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Read Luke 10:29-37
(vs 29) Wanting to justify himself, he (The Priest) asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
There are no allegories in the scripture parables. There's no hidden mysterious interpretations that must be revealed by means of riddles, numerology, or formulaic logic. One may make broader application of a particular point being made, but all the parables are about salvation and very clearly express propositional points. And they explain themselves from within the parable. They're personal evangelism stories given to specific people to make a particular point. Typically they occur when a lawyer, scribe, or priest is not interested in the truth but trying to trap Jesus with his own words. In today's experience, we'd say they set him up with a gotcha question, it's a hit piece.
Here the priest is hoping to spin the idea of a neighbor. He's not interested in Jesus' idea of what a neighbor is, he's justified his entire existence on defining his neighbor by their uncleanliness. He's not concerned about his salvation or his own justification. He wants to catch Jesus in the act of loving the wrong things.
The priest loves God and has built an elite life of godliness for himself to prove it to himself. He has virtuously hated for God. He self righteously hates those who God hates. He hates the things God hates. He loves God so much he perfectly hates everything God hates. He has perverted Gods love so much in his religiosity that his focus is now only on what violates God's love. In his life of right and wrong, he's fully committed to the truth of what is wrong.
And so, Jesus is attempting personal evangelism with him, he's trying to reach past this loveless hardhearted self righteousness. Jesus tells a story about a man traveling along a very dangerous road who is assaulted by thieves. Jesus knows the scripture that the priest knows which says that one must love mercy, and love the stranger. So Jesus tells about a priest who came along that road and he sees the wounded man there and passes along on the other side of the road. He tells this story about the priest for the benefit of the priest to whom he was speaking. The hope is that the priest will see the truth in what the priest in the story is doing , or not doing.
Jesus knows that the priest knows the words of the prophet Micah...
Micah 6:6-8
"With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."
...and he tells about a man that is beaten half to death, robbed, and left for dead, and here comes a priest.
The priests of his time loved the priesthood, they loved themselves, they loved their religion, the things that held their hearts were the things of the priesthood and its self righteous systems. So Jesus tells about one priest coming along and seeing the half dead man and he passes by on the other side of the road. Why? To avoid touching an unclean thing? Maybe. Or maybe he was simply a coward. Maybe he feared for his own safety after seeing the wounded man. Whatever the reason, the priest did not show mercy, he didn't seek justice, he doesn't walk humbly with God. Instead he walks away.
This priest doesn't love God, if he did he'd love the half dead man. Jesus goes on to describe a holy man and a judge who also pass by. Jesus indicts the entire Hebrew religious community in this tale. All three from the religious establishment have no love for anyone but themselves. No love for the stranger, none for their enemies, especially Samaritans, and no love for God.
Then Jesus describes a man of lavish extraordinary love who comes along and rescues the wounded man off the road. And to make matters worse he's a Samaritan man. He binds the man's wounds with his own clothes. Puts him on his own animal. And he intimately deals with the situation. Up close and personal. And he does so with amazing generosity. This isn't handing out a meal at the local food pantry. This isn't social justice or Liberation theology. This is a man loving another as he would love himself. He treats him like he'd want to be treated. He LAVISHES love on him. He literally pours out limitless love on a man he doesn't even know. And promises more if need be. No limitations, no expectations, no virtue-signaling, just pure love.
So I imagine a short pause for the story to sink in, then Jesus moves closer to the priest, looks him in the eyes, and Jesus asks...(vs 36) “Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”
The priest answers correctly...(vs 37) “The one who showed mercy to him,”
Raise your hand if you think the priest has NEVER loved a stranger like that. Jesus convicts the holy man by revealing his love for hatred. His love for discrimination. His love for focusing on hating unclean. In all the priests efforts to be perfected in his godliness, he never fails to hate the unclean. He loves to hate the unclean. His love for God is to hate the unclean. He perfectly hates unclean things and people, all for the love of God.
And here's the evangelist Jesus convicting him about this lack of mercy. And Jesus hopes that the priest can somehow see how he has misunderstood the righteousness of his personal truths and love for God. So Jesus drops the Mike and simply says...
(vs 37) Then Jesus told him, “Go and do the same.”
Following this there's a huge hole in the Bible. We see this hole a lot in the gospels. Holes where people encounter Jesus and he drops the truth bomb on them and then instructs them to go and do something. We don't know what most of them did. We don't know what Nicodemus did. We don't know what this priest here in the Samaritan parable did. We don't know know what the rich young ruler did. So many people encounter Jesus the evangelist and they go away.
We're left wondering because these stories also convict us. And they also instruct us to go and do something. And maybe we're supposed to discover what they did by seeing what we do, or don't do. These stories are about evangelism and the evangelist sparks an interest in something for the listener to take to heart. What they do with it is often the work of others. And so it goes in every salvation story, salvation has to be worked out.
The truth drops...the listener hears the word...a seed is planted, and the rest of the story is the rest of your life.
Extra credit:
Imagine a perfect good Samaritan like love that not only lives in the way that he did, but also seeks the redemption of The Priest, The Levite, The Judge, and even those who robbed the man. That love is God's love. That's Jesus' love. His perfect love loves them all.