The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity – Sunday 25 August A✠D 2024
✠ Psalmody: Psalm 74:20a, 21a, 22a, 23a;88:1
✠ Lection: Leviticus 19:9-18;Galatians 3:16–22;St. Luke 10:23–37
(**Preached from an outline, so no manuscript is available to post. The transcript below was generated by turboscribe.ai**)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. A certain lawyer asked Jesus, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? What shall you do to inherit eternal life? It’s a good question to ask, although in asking it, as the lawyer did, is slightly askew in thinking, what do I do to inherit eternal life? But you must admit, to ponder upon eternal life itself is a good thing, for how many in our day have no desire to think beyond just what all of this is, even now as it exists? How many among us do we, as we go about our lives distracted by all the things, fail to ponder upon life being eternal, and that we have it, or that also we should desire it? Jesus concludes his answer, his parable, with the words, go and do likewise, pointing us to the beautiful reality of the story that he just told about the one that we’ve come to refer to as the good Samaritan. Go and do likewise, he says, in obtaining eternal life.
But what exactly are we to do, to go and do likewise? To seek to gain eternal life by our works? To seek to thrive and have an abundant life here, in this life, not just there, but to have salvation and abundance now and all that we need by our works, by what we do? We must first consider that eternal life has to have a beginning, that it’s a reality that doesn’t just start then. Eternal life begins here and must already be a guaranteed inheritance for us when we approach death, when we enter death, or that eternal life will not be ours at that point, much less forever. Let us then go, let us then apply, go and do likewise, not to justify ourselves by perfectly loving God and neighbor, but by discovering how we, with this certain lawyer, are to see ourselves as this certain man who fell among thieves.
Humanly speaking, all life eternal is begun in the life temporal, here in a place that has much inopportune opportunity, meaning that whether we have come upon difficult times as we all have had, we all have, and, sorry to break it to you, we will all still have in this life. Whether they come upon us by our own doing in walking away from God, and however that may look, walking away from God as the certain man had Jerusalem at his back, and his eyes set upon the cursed city of Jericho as he was going down, whether it be by our own doing, or whether it is by simply living in a world that is plagued by sin and evil that has us hurting in whatever way it is, whether externally by evil being done to us, being inflicted upon us, or whether it’s internal. Whether we suffer in heart, soul, strength, and mind, by suffering in back, in stomach, suffering in knee, ankle, eye, ear, how long can we keep on listening? In heart, in our very mind, in our very emotional state, whether it is by those outside influences or what is happening even within us that most people aren’t aware of throughout the day, what are we to think of these sufferings? All life eternal begins in this temporal life where such things exist, and we’re not to ignore them, to just look over them, or even to depend completely upon our own strength to try to face them.
We all find ourselves right there with a certain unfortunate man, wounded by the harshness of life, deceived into believing that we are left to suffer alone at what has become upon us, and at least halfway toward the inevitable thing that, well, we may even come to long for to come quickly itself, that is death. In this sense, we cannot all but help to go and do likewise, can we not? It is part and parcel for the day. So how do we go from spiritual roadkill to being heirs, lifted up, heirs of eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord? There’s quite a distance there to be gained.
If you try to find eternal life by the law, to close that gap, what is your reading of the law? If you try to find life by the law, then this is what your sins clash with it will reveal to you, it should, if you open your eyes and your ears as Christ bid you do. The law will come to you like a thief. It will strike you down.
Take away the life that you think you can grasp by your own effort and leave you not half dead, but all the way in the grave of spiritual death. That is its function, as we heard St. Paul tell us, or as he told the Galatians and now to us. For all who seek to inherit eternal life by their doings before God, by their own worthiness and merit in loving the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself, if you seek to find eternal life by doing this, you shall lose it.
Likewise, even in the midst of all of that, all who seek to bear this life’s burdens by their own strength will find that strength repeatedly, sufficiently inadequate and unreliable. Sadly, we don’t find ourselves at this roadside, but just one time in this life. We repeatedly encounter its treatment.
It is why we pray the Lord’s Prayer daily in the seventh petition saying, but deliver us from evil. We pray that daily. If we pray it daily, then what does this mean in this petition? What are we asking for if we rightly, wisely pray this daily, but deliver us from evil? We pray in this petition, in summary, that our Father in heaven would rescue us from every evil of body and soul, possessions and reputation.
And finally, when our last hour comes, give us a blessed end and graciously take us from this valley of sorrow to himself in heaven. We pray this daily. For daily, we encounter this road that is oh so harsh.
We are in constant need of that which rescues, in constant need of him who comes in the name of the Lord, indeed the blessed one who came humble mounted on a donkey. He is seen in this good Samaritan, flanked by his own animal, a beast of burden, a donkey, by which he bears up all who are in need of his care. For he, this coming king, this good Samaritan, has compassion.
When the good Samaritan, the unlikely character in the story, shows up to deliver you from lying in death’s strong bands, he does what the two others who passed by could not do in their lawful measure. The law cannot give you eternal life. Not as we stand.
It is given to show us our transgressions, as St. Paul declares, as the Holy Spirit himself declares. So when this king, this Samaritan, shows up to deliver you from earthly woes, how does he do it? He does it by healing, strengthening, and keeping you by the good gifts he bestows upon you. In order to inherit eternal life and to thrive in it as it is begun here in life temporal, your great God and king must come to where you are upon this road of life temporal and have compassion on all your needs of body and soul.
He bandages up your wounds, strengthens and keeps you by pouring on oil and wine. What are we to make of this? Oil, symbolic of the anointing that you receive in his blessed sacrament, holy baptism, anointed by his own spirit, the eternal Holy Spirit of God, anointed to be his own child. He pours on wine.
That connection is much easier for are we not about to partake of wine that is indeed our Savior’s own blood? Holy communion. This is how he strengthens you to face whatever your road has. In holy baptism he has called you his, and he strengthens you by giving you his very sacrificed and resurrected body and blood, so that wherever the road may lead, your compassionate good Samaritan comes to you regularly, hearing your prayer that he deliver you from evil and from the evil one.
He guards and keeps you until his return on the last day, his promise that will ring true. He keeps you through his care of you, where? At the inn. Where do you think that is? In his holy blessed church, where you are guaranteed sure to receive such great care that extends beyond this time.
These are eternal things. These are eternal life bestowed upon you in the eternal one, bestowing gifts upon you, bidding the one to stand, the one in charge to stand here and to take care of you through the holy means of word and sacraments, as he himself has instituted by his compassionate word, he himself bearing the cost of it all so that you reap the reward. Whether you are destitute in body or soul or both, your compassionate king binds you up so that you are healed and kept through the same humble means time and time again.
Go and do likewise. Go and do likewise by being in one in great need. None have a struggle to do that, do you? Go and do likewise, being one bound for death, if not for the care and sacrifice of another.
There you are, likewise of no choice or power of your own to do otherwise. Go and do likewise. Go and do likewise, repenting of the proud thoughts that you need not Jesus in a place where you are robbed, stripped, wounded, and left alone when it was him, remember, who was robbed, stripped, beaten, left wounded alone to die in your place.
This is what he has done so that out of death and into the eternal life that you desire to inherit, he rescues completely by his doing now. Go and do likewise. And believing that your great and eternal king comes to you in baptism, comes to you in holy communion so that you are bound up and healed unto eternal life, the very inheritance that you cannot gain otherwise apart from him.
In Jesus’ name.
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