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Graceocracy

David Capener

08/03/10

Forget everything you know about the parable of the good Samaritan. It is not a nice moral tale about a kind man who does a good deed by helping someone who has had a bit of a nasty turn. Nor is it about an arrogant priest who ignores a dying man leaving him to his obvious fate. It is a story about a different kind of priest, one who would come to end all that the earthly priests had been required to do.

As the story begins we find ourselves adopting the common position of learning, sitting in the dust around the Rabbi Jesus. Others would have stood up to ask legitimate questions of Jesus, asking him to explain Torah. Then we find a lawyer standing up, one who would have known Torah by heart, one who would be an expert in every detail and nuance of Gods sacred words. But he doesn’t stand up to question, he seeks to test. His question only serving to show that in fact he may not be such an expert in the law after all. “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” The question is flawed, what can anyone do to inherit anything? (see Jesus through middle eastern eyes by Bailey p 286). An inheritance is always a gift based on relationship to the one who is giving the inheritance. In other words if you are part of a family or are adopted into one you can inherit. You don’t earn an inheritance you receive it because of who you are.

Jesus answers “what is written in the law, how do you read it?” In other words “you are the expert here, why don’t you tell us.” The Lawyer answers correctly fusing together Leviticus 19:18 and Deuteronomy 6:5. The order is Jesus’ and is found in the parallel passage Mt 22:37. The order is important, loving God comes first. If you don’t love God you will never be able to love your neighbor - If you genuinely love God you can do nothing but love your neighbor. Game over? Not yet. Jesus tells the lawyer “off you go, get on with it, do these things and you can have eternal life.” But the standard is high, love God consistently and unfailingly and love your neighbor as much as yourself. In other words its impossible to inherit eternal life yourself. Surely it is not possible to keep to the exact letter of the law? In the mind of the lawyer he thought he knew how to keep the first bit. If he keeps to the letter of the Law then he will love God but as for who his neighbor is, he needed some clarification.

The next words reveal the true reasoning behind the lawyers ‘testing’ of the Rabbi Jesus. He is not on a genuine quest for an answer, he is seeking to ‘justify himself’. The man who wants to know what he must do to inherit eternal life wants to justify himself. By his very questions the expert in the law exposes the law for what it is, not fully sufficient for salvation. The lawyer wanted a justification by self plan, and he needed Jesus to show him how to do it. The man who is asked 300 questions in the scripture has a record for not answering many directly, this is no exception. Jesus tells a story.

The Jerusalem to Jericho road can be seen today as it stretches 17 miles downhill from Jerusalem, winding its way through the rough terrain. In Jesus’ day a familiar road for robberies to take place, the setting would have been easily understood by those listening. Along the road lying in the dust is, in the mind of the listeners, a Jew. Beaten, bruised, bleeding and unconscious, he has been left half dead. Along came a priest, not an uncommon sight as this was the road that led to Jericho, the town which was home to the Priests and Levites. The Priest would have been traveling from serving in the temple, on his journey he faced a dilemma. If the wounded man was a good, law abiding Jew then leaving him by the side of the road would not have been an option. The only way the priest would have known the mans ethnicity would have been to speak to him, but half dead people don’t speak. What if the wounded man was dead? By touching him the priest would have become ceremonially unclean. The consequences of which would mean a week long process of ritual purification. Not an option. What if the wounded man was from another nation? What if the priest touched the man but the man later died? Even worse what if he touched him and then went on to serve at the altar in the temple and was found out? The Mishnah would see him taken outside the temple court to have his “brain split open with clubs.” Not a nice way to go. The listening crowd were not surprised in the least when they found out that the Priest walked on by.

Next comes the Priests assistant, often traveling along the Jericho road. But what should the Levite do? Under the same ritual and ceremonial laws as the Priest helping the injured man was also not an option. If the Priest didn’t touch him the the Levite definitely wouldn’t for fear of upstaging the Priest. The Priest had a a far superior knowledge of the Law, the Priest knew best. Besides, imagine walking through the gates of Jericho with a naked, bleeding, unconscious Samaritan slumped over your donkey. Insult a Priest? I don’t think so. So the listening crowd not surprised, await the arrival of the next passer by.

The expectation would have been for the next character in the story to be a Jewish layman. First Priest then Levite then ordinary Jew, maybe even a good Jew who could be the stories hero, helping the wounded man. But Jesus has a different kind of hero in mind, enter the Samaritan. The listening crowd would have already had the end of the story written. In their minds there was no way the Samaritan would stop and help. Maybe give the wounded man a few more kicks and finish him off, after all, the Samaritans were the enemy.
The Samaritans and the Jews had a history. Back in Nehemiah the Jews wouldn’t let the Samaritans help them build the temple so the Samaritans went and built there own rival temple on Mount Gerizim. The Jews didn’t take too kindly to this so in 130 BC destroyed the temple. Such was the animosity between the too that in the synagogues some meetings would include Samaritan hate time! Image that before you stand for your final hymn in your church next Sunday you break for a few moments of hate for the Samaritans. The hate continues, in AD 36 a Samaritan fanatic assembled a crowd on Mt Gerizim promising to reveal sacred vessels thought to have hidden there by Moses. Pilate got wind of it couldn’t resist the opportunity so sent a load of troops down and massacred everyone there. As if that wasn’t bad enough in AD 67 over 100,000 Samaritans were slaughtered by the Jews on Mt Gerizim. The word Samaritan was even used as a cuss word, in John 4:48 Jesus was called a Samaritan!

