I feel like I'm just beginning to wake up from a long nap. You know the kind... your eyes feel heavy, your head groggy, but you are increasingly aware of the daylight that lies beyond your world of dreams. That's precisely how I feel at this moment, and no, I've not just had a leisurely afternoon siesta.
This week our Sunday School lesson will be on the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). Now, I know this story quite well, and you probably do as well, but just in case here's the recap. Traveller hiking along a road becomes the target of roadside bandits who steal his stuff and beat him up, leaving him for dead. First religious guy comes along and passes to the opposite side of the road avoiding the bloody dude, second guy comes along... same story. Third guy comes and he's an outsider (a foreigner) and he comes over to the bloody, beaten and nearly dead traveller to see if he can help. He bandages up the traveller, gives him something to drink, and puts him on his own donkey to the local Comfort Inn. When he gets there he pays the bill for the bloody traveller to stay until he's well enough to be on his way.
Art by: He Qi
The Good Samaritan
Simple enough story, right??? Until recently, I would have been quite satisfied with the explanation that this story was about the necessity of loving our neighbours. I would have been content to hear that the best expression of our love for God was through the expression of love for our neighbours. I would have smiled (smugly, and perhaps even at times self-righteously) at the explanation that the Samaritan was fulfilling the law more accurately than the previous 2 religious guys. But recently, God has changed all of that.
God has led me to the increasing conviction that all of Scripture needs to be interpreted through a Gospel lens firstly. This "lens" changes EVERYTHING. I know that the ways that I have read and interpreted the text in the past have been largely inadequate, or at least incomplete, and increasingly, I am no longer content to teach Sunday School lessons that fail to utilize this lens. To aid me, I'll likely pick up these 2 children's Bibles The Jesus Story Bible and The Gospel Story Bible for future Sunday School lesson preparation, but as I was preparing the lesson for this week, I was struck by the lack of gospel message in the curriculum and the blatantly moralistic interpretation of this text. I considered for a while that the interpretation might be simply, be like the good Samaritan, after all the passage concludes with Jesus telling the lawyer, "You go, and do likewise". It sounds reasonable and there are plenty of texts that would support the idea that we need to love our neighbours. And then, in my research I came across this idea that I may be reading myself into the story wrongly. I don't know about you, but I always imagined that I should emulate the good Samaritan since that seemed to be the point of the story. What if, instead, we understood the Good Samaritan to be Jesus? I hadn't put it together before, but Jesus was once accused of being a Samaritan: John 8:48 (ESV) says, "The Jews answered him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?”" Did you catch it? Doesn't it change everything? If we are not the Samaritan, then who are we? The gospel tells me that I am none other than the bloody, beaten, left-for-dead traveller. It is Jesus who binds up my wounds, Jesus who pays my debt. He alone can rescue. He alone is the Good Samaritan!
But what do I do with Jesus' command to the lawyer? Isn't their value in teaching people to love their neighbours? Absolutely, love of our neighbours is the second great commandment. There are plenty of texts that speak of that exactly, including this one in verse 27. But the point of this story is not a nice, moral lesson. The point is not to obey the law... the priest and the Levite were doing just that, they obeyed the law and the law did nothing to help the broken, bloody guy. So what of Jesus' command? The rest of the surrounding text addresses this beginning with the initial question that the lawyer asks, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" and Jesus, rather than immediately launching into a gospel presentation, addresses the lawyer's underlying belief. The lawyer assumed that following the law could save him, and so when Jesus asked him how he read the law, the lawyer answered correctly and Jesus tells him to "do this, and you will live." Dr. Michael Horton says, "Jesus has thoroughly diagnosed his patient. The lawyer replies not with repentance. He does not confess with David in Psalm 51, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.” Rather, like the rich young ruler who said, “All these I have kept” (Matt.19:20, ESV), this lawyer stands up for himself. He is not ready for the gospel. He needs to be judged by the law that he erroneously believes he has kept." The law needed to expose the lawyer's sinfulness, and yet "desiring to justify himself" he asks Jesus "Who is my neighbour?" The story should have pointed out the failure of the lawyer to keep the law and pointed the lawyer to his own need for the good Samaritan, but the text never tells us that the lawyer got beyond his idea that the law could save him. Perhaps he did... I'd like to celebrate the grace of God with him some day.
May you also be increasingly awakened to the reality of the gospel.
Wow, I've never actually considered that either, that Jesus is the Good Samaritan in that story and that I am the broken man. I wonder how many of these "classic stories" would surprise us when we look at them through the Gospel lens. Thanks for the insight!
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