Wouldn't it be great if you could just fix other people by telling them the commandments? Wouldn't it be great if you could tell your kids to stop back talking and to quit fighting with each other and they actually did it? How great would it be if a husband or wife could tell their spouse to “love and honor me the way you're supposed to” and they did? What if someone sinned against you and you told them, “You'd better repent and apologize and make it up to me” and they did? What if a pastor could tell the people in his church, “Stop holding grudges and not getting along” and they did? How great would it be if we could just toss out one of the commandments and fix the other person! The problem is, we do that all the time and it doesn't work. And people do it to us and it doesn't work. The Law doesn't fix people. The Law tells us what's wrong with ourselves but it doesn't fix what is wrong. We can hear the Law tell us what the right thing is to do and we can tell others what the right thing to do is but neither we nor they will do it! And the Law's response is always the same: If you don't keep the commandments, you will perish eternally. Do the Law and live or else die forever!
What is our problem? The problem is that the devil and sin have come along and beaten us to within an inch of our lives, robbed us of our righteousness and left us half-dead in the ditch by the road! Sin, both the sin we are born with and the sin that we fall into all the time have stabbed us, shot us, beat us up and tossed us aside to bleed out in the ditch. Sounds awful. It is. Sin kills. Brothers and sisters, the guy lying in the ditch in Jesus' story is YOU! And as he lays there bleeding to death, who comes along? A priest. A Levite. These are the representatives of the Law of God, the commandments and the teaching. And what do they do? They pass by on the other side! They don't stop to help. They don't even call 911 on their cell phones at least. They just pass on by! In your sin, the Law is no help. You have failed to keep the commandments of God. You surround yourself with idols and you love yourself and despise your neighbor and the Law says, “Well then you're on your own!” No help there. When you break the commandments, the commandments won't help you fix it and do better. Just like when you tell someone else what their problem is, that will never fix them. The reason the Law is no help is because life does not come by the Law. St. Paul tells the Galatians that if a law had been given by which we could have become righteousness, then we would have life that way. If the Law could lift us up out of the ditch, we wouldn't need a Samaritan to come along and do it. But the Law just multiplies our sins, and sneers as it walks a wide path around your dying self.
The only thing that saves that guy dying in the ditch is that the Samaritan comes by and has compassion on him. Compassion. A gut-wrenching feeling and desire to help this miserable guy in the ditch. Did you know the phrase “had compassion” is only ever used of Jesus and the Father in the new Testament? Compassion is something God has for sinners. His compassion is what He does. He rescues the man from the ditch and works to heal him. The only thing that will save you when you are lying in the ditch of sin is the compassion of God. And that compassion is in His Son who comes down into the ditch at the side of the road that is this world and lets Himself get strung up between two bandits, and made fun of and killed. The compassion of Jesus our Good Samaritan is that He lets men do whatever they want to Him, abuse, mock and torture Him so that you will be saved. Here is no Jesus who comes to preach the Law so that the people will start getting themselves right. This is the Son of God who comes to save us who cannot save ourselves. And He does it by letting Himself get taken down and then lifted up on that cross. If you ever doubt that the Lord is compassionate to you when you are beaten bloody by sin at the side of the road, then look to the cross, behold Christ crucified and know: that is your Lord having compassion on you.
But the Samaritan doesn't stop there. He doesn't just slap on a bandage and go on His way. He pours in the oil and wine and does all the first aid stuff but He also takes the man to an inn and makes sure that he is taken care of. Just so, your Savior doesn't just come down, die on the cross and rise again and disappear. No, He brings you to His inn, the church, where He pours in the sweet oil of your Baptismal anointing of water and the Spirit. He cleans out your festering sin wounds with the application of the blessed ointment of absolution. He feeds and nourishes you back to health with the food of His body and blood. All this He gives His innkeeper pastors to do for you. Whatever your pastor does to comfort you against sin and death, it is all laid to the account of that Good Samaritan who is footing the bill. It's not the innkeeper's money that he spends; it is His own. Just so, in His church, it is not the pastor's word and sacraments but Christ's which he applies to you and gives to you to nourish you back from your having been assaulted by your sins. Your Savior not only saves you but makes sure you are taken care of until He comes back too!
And so now, go and do likewise! You know, sometimes there are things that can only be understood when you have shared in an experience. Only someone who has battled cancer, for instance, can truly appreciate what a person who has cancer is going through. Only someone who has lost a loved one to death can have an idea of what that suffering is like when it happens to someone else. Only a single parent can know the struggles another single parent truly faces. And so on. But you, dear Christians, every one of you, knows what it is to have been pulled from the ditch of sin. Every one of you has been rescued from the near-death of being attacked and brought down by the highway robbers of sin and death. Every one of you knows what it is like to have no help from the Law but to instead be rescued and cared for by Jesus the Good Samaritan. So since that is the case, how can any of you, brothers and sisters, dare to walk past someone in the ditch of sin as if it's not your problem!? Or did you think that Lord rescued you so that you could pass by the poor wretch bleeding out on the side of the road the next time you were out for a stroll? Repent, brothers and sisters of rejoicing in and enjoying the rescue of the Lord while ever walking by that person who has been overtaken by sins! Repent because you know what it's like and you know where you've been and you yourselves have been rescued from such an attack.
Brothers and sisters in Christ: God has given us His holy Law to make sure that we're sinners and we know it. He has given us a Law which passes us by and doesn't save us so that we never fall under the false belief that we can save ourselves. The Law just won't rescue us. It can't. But the Good Samaritan does. Jesus does. He comes by and has divine compassion which means going to the cross and death to save you from certain death. It is the oil and wine of Baptism and His Supper that nurse you back to health from the wounds of sin to the life that He gives. So come now, the Samaritan hasn't returned yet. So come now, at His expense, and take your medicine, the medicine of forgiveness, life and salvation, the body and blood of your Good Samaritan Jesus. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
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