7 Pentecost, Year C

“GOD’S POWER – GIVEN TO DO”
(Sermon text: Luke 10: 25 – 37)
Given at St. Stephen’s Church, Harrisburg, IL; at St. John’s Church, Centralia, IL (by Mr. Jeff Kozuszek, Licensed Lay Worship Leader); and at St. James’ Memorial Church, Marion, IL (by Mr. Les Boyer, Licensed Lay Worship Leader)

Ever met a person who had charisma?

Have you ever attended a charismatic church service?

Each of these words, “charisma” and “charismatic”, has a common Greek root: “charism”. “Charisma” is defined as “a God-given gift or power” (according to the Webster’s dictionary).[1]

Now God has been giving gifts to people since the beginning of time.

Think for a moment about the gift of the Covenant that God gave to His chosen people, the Israelites, through Moses…Through the Law of Moses - the Torah - God’s people were given a Covenant through which they could live in relationship to God. The Jews of Jesus’ time revered this Covenant, which gave them an identity that no one else in the world could claim…..they were the Chosen People.

But God continued to give gifts to His people, and now I am thinking specifically of the gift of Jesus Christ….By sending Jesus Christ to live among us, God is calling a new people into relationship with Him. God is establishing a New Covenant which will replace the old Covenant.

In this New Covenant, God will be creating a charismatic people, that is, a people who are called by God and who are gifted by God to live in a new way, and with new understandings.

This new way of living, and this new understanding, are elements in today’s very familiar story of the Good Samaritan….In it, Jesus is pointing forward to God’s creation of a charismatic people, a gifted people who will be able to come together in ways that the world had not seen ever before.

We should begin, as we often do, by “setting the stage” for Jesus’ teaching….For we modern Christians don’t often understand the nature of the divisions between Jew and Samaritan, nor do we appreciate the depth of ill-will that existed between the two groups…..Understanding these things is key to understanding the “shock value” of Jesus’ parable.

The Samaritans were “half breeds” in Jewish eyes…A bit of history is in order here: following the conquering of the Northern Kingdom, the nation of Israel, by the Assyrians, in 722 BC, those Israelites who were left behind intermarried with other peoples that the Assyrians had resettled into the area. The resulting peoples were the Samaritans, who had their own version of the Torah (the five books of Moses), and who had a holy mountain, Mt. Gerazim. So, in reality, the Samaritans and the Jews were “kissin’ cousins” (if we can use an American expression)….closely related, but very different in their bloodlines and in their beliefs and practices.

By the time Jesus had come to be among us, the “bad blood” between the Jews and the Samaritans ran very deep….So deep, in fact, that an observant Jew would take the extra time and trouble to skirt completely around the area of Samaria (to the north of Judea and south of the region of Galilee), either taking the coastal route along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, or down through the Jordan River Valley to reach the Holy City, Jerusalem.

Jews, good Jews, did not associate with Samaritans![2]

And so, Jesus shocks His audience by suggesting that a Samaritan is the only one of the three characters in His parable who not only knew what to do to aid the beaten man, but who did it.

How could that possibly be? How could a hated Samaritan be the hero?

After all, wasn’t the answer that Jesus’ hearers expected the one that said that only an observant Jew, a person who was steeped in the Law of Moses, would be the only one who could please God by doing what that law required?

To see how the Samaritan became the hero, I think we need to consider how “God’s chosen people”, the Jews saw themselves….

By the time of Jesus, it seems like the Chosen People were using the Law of Moses to maintain their own identity. That’s understandable, since they were under pagan, Roman occupation….their national identity was threatened with extinction. So, it seems, the Torah was a tool for maintaining a separation from things that were unclean, from food that was unclean, and from associating with people who were unclean (like Gentiles and Samaritans).

Jesus might be pointing to these attitudes of separation in His parable today…Notice how the priest and the Levite take the trouble to go to the other side of the road when they encounter the beaten man. (By the way, notice that the clergy of Jesus’ day didn’t come out very well in this parable!) After all, if they came into contact with the beaten man’s blood, they would become unclean.

And so, they pass by on the other side of the road.

But God is “gifting a new people into being”, if we can return to the central idea we began with….God is charismatically endowing a new people, and is creating a New Covenant in Jesus Christ.

The people of this New Covenant will include not only Jews, but the hated Samaritans, and yes, even Gentiles (like you and me!)….

Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan points forward to this New Covenant….As this New Covenant unfolds, Jesus will tell His disciples in Acts 1: 8, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

And as we read a little further into the Book of Acts, we see, indeed, that the Apostles learn that the Samaritans had received the Good News of Jesus Christ (Acts 8: 5 – 25).

A new people were being called into being by God, to be inheritors of the New Covenant that is created through Jesus Christ.

But, we have to admit, if left to our own abilities, we human beings won’t forge covenantal bonds with people who aren’t like us. We will do what the Jews of Jesus’ day did: we will associate with people who are like us, who think like us, who act like we do.

We will create rules to ensure our identity is maintained. We will look after our own best wishes, seeking to “justify ourselves”, just as the expert in the Law did by asking Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

In order to be a covenant people with God in Jesus Christ, we will need the God-given gifts that are available in Jesus Christ in order to overcome our own selfishness. We will need the God-given gifts that are available in Christ to overcome our desire to perpetuate our own identity.

But God is charismatically endowing this new group with the ability to overcome all separations, all pettiness, all instincts for self-preservation. For, in Jesus Christ, God gives us the ability to break down the walls of separation, to end all selfishness, to stop seeking our own self-preservation.

In so doing, God does not leave us where we are….that also seems to be an important part of the Parable of the Good Samaritan: the Samaritan not only knew what to do when he encountered the man by the side of the road, but he did it. As a result, the beaten man wasn’t left where he was….his situation changed for the better.

That is a point for us to consider as New Covenant people….God does not leave us where we are when He calls us into relationship with Him….and oftentimes, God uses other people to get us to where He wants us to be. Yes, sometimes God even uses people who aren’t so nice, who aren’t so acceptable, and who may not think like we do…people who might be the modern-day equivalent of a Samaritan.

So, being able to recognize God’s call to us, to be a New Covenant people, is a gift from God. For God charismatically enables us to recognize His call to us.

Being able to do something about God’s call to action is also God’s charismatic working in our lives, as well.

For without God’s grace and gifts, we would never manage to get beyond our own self interests.

Thanks be to God for His charismatic gifts, given to His New Covenant people, you and me!

AMEN.


[1] The Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary
[2] See the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4: 1 – 26 (see especially verse nine).