Preached by the Rev. Mary Perrin on July 14, 2019
Gospel for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost: Luke 10: 25-37
The Parable of the Samaritan
This is one of the two most well-known of the parables. Mother Mary hit all the usual necessary points, but she added a couple. The word that the lawyer uses in his final response to Jesus' story is "mercy". The neighbor is "the one who showed mercy". Drilling down into the Greek and Aramaic languages for the meaning "mercy" we get "generous healing love". The expansiveness of this leads to an important conclusion about all law. When viewed in a top-down fashion through all the Scriptures, we can see that all the rules start with mercy. The two who passed the wounded man by were thinking that they were living by "the rules", but their narrow understanding of those rules would lead to death. The despised outsider was the one whose actions were life-giving.
Then Mother Mary Perrin added a little idea that may have been (unknowingly) just for me. Since I first understood this parable in a mature way, I have always felt a bit repelled by "the lawyer". I have some personal experience with a lawyer that forced me to take a fast from lawyer jokes for more than a year. I was unable to tell them without meaning them. (What is the definition of "a damn shame"? It's when a busload of lawyers goes over a cliff -- and there was an empty seat). Now it is entirely possible that the lawyer in this Gospel scene was a nefarious schemer whose intention was to discredit the Lord. That's not necessarily the case. First of all, the lawyer did understand the central demands of the Law: "Love God. Love neighbor". But the key point here is the phrase "wanting to justify himself" when he asks "who is my neighbor?" We could see this as an ego in search of validation, but then again that isn't the only choice. It is even more likely that the lawyer recognized this as a critical issue that he needed to get exactly right. The person he asked for a deeper understanding is the same person that we ask for a deeper understanding. I'm going to have to give this lawyer the benefit of the doubt the next time I hear his story.
