Familiar passages of Scripture become “strange” when we truly seek to penetrate them prayerfully and carefully. The Parable of the Good Samaritan is an example. Is not the meaning obvious as disclosed in the exchange between Jesus and the expert in the law (Luke 10: 36-37)? Isn’t the story so simple that anyone hearing or reading it can readily become an expert in its interpretation? In principle, maybe. But the familiarity with the tale blinkers the mind to so much else that is contained in the passage. Jesus poses a searching question to the lawyer. “What is written in the law, how do you read it?”  The same query could be addressed to every reader of the Bible. “What do you actually see? Do you skim or search? Do you assume the message from a current mindset or crave renewal of mind from the Word of God? ” So often the Bible is employed to endorse our unexamined presuppositions.

The point we are seeking to establish becomes so clear that we deny ourselves the layers of meaning waiting to be discovered and we are insensitive to situation, tone, and intent. To the Pharisees, who had great facility in memorizing and quoting Scripture, Jesus said, “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’ ” (Matthew 8:13 cf Hosea 6:6). To the experts the citation was well known but its meaning eluded them. “Go and learn” is our motto whenever we open our copies of the Word of God, and the Spirit of God is sought as our Teacher. The Bible is dangerous territory without our divine guide.

Words have meaning and situational and grammatical context are keys to their significance and nuance. Words are easy to scan and recite but not so easy to comprehend without reflection and appropriation. They may become symbols unaccompanied by insight. Frequent and flippant usage reduces their force. Great truths become trifles. Jesus detects this in persons he encountered who repeat expressions of profound worth and seriousness in terms of triteness and sentimentality e.g. “‘Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and raised you.’ He replied, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it’ ” (Luke 11: 27-28). “Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God” (Luke14:15). This statement elicited the Parable of the Great Banquet, a warning against presumption.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan, in its setting and direction, is demonstrative of the adventurous and explorative approach to Scripture that investigates and peruses the word for the gains that it can yield – and these can never be exhausted. No one ever really knows the Bible, just as a swimmer can never cover every inch of the Pacific Ocean. We are always just dipping our toes. The lawyer approaches Jesus with the cocky air of the expert and with no sense of his ignorance and grave deficiencies moral and intellectual. His arrogance is not mere second nature, it is his first and essential nature that has no grasp of the necessity of its salvation. Jesus has no regard for his assumed expertise as a scholar. Head knowledge may or may not be of value. It can be a great asset or it may be the possession of an ass who doesn’t have the sense to profit from it.

Jesus never resorts to flattery on the basis of appearance or reputation. He aims only and always at the heart. That is where the truth of and about  person actually resides. He knows our person and makes it known to us. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Luke 10:27). Everyone, in the light of this summons, knows that they do not and cannot comply. Haters of the Lord do not care. People of shallow conviction cast the matter aside and hope for the best. Lovers of the Lord mourn the littleness and inconstancy of their love. Our Godward obligation immediately casts us in the category of sinner. The lawyer knows he is caught out and becomes evasive. His proud self esteem is under threat and he must defend it with what is a blatantly revealing giveaway. He shirks the matter of his relationship to God and retorts, “Who is my neighbour?” when Jesus advises that an evidence of true godliness is love to “neighbour as yourself”. The defensive ploy discloses that he is callous at heart and complacent as to his condition. A child of God is instinctively merciful to his fellows. Ultimately the word of God gouges out of us, readily or reluctantly, our true spiritual disposition and Jesus has the lawyer hopping from foot to foot with discomfort. He is in fact a legalist without any notion of grace, grace as a gift and graciousness as a virtue. His approval with God, and the rewards he expects, are calculated on the basis of performance (sacrifices rendered).

