St. Luke 10:23-37

August 25, 2013

+INJ+  Creation is good. That is to say, when God made the world, it was good. There was no death, there was no corruption. Everything was rightly ordered. Creation, with man as steward of the world and vice-regent of God, was in harmony. What happened?

We are accustomed to saying that man “sinned,” and this brought evil into the world. That’s true. Some of the early Christians used different language, though, in line with what we find in today’s parable – a man robbed and wounded. Man was made in the image of God. When man rebelled, his own hubris damaged the image. Man, steward of the world, was wounded, throwing the world into disarray. Creation’s harmony was disrupted. If we think of harmony in musical terms, what we get now is dissonance. It grates, and unresolved, it drives us to madness. So the world is filled with insanity, corruption, and death. It is disordered, and man—who was intended to maintain the world’s order and harmony—fulfills not the task God gave us. All this, some of the fathers called trauma.

PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder—may be a relatively new term, but the concept is ancient. Just as we are individually damaged by harmful experiences, so the world is damaged, and the human race traumatized. I know many of you have experienced horrible things, where other people betray you, tell lies about you, or your soul and body are injured by various other kinds of wounds. It can take a long time to heal, and it requires the care of others. We need a compassionate one to come from the outside and care for us, heal us.

All that is depicted in today’s Gospel, where in the parable you have a man descending from Jerusalem.

This man is unnamed and undescribed. He is not a king, a vineyard worker, or a tax collector. He is unmodified, simply Ἄνθρωπός - the Greek term for man, the same word used in Genesis, “God created man in His own image.” This is the man who descends from Jerusalem, the City of God. He left the place of God and journeyed to Jericho, a city legendary for its wickedness. In the Old Testament, Jericho is the city God destroyed. It was never to be rebuilt. In the parable, then, the journey is one away from God toward evil. The human race embraces hubris and descends. We descended. Ἄνθρωπός falls among thieves—the demons—who strip him. His righteousness is stripped away, his dignity is stripped away, his goods are stripped away. He is beaten, and traumatized, and put to shame.

All the wounds you’ve experienced, all the sins you yourself have committed – it all originates in this collective hubris, this collective trauma.

There anthropos is, there mankind is, in the ditch, left to rot. Along come two other men. They see the carnage, and scurry by. “What jerks!” we think. But they are not villains. The priest and Levite serve a narrative function. They do not help because they cannot help. These characters symbolize the Law. The Law shows us our sin and how much we need a Savior. The Law exposes the trauma but cannot heal it. The Law is like an MRI or an X-ray machine. It reveals what is wrong, but cannot repair the damage. A physician is needed.

That’s who arrives, in the person of the Good Samaritan. For the Jew, a Samaritan is from the outside, a stranger, even someone hated. The stranger, the one from outside, embraces the fallen man in his folly. He dons no gown, wears no mask, puts on no latex gloves. He does not shield Himself from this man’s degradation; He does not stay aloof from the trauma. He joins the fallen man in his ditch.

He takes what He has—oil and wine—and administers them medicinally. This Outsider is a healer. He does what the Law—the priest and Levite—could not. He binds the wounds – in Greek, the τραύματα. Man is traumatized, and thus irrational. But the unexpected Physician puts the anthropos on His own donkey. He brings him to an inn, which becomes his hospital. He promises payment for all future medical expenses. This is no rationed care. It is abundant and total, with the goal of full restoration.

Now why does Jesus tell such a story? He is telling it to a man who is on a quest to gain life beyond his mortal limitations. It’s a lawyer looking for a loophole. He imagines that if he can fulfill the clauses of the divine contract, he can get the heavenly payout. He thinks to some extent he’s already kept the Law, the contract, but he wants to make sure. He wants to justify himself, that is, to show himself to be in the right.

By the story, Jesus shows him, and us, to be the man in the ditch. There is no pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Like the man in over his head in debt, like the unjust steward finally exposed in his false dealing, like the prodigal son face down in the mud with the swine, this is a hopeless cause. Someone from the outside must come and rescue us.

As in so many of His parables, Jesus puts Himself into the story. He’s the Samaritan, the one come down from the City of God to bind up our wounds and heal our trauma. Oil in the Bible is for anointing; it goes with Baptism, which is the anointing Jesus instituted for our forgiveness. Wine is for gladness; it goes with the Supper Jesus instituted.

The Sacramental life of the Church is where, along with the Word, Jesus keeps giving us Himself, healing us from the trauma of sin, giving us the righteousness outside ourselves.

We dare not overlook, though, the words of our Lord, “Go and do likewise.” The one who is forgiven much loves much. The one who is bestowed with coins is called to use those coins for the work of this hospital, the church. There are people all around you who have been traumatized. They need your good works. They need mercy, just as you need it. Be merciful, as you have received mercy. Be generous, as you have received the Lord’s generosity. Seek peace and pursue it. You’ve been lifted up from the ditch. Don’t return to the filth. For you are washed, you are justified, you are sanctified. +INJ+