The Road to Jericho

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho…”

There’s a road between Jerusalem and Jericho. It’s a real road, it is steep, rocky, and can be quite dangerous. It winds through desert and hills. It’s about 17 miles long. People knew it back then as a place where bad things could happen. Bandits would ambush and attack and rob you. You traveled it at your own risk, particularly if you traveled alone.

But this road is also something more than just a way to get from Jerusalem to Jericho. It’s a picture of life in this broken and sinful world. Imagine it as the road we all walk today as we journey through our lives here on earth. Just like this road in Israel, the road of life can sometimes be filled with bad things and there are times when we have all felt ambushed and attacked.

Today, in our Gospel reading from Luke, Jesus tells a parable to help us see it clearly.

This is one of Jesus’ most familiar parables. Is it the most familiar? I don’t know, it would be a tight race between this parable we have before us today and the parable of the prodigal son.

The parable of the Good Samaritan we read earlier is so well known that organizations around the world are named after the Samaritan. Good Samaritan Hospital; Samaritan’s Purse, heck, even Good Sam Club, the company that supports RV owners. It is named after the good Samaritan. This parable has influenced so many things and continues to do so even today.

Everyone here knows the story well, and I think most people usually see it as a story about morals and helping our neighbor, right? Be like the Samaritan. Do good and help others. Be kind. Be compassionate. That’s what we’ve been told. And those things are true and taught in this story… but only to a point. If we stop there, we miss the deeper truth Jesus is showing us.

So I want to take us down this road again. And I want to show you something:

In this story, you’re not the priest. You’re not the Levite. I hate to break this to you all, but you’re certainly not the Good Samaritan. You’re the man beaten, lying half dead in the ditch.

Our parable starts with a question asked by a lawyer—a religious expert—he stands up and asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Yall are all smart and I know you get this. You read that question and right away you see the problem. “What must I do to inherit…” That doesn’t make sense. You don’t do something to inherit something. You inherit because of a relationship. You inherit because of grace.

Let’s back up from that just a little bit though for some more context. This man, this lawyer, is trying to test Jesus. Luke records that for us. Our reading begins with “a lawyer stood up to put him to the test”. So Jesus turns it around asking a question that this lawyer, this expert in the Torah, in the Law, should know the answer to: “What’s written in the Law?”

As we would expect from someone who is well versed in the Law, the man answers pretty well citing two passages from the Torah: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind... and love your neighbor as yourself.”

This guy just summed up the whole Ten Commandments for us here. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind” that is the first table. The first three commandments concerning our relationship vertically with God. “and love your neighbor as yourself” handles the second table. The last seven commandments that address our relationships horizontally with each other.

Jesus tells him, “You’re right. Do this and you will live.”

This lawyer isn’t satisfied though and pushes it a little further. He wants to narrow it down some. He want’s to make it more managable. He also wants to justify himself. He asks: “Who is my neighbor?”

And that’s when Jesus tells the parable.

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho…”

That’s you. That’s me. That’s every person born into this fallen world. We go out from the city of God, and we walk this road of life... and we get jumped.

Sin jumps us. Death jumps us. Shame, guilt, regret—they rob us of our joy, strip us of our confidence, beat us down, and leave us lying there—half-dead in the ditch.

And we can’t get up on our own.

Then come the “helpers.” A priest walks by. Then a Levite. Religious people. Good people. Church people. People you’d think would help. But they cross over to the other side.

Why? Well, we aren’t directly told here, but we can infer a few things. See, these two groups, the priest and the Levite would have been working in the Temple in Jerusalem. They could very possibly be traveling from Jericho to Jerusalem to carry out their roles in the temple.

This guy is lying there in the ditch, if they were to touch him it would make them ceremonially unclean and unable to fulfill their duties in the temple. They are quite possibly doing what they think is right by keeping the Law.

And that there is the root of the problem Jesus is laying out before this Lawyer. The Law, on its own, can’t help you. The Law can show you your wounds. It can point out what’s broken. It can show your sin like a mirror shows your reflection, but rules and rituals, good as they may be, can’t heal your brokenness.

And then, a Samaritan comes along.

Now that would’ve shocked Jesus’ listeners. Samaritans were despised by the Jews of Jesus’ day. They were outsiders. They were heretics. The last person you'd expect to stop and help.