Jesus wants to bring the lawyer to the point of felt and admitted helplessness and moral destitution, for nothing is of moral worth without pure love toward God and man, and this is now a natural impossibility to sinful, selfish, men who are turned in upon themselves and have no authentic, disinterested, concern for others. The heart of man has to be stripped of all self righteousness and evacuated of all self reliance. Humbleness is the preparation for eternal life and that attitude is a God wrought miracle within the human heart. The deeply ingrained hubris of the Jewish legalist, his sense of superiority and personal success as a human being, has to be demolished and Jesus assails it  with a parable that verges on insult.

The Lord’s example of mercy, divine mercy through human agency, is not another Jew whom the lawyer could naturally respect and even applaud, but an individual whom he would immediately despise. The lawyer boasts rectitude on his supposed conformity to the law. In his view the Samaritan stands outside the sphere of the law and therefore outside the love of God. He has no possibility of acceptance with God and is to be loathed. Jesus is showing the type of person whose heart is closer to God than that of the self congratulating Jew. His example contradicts every Jewish expectation. It is the heart that matters. This is what Jesus is teaching, and  the heart’s  fundamental inclination is a gauge of its proximity to (justified state), or distance from God.

And more than this, Jesus is asserting that the heart that is truly humbled and rendered lowly recognizes grace in, and receives grace from, human instruments that it would normally regard as beneath contempt. When we are truly aware of our poverty, and are down and out, we receive help from wherever it comes. The egotistical stuffing that fills us has been knocked out of us. This is why we welcome strangers and bother with visitors as congregations. They may be possessors and bearers of grace if given an opening. They may even be angels. It is a simple Samaritan ministry to extend a kindly greeting and proceed to greater compassion if necessary. This is the mark of saintliness, not fussy exclusiveness and selectivity as to whom we associate with, as Jesus shows in the strange bonding of Jew and Samaritan in the Jew’s dependence and the Samaritan’s lack of discrimination.

There is a wideness in God’s mercy and Christian behaviour reflects that fact. Go and do likewise is the Christian mandate (v.37). But Christian action and obedience is not meritorious in terms of winning the favour of God. It is the fruit of grace. If people understand the parable as law-keeping  that obtains a reward in the Pharisaic sense – a claim for commendation – then they stand where the lawyer stood in the doomed zone of legalism. The parable points to Jesus as an “unlikely” Saviour from our perspective, human and humble, but he is our only helper, and being utterly helpless ourselves we must submit ourselves to his hands and extend the hand of compassion to others. This parable is more than moral instruction; it treats of moral reconstruction and speaks of “outsiders” being accepted in the kingdom – not of works but by grace, not of merit but by mercy.

The Collect for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity:
  Almighty and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than we to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve: Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, the Son, our Lord. Amen.

Our natural suspicions, and the suggestions of Satan, cause us to restrict the generosity of God. Deficiency in the knowledge of the character of God enables the evil one to foist a grotesque caricature of God upon our minds. Features of the divine nature can be so exaggerated that others are eclipsed. Our perception of God may become grossly distorted to such an extent that thoughts of him become repellent. God is neither a bully nor a milksop. His perfections are perfectly balanced and wisely exercised and our response is to fear and love him. Sin will always attract his judgment; righteousness is the gift he bestows for fellowship with him. Judgment is deserved and grace is donated. All his decisions and actions are always consistent. In the miracle of salvation his justice is satisfied and mercy moves to the fore. The cross of Christ is the irrefutable evidence. He is the bearer of sin and the benefactor of sinners. The Substitute endures the severity of a just God on our behalf and then endows men with the sweetness of divine compassion. This is the greatest and most ingenious solution to an otherwise intractable problem ever. Hosea poses the dilemma, “How can I give* you up?” (11:8). Isaiah was given the answer, “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (53:6). The key answers to man’s huge moral predicament are supplied in the Old Testament. The full report of God’s redemptive activity is available in the New. Even if it is, strictly speaking, an anachronism, Luther is, in a sense, right to rate Abraham a Christian. “Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56).

