THE GOOD SAMARITAN-ALL CHURCH RETREAT SEPTEMBER 9, 2018

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1 THE GOOD SAMARITAN-ALL CHURCH RETREAT SEPTEMBER 9, 2018 A great quote is attributed to Albert Einstein. It may be apocryphal, but it sure sounds like something the brilliant scientist would say. The quote is, If I had one hour to solve a problem, I d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes working on the solution. Albert Einstein is advocating for the power of reframing the question. Einstein knows what we all probably know deep down in our souls. It s a lot easier to get the right answers to the wrong questions. When the problem is why I am not making enough money, the real question might be why do I spend so much money in areas which lead me to not have enough money? When the problem is how come my kid always screams at the grocery store around lunch time? The real question might be why do I insist on taking my kids to the grocery store at lunch time when they are hungry and cranky? When the problem is why do the 49ers always show so much promise but never end up winning? The real question might be why am I not rooting for the Cowboys? This is the power of reframing the question. Focusing on the real problem before trying to find the right answer. It is making sure we aren t getting the right answers to the wrong questions. It s why there is candy and magazines at the check-out line at the grocery store. The problem has been reframed from why is this line so long to what kind of candy should I eat while I read People magazine. This is the power of reframing the question and no one did this better than Jesus. I want to show you a story today where Jesus takes a man on a wild journey of reframing. This man starts with possibly the biggest question facing any thoughtful human, What must I do to inherit eternal life? For any person that has considered their own mortality or their relationship to the divine, this is the question to end all questions. Jesus takes this question and

2 takes it on a set of twisty turning reframing processes, and he gives this man an answer that blows his mind. Luke 10:25-27 An expert in the law, this is a man who knows his stuff backwards and forwards. We have talked about this before, but a Jewish boy was well-versed in the scriptures. By the time they came of age, they were to have memorized the Pentateuch. That is the first five books of the Bible not five verses or five chapters. A 13-year-old was supposed to memorize Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. I know this is before Netflix and video games, but this is still a huge endeavor. Every 13-year-old Jewish boy was supposed to know the first five books of the Bible by heart. That is the baseline. So to be called an expert in the law meant way more than memorizing the first five books. This man had dedicated his life to knowing the scriptures. Thus far, Jesus hasn t particularly reframed anything, but he has gained understanding into this man s worldview. He has reframed in a sense because he has flipped the question back to the man. What is written in the law? If you are an expert, then tell me what you think? The man quotes Leviticus 19:18. It is a verse that Jesus will say in another passage is the summation of the law. He says that is the only thing that matters. Everything else is details, if you love God and love your neighbors, then everything else is secondary and tertiary. Let s keep reading. Luke 10:28-29 Jesus applauds this man. He says you have the right answer. Do this and you will find life, but the man is a minutiae nut. He is a nut for the fine print. A key phrase comes out of this story. This man asked who his neighbor was because he was looking to justify himself. Jesus read between the lines here and realized this man had the right answer to the wrong question, so he decided to take him on a twisty-turn journey of reframing.

3 My mom has gotten really good at this as a grandma. We call her up to complain or ask for advice about one of our children who is acting wild or disobedient. Without offering answers, she states that it s great to raise a child who will be a leader. I think, Mom, that s not what I was asking or complaining about. The secret is my mom knows I am looking for the right answer to the wrong question. How do I correct an annoying habit in my child now when the ultimate goal is to raise high-functioning leaders of people? I m trying to squeeze the individuality and tenacity out of my children so I can get some rest. She reframes it towards the bigger goal of what kind of adults my kids will be. Jesus saw this man. He really saw him, and this man wasn t asking the right question even though it seemed like the right question. Jesus told him a story that exposed several of his assumptions. Luke 10:30-35 This is a passage I m sure you have heard before, and it is loaded with powerful details. A man was walking on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem. This was a known dangerous path. This 18- mile road from Jerusalem to Jericho became a highly-trafficked road for travelers and commerce. Even though Jericho was northeast of Jerusalem, it was said you were going down to Jericho. That was literal and figurative. Jerusalem was at a higher elevation so you were descending, but you were also heading down to the Dead Sea and heading into dangerous territory. Because there was so much traffic on this road, there were a lot of opportunistic thieves who robbed people on this route. It was a known problem, so much so that Roman soldiers were positioned along the road to help stop bandits. Jesus started here to reframe the question. To tease out this man s worldview about right and wrong, sin and blame, he started with someone foolish enough to take this road towards the Dead Sea.

4 I told the story a couple years back in church about how I took my wife and kids to San Francisco to look at some art galleries, and I proceeded to share where we went based on the street locations. I also lamented the obvious drug-dealing, decay and dangerous atmosphere. Only afterwards did someone come up to me and say, Why did you take your kids to the Tenderloin? What did you expect? Jesus was setting this man up by playing with his ideas about responsibility and righteousness. This man put himself in peril and he kind of got what he deserved. It is not stated in the text, but it will get teased out in a moment. The question in the air at this moment was who is my neighbor? Who should I help? I am guessing this man was thinking that Jesus might ask him, Would you be a good neighbor to this man even though he got robbed because of his own negligence of taking this perilous road? Jesus wasn t done yet. He hadn t even gotten to the heart of the issue. This man had the right answer to the wrong question. You know how this story proceeds. The man was lying down on the side of the road nearing death. A priest and a Levite passed by on the other side. The text makes it clear they saw the man and walked by on the other side. Now lest you think this is simple laziness or a lack of compassion, these men probably had good reasons for what they did. Good religious reasons. A priest would preside in the temple, and a Levite was like a super priest. They were in charge of the temple. This is like saying a pastor and a bishop to use our modern language. Jesus is upping the ante. The priest doesn t help and the super priest doesn t help either, but with good reason. Good religious reasons. Numerous passages in the law forbade people from coming into contact with blood or dead bodies. This man on the side of the road was definitely bloody and quite possibly dead. If you came into contact with a dead body or blood, you were unclean for seven days. You could be made clean again, but you definitely couldn t go into the temple. Numbers 19:13 says that if they did not purify themselves within a certain amount of time, they would defile the temple of God and be cut off from Israel. That is bad news for a priest or Levite. Especially if you don t