Back to the story, the Samaritan does the unthinkable, he stops and with Christ like compassion, helps his enemy in need. Using costly resources he binds the mans wounds and carries him on the back of his donkey to the nearest town, enemy territory. Risking his own life the Samaritan takes the rescued Jew to an Inn and pays for around two weeks lodgings, promising to come back to cover any outstanding debts. Jesus turns to the testing lawyer “which one of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” The Lawyers response is telling, unable to even say the word Samaritan , he answers. “The one who showed him mercy” Jesus finishes “You go and do likewise”

When we hear this story we are often asked to think about which one of the three journeying characters we are. Are you the haughty, arrogant Priest or Levite, supposedly too proud to stop and help a dying man? Or are you the unexpected Samaritan hero, doing a good deed? I don’t believe that Jesus is asking us to be either. Why? Because this is a story about This not That. We are non of the three, but we are the half dead man lying by the side of the road desperately in need of unexpected mercy. The “one who showed him mercy” is of course Jesus, displaying his unexpected, costly love to a dying man. This is ultimately a story about law, grace and the cross.

Parallel this with the first commandment mentioned by the lawyer to love God, who we only love because he first loved us, showing us, in Christ, his mercy. The result is that the love and mercy we have received produces only one response, and that is to love God with all our hearts, souls and minds. In being recipients of this incredible mercy and grace we are then propelled into carrying out the second commandment. The only suitable response to receiving the fathers welcoming, loving embrace is to love others. As we have received mercy so we can go and do likewise.

The parable of the good Samaritan is a story about Law. It is a story about an expert in law asking a leading question to a man who came as the fulfillment of the law. It is a story about how the law apart from Christ achieves nothing. It is a story about how the law apart from grace paralyses those bound up by the strict requirements who are then unable to meet the requirement by themselves. It points to one who came to save half dead people like us by achieving everything that the law and the priests could not, a final sacrifice. The sacrifice of one who would get down in the dirt on his hands and knees at the risk of his own life to heal the wounds of the enemy, at his own expense, providing safe haven, and leaving the one who had been half dead alive and completely debt free. The parable of the good Samaritan is a story about no-boundaries grace.

When we misunderstand grace we try and apply rules to it that restrict its free roaming. We draw a line, one side of which is IN, the other is OUT. We line our subjects up against the wall and like children in a school playground, point, chanting ‘inny meeny miny mo’. Grace only works when it applies to all, the moment we restrict grace based on our own boundaries we end up with nothing more than non-grace. We dress grace up in ill fitting hand-me-down clothes with a face plastered in cheap makeup. We disguise her natural beauty because we think she looks better the way we dress her rather than the way she has already been dressed.

Grace is not just something we receive nor is it something static that can be tied to a particular moment in time. Grace is dynamic it is never peripheral but always central. In Christ we are by our very position in him objects of outlandish grace. We are saved by grace, sustained by grace and propelled by grace as we live out the very heart of its message, that acceptance is based on someone else’s merit not our own. This is why grace is dangerous, it goes against the grain of our entire value system; We earn position and in return receive reward through meritocracy. The value system of the kingdom is completely different; We earn nothing and in return receive everything through graceocracy. We need to understand more of grace, yet our knowledge of grace it at its weakest when we claim to understand it. If we claim to understand grace we automatically devalue it because we are in no way capable of fully conceiving the intricately woven pattern that it is. Yet in part we do understand it, for it has been miraculously revealed to us; the grace of grace is that we have experienced it and have been and will continue to be transformed by it.

My eyes were held wide open to the marvelously gritty realty of grace when I was once invited to preach at a prison mens group in a maximum security wing for serious sex offenders and murderers. My subject was the parable of the prodigal son. As I spoke of a father throwing his arms in delight around the wayward son regardless of the mess he had got himself into, something happened. I looked into the eyes of the listening men and began to understand. As I looked at these wayward sons I realised that I too was no different to them. The same grace that welcomed me home was the same that lifted the arms of the father as he flung them around the pedophile or the murderer. The very same act of mercy saw Jesus on his knees in the dirt healing the wounds of a half dead man was the same mercy that these men had received.

In that room all hierarchy disappeared, for a moment there were no prisoners and civilians. There was a just a room full of men who had all once been prisoners to themselves but by grace and mercy were now debt free living as ‘one new man in christ‘, slowly becoming more and more like their maker. I left that night with a question; Was I really prepared to take grace for what it really is? Or was I like the teacher of the law asking loaded rhetorical questions, going to continue testing Jesus by seeking to justify myself rather than accept his amazing grace. This is my inheritance, that I can do nothing to bring me any closer or further away from salvation because everything has already been done for me.

Tags: Christianity, Church, CityGroup, Community, Grace