These feelings of animosity don’t run one way either, the Samaritans felt the same way about the Jews. These two groups really did not get along. In fact, while this parable is clearly aimed at our lawyer friend, I think Jesus is also teaching his own disciples a lesson.

Just a few weeks ago, on June 29, our Gospel reading was from Luke 9. In that reading, a Samaritan village did not receive Jesus because he was traveling to Jerusalem. The people in this village despised the Jews so badly anyone going to Jerusalem wasn’t welcome to stay there. James and John see this and they ask Jesus if they should just blast this village Sodom and Gomorrah style with fire from Heaven. Jesus rebukes them then, but I think he’s gonna use this parable to make a point to his disciples again.

And Jesus says of the Samaritan that “He had compassion” and everything changes.

The one everybody expected to pass by… this no good, outsider. The one nobody thought would help. This Samaritan draws near. He binds up the man’s wounds. He pours on oil and wine. He lifts him up, puts him on his own animal, and takes him to an inn. He stays with him. He pays for his care and promises to come back and cover any other expenses.

You know who that is now? That’s Jesus.

He’s the one who sees you. He’s the one who stops and helps you when life kicks you in the gut and leaves you half dead in the ditch. He’s the one who binds up your wounds—not with oil and wine, but with his Word and Sacrament.

He covers you with grace. He covers you with mercy. He covers you with love.

He lifts you out of the ditch, carries you, and he pays the full price for your healing—on the cross.

Now, consider the inn and the innkeeper. That’s a picture of the Church. Jesus brings you to his Church, where you’re cared for, nourished, and restored. Then on top of that, he says, “Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.” He cares for our needs as he pulls us out of the ditch, but keeps caring for our needs going forward.

You see, the parable of the Good Samaritan is not just a story about being nice. It’s a story about being rescued.

We are the wounded one. We are the dying one. We are the one in the ditch, and Jesus is our Savior.

We don’t need to justify ourselves. We don’t need to prove our worth. We just need to be found by the one who has compassion.

Now, this parable is full of Law and Gospel connections that are easy to get confused and turned around. That’s what our lawyer has backwards. That is also something we do a pretty good job of handling here in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod - the proper distinction between Law and Gospel.

What is easy to forget is you have to read the Torah, actually the whole Old Testament, as the book of God’s gracious election of his people despite their sin, and not as some kind of a “how to” book about earning merit before God. If one loses sight of the dominance of God’s grace in the Torah, then the focus shifts from the inheritance God freely gives to his people, to the deeds people do.

An easy way to do this is by paying attention to who does the verbs. If you are doing the verb, it’s the Law talking. If God is doing the verb, it’s the Gospel. That is the big flaw in the lawyers question “what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He’s assuming he can do something to inherit eternal life and completely misses that it is freely given to us out of God’s grace.

Another easy mistake for us to make would be to moralize the Good Samaritan story, so that it becomes an encouragement to help our needy neighbors. I’ve heard sermons like that. You probably have too. That kind of interpretation, that this is all just about helping our neighbors, would turn this parable of God’s grace and the Gospel into a sermon about the Law. The interpretation of the parable must be Christological and stay focused on what Christ is doing for us while we are lying in the ditch half dead in our own sins.

But, once you’ve been rescued… once you’ve been healed and restored… then you begin to see the world differently. You start to notice the other people lying in the ditch.

You see them in your neighborhood. You see them at school. You see them in your family. Wounded by sin. Beaten down by life. Maybe smiling on the outside, but inside they are barely hanging on.

And now you know what to do. Not because you’re trying to earn your salvation. But because you’ve already been rescued.

You love—because you’ve been loved. You help—because he helped you. You stop—because he stopped for you.

I don’t know who, but I heard someone say once, “The Church is not a country club for saints. It’s a hospital for sinners.” That’s pretty good. This is the inn. This is where the broken and bruised come to heal. This is where Jesus meets us, feeds us, restores us, and gives us rest.

So in our parable when you hear Jesus say, “Go and do likewise,” He’s not telling you to fix yourself. He’s not giving you another command or a new Law to live by. He’s inviting you to live out of the grace you’ve received and to walk the road to Jericho with open eyes. To kneel down beside the hurting. To comfort those who are struggling. To share the love that first found you and loved you.

Because Jesus is the Good Samaritan. And you—you and I are the ones in the ditch.

But now… Now you’ve been rescued. Now you’ve been made whole. Now you belong to Him. And He’s not done with you yet.

Amen.