It is worse [Trinity 13; St. Luke 10:23-37]

Jesus speaks to us today, saying,

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.”

For the last few weeks we have been talking about poverty. Whether it was the unrighteous manager, Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, the tax collector, or the deaf and mute man all were brought in front of us to show the poverty of earth. Yet, all were brought in front of us to also reveal the poverty of God on the cross.

Today is no different. How easy life is when we are well off, or at least, not in need. Indeed, one of our favorite things to say is: “It could always be worse” or, similar to that is “someone always has it worse than you do”.

Then we try and think of how our lives could be worse than they are now and we imagine extreme things such as nuclear war, abject poverty, oppressive government, or even having many people in our family die at the same time or closer. You really must go to great lengths to think about it being worse for you.

The reason that is is because it is worse for you right now, in your sin. You already have to deal with death, suffering, trauma, and futility. You already know what its like to have nothing: no income, no rights, and no future. You have heard about all of these things from one source or another, maybe experiencing one or two personally, but never all of it.

We can not all be champions of empathy so when you have life-altering problems, they are just as big as other problems. This may sound conceited, but what difference does it make to the chemicals in your body whether undue stress is caused by family dysfunction or life as a refugee?

Take our man from Jerusalem, here. Who knows what he was thinking or what he was doing that fateful day when he decided to go to Jericho, but here he is. He takes his journey and is ambushed by hooligans. At this point, lying half-dead in the road, do you think he cares that Rome has created world peace within its borders?

Your fears often major in the minors. You think that by pretending your problems are not as important, that you gain more favor in being humble, but then you become angry and isolated when no one notices what you are hiding! Your inner resentment grows and grows until either you are living a life full of despair or you give up on religion altogether.

The difficulty you face is not in trying your best to decide what you must do or what you can do, the real difficulty you bring upon yourself is trying to figure out which way God has planned for you or, put simply, what is sin and what is not.

In that epic battle, you lose. In struggling to find what will please God and what will condemn you forever, you run into reality. The same reality that forces you to pick one drug over another, one family member over another, or one sin over another.

That is the catch. Each and everyday in your ordinary life, you are forced to choose: will you sin a little or will you sin a lot? Will you choose the sin that maybe God won’t notice or at least, you hope, that He will overlook, or will you choose the sin that everyone will notice and no one will overlook?

And no matter who you choose to see yourself as, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, there is this deficiency, or corruption of human nature. This is easy to point out in the violent robbers. The next easiest is the priest and the Levite, but what did the man do to deserve his beating and really what is so bad about the good Samaritan?

Lots of things could be speculated upon here as to what could have been done to avoid such a tragedy, but they are simply speculation. The cold, hard truth as to why each character sins and why your life is replete with sin is that they are all sinners.

The traveling man is a sinner. He did not do any specific thing to earn his beat-down, but as a result of his fallen condition, he deserves more. The Samaritan did not show great mercy here, just a little mercy. Where is he for the rest of those who have fallen victim to such crimes? There is plenty of guilt to pass around, even omitting the robbers’ actions.

Jesus is the end of this guilt and the end of such sufferings as the traveler, the Samaritan, and yes even the robbers and priest and Levite endured. You do not just suffer things physically, but also spiritually. You do suffer at the hands of your neighbors, intentional or not, but you also suffer under a holy God.

God demands perfection from you, without excuse. He demands righteousness and holiness. Not because He is mean and cold-hearted, but because that is Who He is and if you wish to be with Him forever, this is how it must be.

What a cruel and unmerciful attitude God has! If only He would bend the rules or overlook certain actions on your part, all of this suffering business could simply go away.

Dear Christian, thank heavens God does not overlook one injustice committed, no matter how small! Thank your lucky stars that the Lord is attentive of all things and forgets nothing. If He did not, then there would be no one who would attain any sort of blessing at all.

God knows what you think of Him and His unbending laws and He also knows your inability to follow them. He knows that you secretly resent having to be “goodie-goodie” when all your friends are not hindered by such out-dated thinking. And because He knows all this and more, He knows and wants to do something about it Himself.

You see, the law was not given for your benefit, primarily. The Law was given to reveal sin to you; to show you that, in this corrupted life, you really will have no good choices as to what you should or should not do. Each choice, good or bad, is corrupt and sinful in front of God.

In God’s eyes, you are already worse off than your neighbor. If you were to stand in front of God on your own, you would get no credit for helping a half-dead man be cared for properly and neither will this Samaritan.

Jesus is the Good Samaritan and He is the half-dead man. Jesus is the man that comes down from heaven to traverse an utterly corrupt road in a total depraved world. He comes bringing forgiveness and peace, but is stripped of everything, including His life on the cross.

He raises Himself from His all-dead state, returns to this road, and finds you, dead in your sins. He does not ask if you’ve been naughty or nice. He does not request a little room in your heart and He does not require your commitment to Him. He finds you. He speaks to revive you. He washes you and He feeds you immortality.

The beauty of the Gospel is that credit has already been wired to your account in full. The sweetness of Christ Crucified for you is that there is grace and mercy and peace from God, instead of judgment and laws that have no end. The comfort of the word of the cross is that there is an end to thievery, apathy, pain, and endless work.

Christ has come that you may be free. Free from the guilt of the Law that binds you to your sin. Free to hear the Word and believe it. Free to be washed and regenerated into the Body of Christ. Free to take and eat and drink the true Body and Blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of all of your bad and good decisions.

Jesus is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Each and every decision you have to make in this life is accounted for and forgiven, by Jesus. Each and every time you come to a crossroads that is bad or worse or uncertain, you have confidence that your righteousness comes from Christ and not those sins.

You have received the Spirit by hearing with faith and not by works of the law (Gal. 3:2).

“Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” ¹² But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.”¹³ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— ¹⁴ so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith” (Gal. 3:11-14).

This does not mean that we continue in sinful ways, knowing that we are free from the law, but this does mean that we find forgiveness for all our deeds. It means we can live life without worrying about being righteous before God, because Jesus already has secured and paid for that righteousness in full.

Though we will still mark, avoid, and hate sin, we can now, with confidence approach a horrible situation, in which all the choices are sinful, and just pick one, even if it means sinning boldly. For there is no other God or Savior Who determines the righteousness of a person by His own, or Who gives His own righteousness so freely and completely.

There will never be a time when you come to church without sin. Do not fool yourself by thinking you don’t deserve to be here. Quickly bring your sin, confessing it as sin. It is the only offering Jesus will accept in exchange for His holiness.