WWJD? [Trinity 13; St. Luke 10:23-37]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE.

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.”

Today I’m going to start off with a question, not to be insulting, because I ask it of myself as well. That is, what are you doing to make St. Luke better? What are you doing to help St. Luke? Now, to be sure, just having the building here is a giant step. It is a visible sign of gathering that shouts, “This is where the Lord communes” to the entire community.

Yet, what we encounter in these questions is the biggest impediment to the Christian faith for anyone and everyone. That is, our own perceived goodness. We must admit the wrong and pay the high cost of doing so. We may be doing our best, but is it the best in the right direction? We may be busy about church, but are we busy about the Church’s business? We must be honest and transparent and then take steps to change the wrong behavior.

We don’t do this because it is self-defeating. It is agonizing having to admit you are wrong because then your whole aura of “proven-authority” and “trustworthy leadership” is thrown out the window. If you are wrong even once, it is used to smear your reputation into the ground. We have been made to be afraid of the liberty to fail, by current culture, for fear of being proven wrong.

Now, there is a trick to this and it works personally as well. Aesop tells us of a parched crow who comes upon water at the bottom of a jar. He cannot reach it with his beak and tipping the jar over doesn’t work. So, he starts piling pebbles into the jar. As the pebbles fill the jar the water rises to the top and he is able to drink. Little by little does the trick.

However, we have our man from Jerusalem. He is bold. He knows the danger that faces him in his quest on the road to Jericho, yet he risks it anyway. He is a man on a mission. For whatever reason, he has his orders to go down this road, so like it or not he must go. Yet as we see, his zeal, his defense, and his self-sufficiency are not enough to weather the storm.

Turn back! Don’t go that way! If only this guy would have listened to his friends or his wife who probably told him, “The old Jericho road?! Are you crazy?!” If only someone had told him that there was another way, what I mean is, if only I had been there.

Or at least, that’s what we see. What we hear is a different story. What God is telling us here is that this man is supposed to go down that road, he is supposed to be waylaid, and he is supposed to be ignored all the while lying half-dead in the way. It is ordained by God that this should happen.

Repent. We only have one road to walk down not many, that is the road of life, but just because we will fall and fail does not mean that should dictate a fatal view of our own actions. When we come to the realization that we are not in charge, that good and bad things happen to us and they’re all good for us, and that we don’t save the church or the world, then we begin to make progress.

Luther says that even if he knew the world was ending tomorrow, he would still plant a tree today. Human action is never futile, if done in faith. Apathy and despair is not in the Christian vocabulary because Christ has ordered all things for our good. ALL things. Even this man’s tragic encounter with the robbers, the priest, and the Levite.

Not very motivational, but the Church, we all sitting here baptized and believing, are the half dead man. The reason this is is because so many of the words Jesus uses in this pericope describe the Church.

In verse 30, Jesus replies or “takes up” the argument of self-justification and proves it wrong. Jesus is the man Who takes up the Church and acts in it and the Church uses the same word responding with, “We have taken up your steadfast love, O God, in the midst of your temple.”(Ps. 48:9) Meaning, of course, that we have taken up Jesus and placed Him on the cross.

The Church has “gone down” from her Lord. She has been brought from the heaven of Jerusalem and set down on the earth away from safety and set towards the world of corruption in Jericho, where she encounters unbelievers and robbers in the world, desiring her doom.

And she finds no rest in earthly princes. Her own men abandon her and leave her. The priest and the Levite, though they came from her, walk a way that is opposed to the Church or “on the other side” of what the Church is given. In this life and because of betrayal, she receives wounds, or trauma. This then becomes one of the marks of the Church, that she is traumatized according to the world.

She appears to be that fallen, tragic figure that lays on the side of the road of life. Beset by schisms and internal strife, fallen among the sin and corruption of the robbers where she is left as an example to others. Yet, we have ceased to talk about the Church and begun to speak of Christ, for it is He that is “…the Lamb looking as if he were slain.” (Rev. 5:6)

Where Christ is, there is His Church. Has He stepped down from heaven, so does she. Has He fallen among robbers and hypocrites, so does she. Is He betrayed, scourged and does He suffer, so does she. Is He left on the cross as an example of what not to do in this world, so is she. Jesus treads the death-filled road to Jericho before us yet, in His so doing creates salvation.

For now there are other words in the Gospel that point to the resurrected work of Christ for His Church. The Samaritan’s journeying is just as purposeful as the robbers and the priest and Levite. But, where the others go towards tragedy, the Samaritan journeys, expecting to find the half-dead man. Jesus steps down from heaven expecting to find believers on their death-beds in sin.

But this trauma is cared for, twice over! Not only does our Good Samaritan bind up our wounds in mercy, but He drops us off at the nearest church to continue the process. This healing and salvation has been paid for. This care and concern had a price and a bill that has been covered completely, by our Good Samaritan on the cross.

Now that Christ has become our Good Samaritan, raised from the trauma and death inflicted upon Him in our place, we are mercy-filled and show mercy. Instead of worrying about ego and what everyone will think of you, you head fearlessly out on the road to Jericho, because Jericho is also in need of the mercy of Christ Crucified. Regardless of whether or not you get there, the road to Jericho is also in need of mercy.

Where you are now is where you’re supposed to be. Though it is difficult and though you may make the wrong decisions, you are cared for and your trauma will be taken away. For Jesus will have mercy and not sacrifice as He promised, not as you succeed or fail. Even if it means God needs to be the sacrifice to create such a world. Which He is.

The pattern this all gives us, then, is facing the importance of Word and Sacrament. Here is the greatest change a church can make anywhere she finds herself: to not only receive the Sacrament (think oil and wine) as often as possible, but to bring that exact thing to those suffering in their own sin. What we have been doing wrong is trying to better people’s lives. What we need to do is bind up their wounds with the Lord’s Supper.

We are not immune to the trauma caused by sin and death, though we may think so. We are also constantly put in a half-dead state by our own sins and no matter how good we think we are, we are in need of the same forgiveness and mercy necessary to everyone else. This is why it is easier to get into heaven if you are a prostitute or a tax collector. You already know you’re not getting in on your own goodness.

Thus the Church Christ gives us and places us in, is in the business of caring for the fatally wounded. Jesus only gives us weapons to bind up and heal, not to tear down or destroy. The real power of the Church is exposing sin and raising to new life; pointing out the damage and giving the means to undo it, in Word and Sacrament.

Jesus has not only traveled the road to Jericho, but has reached the destination taking on the suffering, sin, and death of the whole world. In His second coming, He will undo the old, sin-filled ways and remake them into new ways filled with His sinless glory, leading us down these paths forever.