Rescued by Justification - Sermon for the 13th Sunday after Trinity

Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, September 11^th, 2022
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, South Dakota
Rescued by Justification

Justification.  The Good Samaritan is teaching us about justification. 

   Justification is a ten dollar word whose meaning we struggle to keep straight in our heads.  But for many reasons we need to know what justification means, including because this morning, the Good Samaritan is teaching us about justification.  

   Maybe you were thinking that the Good Samaritan is teaching us about good works,
about loving our neighbor, about heroism and putting people first, no matter what.  On this September 11^th, maybe you connect the Good Samaritan with New York City firefighters who rushed into the burning Twin Towers to help people get out.  Then, after getting one soul out, many firefighters rushed in again to rescue another, and another, until the Towers collapsed and they died, along with so many others they were trying to save.  Very good.  We are not wrong to associate the Good Samaritan with selfless acts of service and bravery.  But we know that the Good Samaritan is first and foremost about justification, because St. Luke tells us precisely this.  Listen again: 

 

    And behold, a lawyer stood up to put [Jesus] to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” ²⁶ He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” ²⁷ And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” ²⁸ And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

   ²⁹ But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

 

   This lawyer is a religious lawyer, an expert in the Law of Moses, which was both the foundation of the Jewish religious rules, and their civil law as well.  This lawyer desired to justify himself, to successfully make the claim that he could and did keep this law, that is, that according to Moses’ rule, he was just, he was good, he was right with God. 

 

   The basic shape of God’s rule for what we must do to inherit eternal life was not in doubt.  To gain from God the life after death that He holds out as a reward for the just, for the righteous, for the good, one must simply love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.  Jesus agrees with the lawyer:  Yes, do this, and you will live.  You will live forever and ever, even after your earthly life ends. 

 

   Simple enough.  But the lawyer has a concern.  Maybe he doesn’t think he can really do it, or perhaps he simply doesn’t want to love as God requires.  In any event, he tries to qualify the rule, to limit its application.  Desiring to justify himself, he asks Jesus:  And who is my neighbor?  Jesus responds with the story of the Good Samaritan.  So, along with whatever else we might take away from this wonderful story, the Good Samaritan is about justification. 

 

   And what does justification mean?  Justification is all about being judged.  Justification refers to successfully passing through judgement, of being judged by an authority who declares that you are innocent, in the right.  Judges either justify, or they condemn.  They find innocence, or guilt. 

 

   Part of the reason we struggle to remember what justify and justification mean is that in English we have two word families that cover the same ground:  the “just” family of words and the “righteous” family.  Just, along with justify, justice, justification and judge, both the action and the person, come to English as borrowed words from French and Latin.  Right and righteousness come to us from Old English, which was a Germanic language.  But right and righteousness didn’t come with verb forms.  We say “justify,” which means to prove or declare one righteous, or just.  But we don’t have the verb “right-ify.”  So we can’t always stick with one family or the other, and in can be a bit confusing.  But let’s keep trying to get it straight, because our eternity depends upon it. 

 

   We deal with justification or righteousness all the time.  We go out of the house, hoping we look right, hoping people won’t negatively judge us for the clothes we wear or the way we look.  We put on make-up, comb our hair or figure out how to dress to cover up the 20 lbs. we’ve recently gained.  All of these so common efforts that we all do are attempts at self-justification: us trying to do what it takes to avoid the negative and gain the positive judgement of others.  Because being judged negatively hurts.  But being judged positively, having someone else tell us that we did things just right, well that is a wonderful feeling, an addictive pleasure. 

 

   When something goes wrong, our knee-jerk reaction is to justify ourselves, that is, to say whatever went wrong wasn’t my fault.  Character development is in great part practicing the habit of first considering the reality of a situation, and then speaking the truth about what has gone wrong, even when the truth is that we own part or all of the blame. 

 

   Our desire for justification is inbred.  Children naturally seek their parents’ approval, which means they seek or desire that their parents justify them.  Our mom and dad are the first judges of our lives, and we learn from them what is right, or just, and also what is wrong, unjust, unrighteous. 

 

   Of course, justification doesn’t end with childhood.  No, it extends into every area of life.  Seeking justification is what politicians do, justification in the form of votes, and contributions, positive judgments from constituients that the politician needs, in order to gain and hold onto power and prestige.  Politics is all about justification.  But so is almost everything else.  Justification is sought by contractors and grocery stores, interior designers, entertainers, athletes, and everybody else.  Seeking the positive judgement of others is what drives our economy and our way of life. 