5 know how long you have to stay with this man and oversee his affairs. You might not make it back in time. You might be forever unclean. You might defile the temple and be cut off. They had good reasons, good religious reasons. Jesus is reframing the whole problem. He is exposing a conundrum that leads people to wrong answers to the right questions and the right answers to the wrong questions. If the totality of the law is loving God and loving others, yet keeping other laws means you are unable to fulfill these great commandments, you have a mind-bending problem. By working their way back to God, this Levite and this priest were getting further away from God. A friend of mind recently sent me an article about parts of the Navy Seals training regimen. They put these men and women through the most rigorous training and only a few make it to the end. They test their physical, emotional and intelligence quotients to the max. One of their tests is being tied up around their hands and their feet and thrown into the deep end of the pool. The only goal, don t die. What would you do? A lot of them try and wiggle and swim without the availability of arms or legs. Like a water snake they try and thrash and make it to the surface. They tire themselves out and eventually pass out. It s the right answer to the wrong question. They think the goal is to make it to the top when in all actuality the goal is to make it to the bottom. A little inside secret for you if you ever get thrown into a pool with your hands and feet bound. You allow yourself to go to the bottom, and then push back up to the top. Get some air and go down again, and wait for help. The priests and Levites were drowning in the law. They had allowed things to get so complicated that they were thrashing to get to the top. Their hands and feet were bound by the law and they didn t realize the real answer was to go down not up. They don t realize help is waiting for them if they will simply give up. Finally, the great piece de resistance comes at the end, the Samaritan. In the eyes of any faithful Jew, Samaritans were guilty of mixing races and mixing religions. Some point to the

6 beginning of the Samaritans to the Babylonian s exile. When the Jews were conquered by the Babylonians some 600 years before, they were sent away from Israel to the far reaches of Babylon so they would assimilate to Babylonian life. They didn t conquer and occupy. They conquered and deported in hopes of assimilation. They wanted them to become Babylonian. Many times, it worked. Many Jews intermarried with Gentiles in these foreign lands and took on parts of their religions. That s where we get the Samaritans. They were half Jewish by blood and half Jewish by religion. They believed in Yahweh, but they believed in worshipping him in a different way at a different place, Mt. Gerizim. They were the hardest kind of outsiders. The ones who were kind of like you but not really. This man whose ancestors mixed blood lines and corrupted theology is the hero of the story. Jesus is reframing again. The hero wasn t a priest or a super priest or Levite. He was an outsider. A man who not only stopped and helped but put the man up in a hotel and payed for his care with the promise to pay for any future medical bills. I told you earlier this whole conversation started with the question, how do I inherit eternal life? Love the Lord and love your neighbor. Who is my neighbor? At that point, the man might guess this is a moral question. Should I help this man? It was his own fault because he went on that dangerous road? Jesus didn t stop there. Should I help a man that would make me unclean and violate my religion and make me unclean? But he doesn t stop there because he makes the hero an outsider. Here is the wild part. Jesus didn t answer his question at least not in the way he originally asked it. Who is my neighbor? Luke 10:36-37 Who was a neighbor to this man, the one who showed mercy? But that wasn t the question. It started with the expert in the law asking Jesus, Who is my neighbor? It ended with Jesus asking, Who acted like a neighbor?

7 This is the grandest reframing of all. Jesus flipped the direction of neighboring and compassion. This is the gospel story writ large. The man who was seeking to justify himself asks what he can do to inherit eternal life? Jesus then allows him to say, Love God and love your neighbor. He goes on to show how difficult and nearly impossible that is to do from a human vantage point. Like a person with his hands tied behind his back and dropped in the deep end of a pool, he will thrash and drown under the weight of the law of accomplishment and self-righteousness. Jesus flipped the script by changing the direction of the neighboring. If you haven t guess it yet, Jesus is the Samaritan in this story and this expert in the law is the beaten, bloodied and unclean man on the side of the road. Jesus stopped to show him unmerited favor. Jesus bound up his wounds and comforted him. Jesus put him on a donkey and took him to an innkeeper. Jesus paid the price for his healing and offered to pay more. This man started out with the right answer to the wrong question. What can I do to inherit eternal life? The right answer to the wrong question is love God and love people, but apart from the unmerited favor of God through Jesus Christ this is an impossible task. This is the right answer to the right question. At this time, Jesus was an outsider. He was seemingly the illegitimate product of unwed parents, who grew up as a carpenter, socialized with the least among society and died as a traitor and a heretic. He is a good Samaritan if I have ever heard of one. He is the unlikely hero who binds up our wounds and pays the price so we can live. How can I inherit eternal life? There are a lot of right answers to that wrong question, be good, be religious, keep the rules. But the right question is, how can I be made right with God? The answer is that God alone through his unmerited favor and grace binds up our wounds and brings us home.