumstances . . . when the situation was dangerous, and when his hearers were difficult. When they would just stop up their ears and shut their eyes, and they wouldn’t hear and they wouldn’t see. Jesus would bring out a Trojan horse to ram it through their ears and get it beyond their blind eyes. (Clarence Jordan and Bill Lane Doulos, Cotton Patch Parables of Liberation, pp. 38, 40)

I know I need it,  to get beyond my blind eyes when I can’t move beyond just quoting scripture.

The other day I told my 93-yr old mother I was working on my sermon on the Good Samaritan story in Luke 10 and she said, “I love the good Samaritan! That is what I strive to be like.”

It’s true, she does. Growing up, she showed us. When we 5 kids grew up and moved out of the house, my mother welcomed refugee families to live in our rooms! I the basement. She got involved with Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. Giving money. She went around giving talks for Heifer Project, with a llama! Participating in advocacy. Giving money to the ELCA.

She taught us to bid up things at charity silent auctions, to help the charity get more money. Lutheran Peace Fellowship, Lutherans Restoring Creation, the Hunger Program. whatever. Bid it up, Barbara. Be generous! Give more. They need you, Barbara. They need you.

My mother doesn’t really like doctrines. She doesn’t like  the Apostles Creed because she doesn’t’ believe in the Virgin Birth. But she loves the Good Samaritan story. She strives to be like the Good Samaritan.  When you see the wounds of people, my mother showed us, respond. Show compassion. Strive to be like that Good Samaritan.

We you see a truck with 53 people who died locked inside is by the side of the road in Texas, isn’t this like the man who was mugged by robbers on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho? Aren’t you moved in your guts, in your splanchna? Aren’t you moved with compassion? These are our neighbors. Something is wrong. That’s what Jesus is trying to tell this scholar. You need to see.  When you see something is wrong; you respond in compassion,

 

We can’t do it alone, sometimes we need to work together politically, my mother will point out. Join Bread for the World. Sometimes we need to change the SYSTEM: Advocacy, ELCA Advocacy. Not just individually, but organizing.

My mother reminded me of the print she has on her wall of the Good Samaritan story by the Chinese painter James He Qi that she got at an ELCA global mission event. I don’t have that print but I brought a different one of the Last Supper. He portrays Jesus and all the characters as Asian, in beautiful colors, almost like stained glass.

The He Qi Good Samaritan print, so beautiful blues and reds, shows the man who picks up the hurt person, lays him on his donkey, and takes him to the inn. It’s a beautiful scene of compassion and mercy.

I hope the Good Samaritan story is one of your favorites too. I hope you know how to not just quote it but LIVE this teaching, better than me. I’m sure you do, in all the ministries you do.

This is what the scholar in this story had to learn: the neighbor is the one who showed mercy. The neighbor is the one who knows how to live out that kyrie eleison, the neighbor is the one who “eleison’s” people, who shows mercy.

Go thou and do likewise. I hope the man did it. We will never know, it’s an open ended story. Do this and you will live, Jesus says.

 

 

AMEN