Sermon: “Half-Dead and in the Ditch," Lent, March 9, 2025

Luke’s Gospel: Jesus and the Outsiders, Outcasts, and Outlaws

Scripture: Luke 10:25-37

Preacher: Rev. Ryan Slifka

Title: “Half-Dead and in the Ditch”

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and all your strength, and with all your mind.” and “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” This is the answer a lawyer—not our kind of lawyer, but a scholar of the Bible, the law of Moses—gives to Jesus.

He gives this to Jesus as the answer to the question “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” What must I do to be a part of God’s future, the kingdom of heaven? Love God with everything you’ve got, Deuteronomy 6. And your neighbour as yourself. Leviticus 19.

Jesus agrees. “Bingo!” He says. The lawyer, however, isn’t quite done with the questions. “Sure, we’re supposed to love God and our neighbour,” he says. “But… who exactly is my neighbour? Who am I supposed to love as myself?” Who is mu neighbour?

In response, Jesus doesn’t quite give a straight answer. But he tells a story. A parable.

Once upon a time a man took a trip from Jericho to Jerusalem. The kind of road where you don’t know if you’re gonna get a shake down at gunpoint from out of the bushes. And, sure enough, a gang of bandits hits him, takes his cash, his car, everything, beating him half-to-death, and in a ditch to die.

And as he’s lying there, a couple prominent people pass by. One’s a priest–a holy man whose job is in the temple working with the things of God, and the other’s a Levite–a descendant of the long and prestigious line of Levi. Usually also priests, but not always priests. And you know what these guys do? As a Minister, I resent the portrayal of us priestly-types! They both cover their eyes and keep walking. As if Ministers needed more bad PR!

All kidding aside, somebody does actually stop to help: It’s a… Samaritan!

A… Samaritan!

A Samaritan?

When I say “Samaritan” you’re supposed to gasp. Because Samaritans are the backwoods, superstitious, inbred cousins of God’s people. Maybe if I would have said “Republican” or something else instead. That’s kind of what Jesus is going for with shock value. The things called the “Good Samaritan” because to the listeners there’s no such thing. A contradiction in terms. 

The Republican… I mean Samaritan bandages up the victim’s wounds, after pouring oil and wine on them. Oil to soften the wound, alcohol to cleanse it, a first-century first-aid kit. Then he pulls the victim out of the ditch, tosses him in his own car without worry as to what his blood’ll do the white upolstery, and drives him to a local inn to recover, spending the night nursing him back to health. And if that isn’t enough, the Samaritan leaves his credit card to pay for the room and room service. “Give him everything he needs,” he says, “until I get back. Just put all the expense on my card.”

“Which of these three—priest, Levite, Samaritan—is a neighbour?” Jesus asks.

 “The one who showed mercy,” the lawyer replies. He can’t bring himself to even say the word “Samaritan.”

To which Jesus simply replies “go and do likewise.”

To inherit the age to come, Jesus says, one must love God and neighbour. To be a neighbour is to be one in need of mercy. To love your neighbour them is to show it.

In this parable Jesus explicates the radical ethic of neighbourly love at the heart of the Christian gospel. How do we inherit God’s future? By loving God with everything we’ve got, and our neighbour as ourselves. St. Jerome said it means that “that we are neighbours, all people to all people, for we have one Father.”[1] Meaning our neighbour is being anyone in need. The Jew in need. The Samaritan in need. Whatever race or country, or language, or religion. Muslim or Jew, Christian or Zoroastrian. Rich, poor, housed or homeless. Straight or gay. Liberal or conservative. Enemy or friend.

Go ahead and insert your sermon on how we should support Ukraine there.

But if you wanna inherit eternal life, Jesus says, you gotta show mercy to all. 

Of course, it’s far easier said than done.

I recently finished The Hiding Place, a memoir by Corrie Ten Boom, about her Dutch family’s experience hiding Jews from Nazi persecution during the Second World War. They would hide Jews in their apartment above the clock store they owned and find them safe places to live in the country. Out of a deep sense of Christian duty towards their neighbours.

One family’s case was particularly urgent–a young Jewish mother and her newborn baby who had been born prematurely. The problem with babies being that they make a lot of noise.

Ten Boom knew of a pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church who lived in the country away from so many prying eyes and ears. She invited the man to their shop on the pretenses of needing his spiritual counsel. When she explained the actual situation, he hesitated, saying, “It’s just not safe!’”

At this point Ten Boom went upstairs, and came back downstairs with a soft bundle in her arms. She it out to the Pastor and pulled back the blanket, revealing the tiny, beautiful face of that very Jewish baby they needed to hide. In the hopes it would change his mind.

“There was a long silence,” she writes. “The man bent forward, his hand in spite of himself reaching for the tiny fist curled around the blanket. For a moment I saw compassion and fear struggle in his face. Then he straightened. “No,” he said. “Definitely not. We could lose our lives for this Jewish child!”[2]

Now clearly, this Jewish woman and her mother were two people in need of mercy. Like the Levite and the Priest in this parable, this guy should have been the first one to say “yes.” But also like the Priest and Levite in the parable he kept walking. Because the danger was too great.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I am afraid that if I were in the same situation I fear that I would probably do the exact same thing. I am clergy after all. But I have a hard enough time showing much smaller, less risky mercies to the people in need around me, let alone holding someone’s life in my hands. Not only that, but the internet has created a “global village” where the number of people in need is endless, and their needs infinite. 