In the cross, rightly expounded according to prophetic and apostolic testimony, we find the key to the divine character. It is the clearest window into the divine Self. Justice prevails and goodness overflows. The gift of the Son is strongest proof of the generosity of God and that is our sure starting point for an assessment of the divine goodwill, as Paul points out, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave* him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). The forgiveness of “those things whereof our conscience is afraid” is at the heart of Jesus’ mediatorial role for our sakes. This is acknowledged in the General Thanksgiving: We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ.

The love of God is inestimable – beyond measure. For those who have received Christ by God’s grace, the love of God towards them is boundless. He has bound over to them through irrevocable promise the fullness of his being and provision. All things are ours in Christ. We can only agree, in all things best and beneficial for us, that we do not have because we do not ask. Unbelief or sluggishness prevent our petitions.  Here is where the collect rushes in to prompt our prayers when our spirit flags, our faith becomes faint, our difficulties seem insuperable, and our requests too large. What wisdom and encouragement is packed into our sample prayer from our forbears in the faith.

We are reminded of the God whom we address and bidden to approach him. He is able to answer prayer for he is almighty and everlasting. Omnipotence makes his action easy. Ultimately nothing can obstruct him when his wisdom certifies his response as wise, as his responses infallibly happen to be. Desires implanted by him are granted; desires of our own invention are refined. Because he is everlasting the answers he gives and the gifts he bestows are of eternal validity. He can uphold his undertakings and bring them to fruition. If he delays according to our reckoning he has plenty of time to reply appropriately for he knows and decrees what lies ahead and can suitably fit a blessing into its right place according to the overall scheme of things. When he withholds an answer the fruit of his love is ripening. We do not have to grab at green apples in God’s purposes for us. We must not hurry his season for harvest time.

Furthermore, God wills our prayer, not in a formal sense, but with a Fatherly desire. He wants to hear from us and expects our pleas and praises that constitute the kind of rapport that exits vocally between earthly parents and progeny – asking and appreciation. Prayer is family conversation. The marvel is that the God of infinite majesty bends his ear to us. His disposition to us is such that he is, “more ready to hear than we to pray”. Indifference and apathy close our communication with God. Distractions and idols turn us from diligence, and desire for him, in prayer. It is self deprivation. When he quickens us with trials and disappointments to consult him we cannot imagine ourselves more intense in our seeking of him, yet even at those points of crisis he is more ready to hear than we to pray. His yearning for the union of souls with him outstrips ours. He does not need us but he generously creates our need of him. We cannot estimate his eagerness to hear our voice. Sometimes we are prostrate before his throne, at other times we are positioned in an armchair talking with Father Dear (Abba). Circumstance will determine the posture, but always we are filled with the sense of awe and privilege. And what draws us to him is his willingness to hear, so easily forgotten.

More than this, God is willing to lavish his goodness upon us to such an extent that it exceeds our desire. Our holy cravings are an appetite for God that only he can satisfy. Our emptiness is such that we feel it cannot be filled and the world soon proves that it is not adequate. So deep is our native dissatisfaction and hunger for repletion that we scale down our expectations of God. We minimize his ability to give. We hesitate at his willingness. Nature speculates that he is miserly: Satan alleges that he is mean. God is at the ready to pour upon us the abundance of his salvific mercy and this can be realized also through temporal blessings that are contributive to the soul’s wellbeing. The Lord is bountiful in immediate provision for we have no deserts of the slightest favour or comfort. These have been forfeited. And he holds in reserve for us an unimaginable inheritance.

Well does John Newton advise us: 

Come, my soul, thy suit prepare:
Jesus loves to answer prayer;
He himself has bid thee pray,
Therefore will not say thee nay.
.
Thou art coming to a King,
Large petitions with thee bring;
For his power and grace are such,
None can ever ask too much.
.
While I am a pilgrim here,
Let thy love my spirit cheer;
As my Guide, my Guard, my Friend,
Lead me to my journey’s end.

We deserve nothing, but our confidence is in the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, our Lord. When we are in a state of equipoise between prayer and competing preoccupation the collect tilts us in the right direction.