We've been talking about this man
who came to Jesus
wanting to know what he needed to do
to inherit eternal life.
We're told that he was a lawyer
and so we shouldn't be surprised
that he did what lawyers so often do.
Knowing that he couldn't live up to the expectations
of God's commands, he went looking for a loophole.
He wanted to see if there was any wiggle room
in one specific word.
He asked Jesus,
So that's when Jesus told this story,
that we know as the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
There was a man who was traveling
from Jerusalem to Jericho.
Not a long journey
but one that was known to be a treacherous one.
And sure enough, he fell into the hands of robbers.
They beat him up, took everything he had
and left him by the side of the road to die.
Shortly thereafter,
a priest came walking by, but,
rather than helping out, he passed by on the other side.
Then, shortly after, a Levite.
Only, he did the same.
Now realize the masterful scene
that Jesus is setting up here.
This lawyer had asked about that word "neighbor."
A neighbor is someone who
lives in close proximity to you.
Someone who shares things in common with you.
Someone whose life occupies
some of the same space as yours.
And the man was really asking
just how how close someone needed to be
in order for him to be obligated to help him out.
Well, by any definition of the term "neighbor,"
the priest and the Levite in Jesus' story
were neighbors to the man dying there
on the side of the ditch.
For starters, they were both Jews, just like he was.
They shared a race, a culture, a religion with him.
Secondly, it seemed as though they lived in Jericho,
just like he did.
By any definition of the term,
they were obligated to help this man out.
They were his neighbor.
And yet they found reason
to pass by on the other side.
Who knows? Maybe they thought the man deserved it.
He had been traveling that treacherous road
all by himself without protection.
Maybe they thought it would have cost them too much,
that that helping him out was too great an investment
of time and money.
Maybe they thought the risk was too great.
Maybe they wondered whether those robbers
were still hanging around
just looking for their next target.
Do some of those excuses sound familiar?
You see, within our hearts,
we are harboring the very same religion
that that lawyer was.
One that depends on our obedience to God's commands.
Then, we, too, will inevitably
try to lower the standards
and go looking for loopholes.
We'll maybe say that the cost of helping someone out
is too great that we can't afford it.
We'll maybe talk about the risk and wonder whether
our help will be taken advantage of or abused.
We'll perhaps use it as an excuse to
sort of celebrate our own superiority over the person.
We'll say:
"They got themselves into that mess, they can get themselves out."
I warned you that this kind of self-analysis
isn't always fun or easy.
And yet Jesus wants to point out the symptoms
of this problem so that
we can see if this kind of religion
is really what is running and ruling in our hearts.
Like any skilled physician,
Jesus simply wants to diagnose the problem
so that he can then lovingly apply its only cure.
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