The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 11, 2010
Solemn Mass
By the Reverend Stephen Gerth
Year C: Deuteronomy 30:9-14; Psalm 25:3-9; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37

As I began to work on my sermon this week, Joseph Fitzmyer’s commentary on Luke[1] had me wandering through Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Despite hearing a great deal of these books read over the years at Morning and Evening Prayer, I really don’t know a lot about what was for Jesus, his disciples, and the people of his community the primary religious text of their nation.

“And who is my neighbor?”, the lawyer in today’s gospel lesson asks Jesus.[2] The answers in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy were well known to Jesus, to the lawyer and to all who were standing there – and the answers are rather specific. In the Five Books of Moses, commonly called Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, a neighbor is another Hebrew who lives near you,[3] not a foreigner, not a slave, not a guest. And it’s not anyone who has died, Hebrew or not.[4] Please note that the lawyer, even after he hears and seems to understand Jesus’ response, cannot bring himself to say the word “Samaritan” – he can only say, “The one who showed mercy on him.”[5]

Fitzmyer in his commentary remarks that there hasn’t been a lot of attention historically, or even in the last century, to the theology of Luke’s gospel by New Testament theologians, past or present – very little compared to work on John or Paul.[6]

I know it was three Christmases ago that I started a new journey with Luke’s gospel. That Christmas I realized that unlike Matthew, where Jesus is identified as the son of David, the son of Abraham,[7] in Luke, Jesus[8] and Adam[9] are both called “son of God.” That’s a radically different way of looking at the human family. Matthew, Mark, and John –not to mention Moses and Paul, don’t see things that way.

Matthew’s very clear: Jesus was sent to save the people of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, from their sins.[10]

In Mark, Jesus calls the people of Israel God’s children. In Mark, Jesus describes others by using the word “dogs” – chapter 7, verse 27.[11]

John’s Jesus doesn’t suggest his disciples should love one’s enemies as Matthew[12] and Luke do;[13] Jesus’ disciples in John to love each other.[14]

Unlike Matthew, Mark and John, as much as he might want to, Luke doesn’t look back to the time when for a moment it seemed Christians and Jews might become one in Christ. By the last third of the first century, the split between Jews and Christians is permanent. Jerusalem and its Temple are in ruins after the Great Revolt in the year 70. The Christian community of Luke is already in Rome.[15] The kingdom of God is to be proclaimed to everyone everywhere.[16] And for Luke, “neighbor” has as new meaning. Luke and his community claim that all people are children of God and all can be saved by turning to the kingdom of God.

I grew up being taught and thinking that the differences between Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were so minor as to be unimportant. I grew up being taught and thinking lots of things that have not proved to be true.

There are many reasons I want to find the time to read and learn more about the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. At some very early point as the first manuscripts of the gospels were being prepared, a very few editors probably tried to tidy things up. But these texts were circulating somewhat independently of each other; no one editor ever had the chance to introduce any kind of fundamentalist consistency to the narrative. If I recall correctly from seminary, things are much the same in the Old Testament. There are even some words in the Old Testament texts, that early in the Christian era, Jews and Christians both no longer were sure of their meaning.

At this point I would not be surprised at all were we to find a breadth of theology in the Pentateuch, something like the breadth we find in the gospels, not to mention the rest of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and those middle books we call the Apocrypha.

Today’s reading from Deuteronomy concludes with “But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.”[17] The lawyer heard the word, but couldn’t hear it, much less do it.

There have been many different explanations of this parable over the centuries. Professor Fitzmyer notes that three of the more significant are first, christological – Christ is the Good Samaritan. The second is ecclesiological – the Church is the inn where the spiritually wounded are healed. The third is anti-Semitic.[18]

My own take is a little different – and if I got this from somebody I don’t remember because I have been thinking this for a long time: Jesus is speaking about himself. 

Foreknowledge, the individual thoughts we have about the future, is a very mysterious thing. In the gospels, sometimes Jesus knows and sometimes he does not know what will happen next. But the man who is attacked by the thieves and left for dead is an image of someone nailed to the cross, and a stranger saves him – his own people pass by on the other side. And he’s taken to another place before he becomes whole. Whenever I read Luke in particular, I often wonder if Luke is imagining Jesus speaking about himself.

I like the parable of the Good Samaritan. It really hits home. Back to the lawyer, whose question to Jesus brings this response. He already knew the writings, but because of rules, because of what was imposed from outside, he couldn’t listen to God’s word and do it. In the end kindness and mercy are God’s word, God’s truth.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Copyright © 2010 The Society of the Free Church of St. Mary the Virgin, New York, New York. 

All rights reserved.