It’s one thing for us to retweet slogans, to post memes in support for this or that cause, or give our money to this or that charity. But it’s much harder to sacrifice our safety when somebody truly needs it. Rather than empowering me to be the Good Samaritan, it leaves me feeling more powerless. To be a Good Samaritan, to love our neighbours in need unconditionally may be absolutely necessary, required by the Lord himself. But it’s easier said than done.

I feel more like the man half-dead in the ditch than I do the bold, brave hero of this story. Truth be told.

What’s interesting, and perhaps somewhat relieving, though, is that this parable isn’t just about what we’re supposed to do. It is about what we’re supposed to do. But not only.

You see, throughout the history of the church, we haven’t only read this passage as an exhortation, as moral instruction. After all, as the late preacher Robert Capon points out that “if the world could have been saved by providing good examples to which we could respond with appropriately good works, it would have been saved an hour and twenty minutes after Moses came down from Mount Sinai.”[3] It needs to be about more than a command for us to do better.

And it is more than that.

The early Church Father, Ambrose of Milan, said that Jesus himself is the Good Samaritan, and we’re the ones in the ditch–half dead, needing his help. Hans Urs Von Balthasar, the late Catholic theologian who I quoted last week says, that Jesus tells the parable this way “does not do so out of humanitarian concern, rather, because he himself has done everything the [Samaritan] did and he has done it lavishly for all.”

The parable, like all of scripture, is ultimately about the God we meet in Jesus Christ. And his life-giving, sacrificial love for all. Especially for those of us, like the man on the side of the road. To carry into the kingdom of heaven we who can’t carry ourselves.[4]

Jesus is our Good Samaritan. One who has come to save we who are dead in our sins. To forgive us for the ways we all fall short, to gift us with the power of his Holy Spirit, and to carry us into his kingdom. By a strength and power not our own. Even though we fail to love God and our neighbours, our inheritance, our future, our destiny is assured.

And since the inheritance is ours, since our future is assured, then it means that we’re free to risk ourselves for our neighbours in ways we wouldn’t be able to if this were not so. Such mercy may be impossible on our own. But, in the words of the angel Gabriel to Mary, from the beginning of Luke’s gospel “all things are possible with God.”[5] With God all things are made possible.

Back to The Hiding Place and Corrie Ten Boom. After the Pastor refused Corrie’s Ten Boom’s plea for a safe place to hide, her father, the 87 year old Casper Ten Boom appeared in the doorway.

‘Give the child to me, Corrie,’ he said.

Her Father held the baby close, his white beard brushing its cheek, looking into the little face with eyes as blue and innocent as the baby’s own. At last he looked up at the pastor.

“You say we could lose our lives for this child,’ he said. ‘I would consider that the greatest honour that could come to my family.’ An honour, which did come to him and his family, when he died in a Nazi-run penitentiary.[6] He stopped while the priest passed by.

Casper Ten Boom, a clock maker, an ordinary person just like you or me in an ordinary town. Somehow, this man thought it the greatest honour to die for this child, to die for a reviled one, to be a neighbour… regardless of the cost.

My only explanation for this incredible, impossible feat, is God’s power in Jesus Christ. Jesus, the Good Samaritan.

Ten Boom had faith that he, like the man half-dead by the side of the road had been rescued, had been brought to the inn, healed with the wine of the Lord’s shed blood, and oil of eternal mercy. Faith that, he, too, had been carried out of death into the kingdom of eternal life and had been fed and cared for by another’s bottomless account, a store of treasure that would never drain. Faith in the fact he already has a future that not even the black boot of the grave could crush. Faith that not only moves mountains but has the power to move something even more implacable: the fearful human heart to love.

I have no explanation for this man’s courage to love his neighbour. Other than faith in the power of the God who has made every human being his neighbour in the cross of Jesus Christ. With a Lord like that, he couldn’t help but go and do likewise.

The truth is that we can not inherit the kingdom of heaven, God’s future, with out loving God with everything we’ve got, and loving our neighbours, even our enemies, as ourselves. A feat that—when it comes down to it—we are most likely to fail. A feat impossible on our own. Especially in these fearful times.

And yet, the good news is that we are not on our own. We have a Saviour. In Jesus Christ, a Good Samaritan has come to we who are languishing on the side of life’s roads, to rescue us, to heal us, to gift us with a mercy and grace that will never run out. And to carry us with him into his kingdom. Which will have no end.

So dear friends, knowing that you are forgiven. Knowing that you are healed. Knowing that your eternal inheritance is assured, may you be given the recklessness to spend it like there’s no tomorrow. May you be given the strength to love God with all you’ve got. And may you be given the courage—like brother Casper Ten Boom—to risk something big for something good.

In the same way our Lord has made you his neighbour, in the same way he has shown you mercy, may you go and do likewise.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

[1] St. Jerome, “Homily on Psalm 14,” quoted in Ancient Christian Devotional: A Year of Weekly Readings: Lectionary Cycle C, ed. Cindy Crosby (Downer’s Grove, IVP Press, 2009), 170. “For anyone to be a neighbour, then, it is enough for him [or her] to be a [hu]man.” John Calvin, A Harmony of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, vol. III, trans. A.W. Morrison (Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 1972), 38.

[2] Corrie Ten Boom with John and Elizabeth Sherill, The Hiding Place (Old Tappan: Spire Books, 1971), 99.

[3] Rober Farrer Capon, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2004), 213.

[4] HUVB, 330.

[5] Luke 1:37

[6] Ten Boom, 99.