Trinity 13 – Healing the Wounds

Galatians 3:16-22       St Luke 10:23b-37

“Do this, and you will live.”

We are at the midpoint in Trinity season today – halfway in our reflections on our ascent into the life of God.  And it is appropriate that we are reminded in our readings that eternal life is the end to which we are moving and what that looks like.  Eternal life is coming to the state of soul where we are “loving God with all our heart, and with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind, and our neighbour as ourselves.”  This is what life looks like when we are justified, sanctified and glorified.  These are the two great commandments of the Law that we repeat Sunday by Sunday in our liturgy.

The lawyer in today’s Gospel, is someone who studies the Law of Moses.  He asked Jesus what he should do to inherit eternal life.  When asked by Jesus about what the Law teaches, he knew this summary of the Law.  And Jesus answered him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.”

But how do we do it?  How do we come to this state of heart and soul and mind?  To be perfected, we need not only to know what is the right thing to do but also to will it, that is, to actually do it.   The Lawyer asks, "who is my neighbour?", and Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan to give an example of someone who is actually doing the Law, someone who is even outside of the Covenant with Moses (the Samaritan), who might not have studied the Law, but someone who is acting in the way the Law commands.

Jesus concludes the parable with, "go and do likewise".  We are to be the Good Samaritan.

What hinders us from helping the stranger who is in need of help?  Is it a lack of courage?  Are we afraid of our own safety, our own well being?  In the case of the man in the parable, he had “fallen among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed leaving him half dead.”  That is clearly one reason.  Is it that our hearts are just not moved to help, we’ve been hardened in our experience of the world?  Is it that we are too busy with our own things?

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is read this Sunday to keep us steady on our journey into the life of God.  It is not the study of the Law that will save us, but faith in Jesus Christ will.

Jesus is telling us that to grow in our moral life, our attention should not be an obsession with getting the finer and finer points of the Law as we ascend.  Knowing the Law of Moses in greater and greater detail does not change our heart.  The inward illumination we so long for, that will really change our hearts, comes to us another way.

The Fathers of the Early Church saw in this parable a kind of summary of our salvation history:

• The man who fell among robbers and is stripped and beaten and left half dead is every human being who has in some way suffered in this fallen world - it is the descendants of Adam.  We are all wounded and left half dead.  Not only do we inherit a kind of brokenness, but there is no one without some kind of trauma from the world from which we need to be healed.  We’ve been hurt in some way by our family, our friends, our colleagues, our neighbours, and by our enemies.  And it leaves a mark on our souls that affects our ability to love perfectly our neighbour.  We are all here this morning because we have a sense that we need help and healing from God.  Our liturgy expresses this: right after we hear the Summary of the Law, we cry out for mercy as we recognize and acknowledge our inability to attain the great commandments to love without God's help.

• The priest and the Levite, who pass by the man, represent the Law of Moses, which can point to our failures in love, to our woundedness.  This is a vital role.  But the priest saw him and passed by on the other side of the road, the Levite saw him, and also passed by on the other side of the road.  This is what our Epistle reminds us of this morning: the Law “imprisoned everything under sin”; it points out that we are all wounded, and so sinners in need of grace.  But the Law cannot heal our hearts.

• The Good Samaritan is Jesus Christ who descends from Jerusalem (the heavenly city) to Jericho (the earthly city) to pick us up out of the ditch.  It is Jesus that can save us.  His pouring wine and oil on our wounds, could point to our baptismal regeneration, restoring us sufficiently to be brought to the Inn where further rest and healing occur.

• The Inn is the Church that Jesus has left on earth, with the provision of two coins, suggested by the Fathers as the Word written and the Sacrament of Holy Communion. Jesus can leave us here in the Church to be restored until He returns at the end of time.

The illumination that our souls need at this stage and at every stage in our ascent is not so much the finer points in the law, but faith in Jesus Christ.  It is to be shown and to acknowledge our woundedness and need for a Saviour.  It is to have faith, to trust, that Jesus is the One who has restored us and can restore us even more, the one who shows us mercy.

It is a powerful image that the place we are taken to by Jesus is an Inn.  What do we do at a hotel?  Eat and sleep, rest and be refreshed!  It is to enter into God’s rest, which is the Sabbath rest that humanity longs for.  This is our aim and goal in life.  That rest is not doing nothing but doing all things in God, joined with Christ in our heart, in our soul and in our mind, and acting in the world from that place.

Notice that we are able to enter God’s rest, the Inn, even before we are fully healed?  That is what happens as we live by faith in the promises of Jesus.  Do you see how the kingdom of God is mingling in our soul even now, we rest in Christ even while we are in our ascension?  The healing work is going on in the background, Sunday by Sunday, weekday by weekday, as we trust in Jesus.

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The second part of the Parable is the call by Jesus for each one of us to be the Good Samaritan, to be like Him in the world.

From our place of resting and being restored, knowing God's mercy, we are to look out into the world for those on our path who have also fallen among robbers and show them mercy.  Robbers are those who misuse other peoples’ desire for God (it is a universal desire even if we don't know it) for their own ends by confusing them and robbing them.  And isn’t it true that we are stripped and beaten by the cruelty of false ideologies that leave us to die spiritually and physically.

There is some work on our part in this being a good Samaritan, but the principle work is Jesus Christ’s.  You see that we are not to pass by the wounded who are on our path, but to show mercy.  It is to help them in some particular way, as the Samaritan did to wash the wounds.  But the principle part of the work is to bring them to the Inn, to bring them into the Church.

Jesus relieves us of the burden of responsibility to save others, we cannot, but we can bring them to the Church, where Jesus will, over time, by Word and Sacrament, bring about the restoration of the person… until He returns.

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There is more in this parable, there always is, but we will leave it today with these principle insights:

The illumination that is so necessary for our souls comes not from a deeper dissecting of the finer points of the Law, but through faith in Jesus.  Our growth in maturity in Christ, comes from the Holy Spirit who reveals our brokenness at deeper and deeper levels and of our need of mercy from God.  Jesus offers us that mercy and we will be healed over time in the Church.  This is how real and lasting change happens in us.

And living from that place of rest in the mercy of God and being restored by His Word and the sacramental life, makes us merciful, like God, towards others, able to "go and do likewise".

In our Liturgy now we lift high the Cross of Jesus as we proclaim His death for us.  Here is the greatest possible expression and assurance of God’s mercy towards us that could ever be revealed.  It is through repentance and faith in Jesus' self-offering, that we are made ready to receive forgiveness and to receive His risen life in the Sacrament.

“Do this, and you will live.”

Amen +