 

   In our current popular culture, everyone is said to be their own judge.  In fact, the only unforgivable sin, they say, is to judge the choices someone else makes.  Unless you are so backward as to make the choices that God in the Bible has told us to are right.  Seek to be righteous according to Christian values and quickly the world will judge you guilty, bigoted, a transgressor who must be punished. 

 

   The world has reached the judgement that unlimited sexual freedom is an absolute right.  So if you dare say that boys are boys and girls are girls, or if you dare protest that the unborn child has rights as well, you will declared guilty of hatred, of misogyny and patriarchalism, two other fancy words that mean hating women and promoting the power of men over women.  Which is weird, since the internet driven gender disphoria epidemic that is roiling our society mostly impacts young women.  And a bit more than half of all unborn babies are girls.  Popular justice is weird, and frightening.      

 

   Justification, the concern for being righteous in the eyes of whomever we consider to be our judge, this is the concern that drives our actions, our very lives.  Be careful which judge you choose, because justification determines your peace of mind, your happiness. 

 

   To be just, or righteous, according to God’s Word, is to be right with God.  To be just, or righteous, is to be able to stand with confidence before the Judge of All, the Ruler and Sovereign of the universe, confident, because you know He will declare that you are right.  He will justify you, declare your innocence, and even praise and extolling all your good deeds, as He welcomes you into His glory.  Biblical justification is a great and wonderful thing, the very goal of human existence. 

 

   Justification is life and salvation.  So it is helpful today that the Good Samaritan teaches us about justification, about how a person can be right with God, and so also inherit eternal life.  Because if we have eternity figured out, if we know we are justified before the Eternal Judge, then dealing with the ups and downs of today becomes a lot easier. 

 

   So, what does the Good Samaritan teach us about justification?  Well, it is important to note that the lawyer desires to justify himself.  Which the Law of Moses also talks about:  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself… you do this, and you will live.” This is self justification.  But the lawyer wants to qualify, to limit, the definition of neighbor, to make the keeping of God’s Law a bit easier:  “And who is my neighbor?” 

 

   Jesus responds with an extreme example.  Your neighbor is whatever needy person the Lord God puts in your path.  A half-dead and naked enemy, lying on the side of the road, interrupting your journey?  Yep, that’s your neighbor.  Where the priest and the Levite, two religious workers, two holy men, decided to ignore and pass by the victim dying on the side of the road, a Samaritan, a citizen of the most despised neighbors that the Jewish people had, this Samaritan is moved to compassion and goes way above and beyond to help. 

 

   The Good Samaritan makes the victim’s problem his own problem.  He involves himself personally in the solution, touching, washing, lifting, and leading his own donkey to carry the victim to the inn.  There the Samaritan spends his own money to provide for his new neighbor’s care.  The Samaritan even promises to cover any future debt, in order to bring the victim back to life, and then continue to keep him alive.  This, says Jesus, is what it means to be a neighbor; this is to love your neighbor as yourself.  Do this, and you will justify yourself, you will make yourself right with God.  Do this, and you will live.  Even though you die, you will live. 

 

   But we can’t.  Or can we?  Maybe once in a while you stop on the highway and help someone change a tire or get their car out of a snowbank.  Maybe you can take one messed up person under your wing and help them out.  God be praised, such Good Samaritan acts are precious indeed.  What would life in this world be like if no one ever helped out a neighbor, just because, for no apparent reason at all?  Thank God for good neighbors.  I see many of you serving others every day, Christians freely loving as they have been loved.  There is hardly anything more beautiful in this world.  Keep on serving your neighbors.  You all have the capacity to help someone. 

 

     But what about the next needy neighbor, and the next one?  Even the ones who treat you shabbily?  We all have limits.  But that’s a problem, because the Law of Moses, which Jesus explains using the Good Samaritan, does not set any limits of time or frequency.  Every time, each neighbor, every needy soul.  Help them all, every time, without fail, without complaining, and then you will have kept the Law.  Then you will have justified yourself, and you will live. 

 

   Can you do it?  I can’t do it.  The Apostle Paul, greatest missionary of Christ, declares quite clearly that he can’t do the good that he knows he should do.  (Romans 7)  St. John tells us that if we say we never fail to keep this Law, that is if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  (1 John 1)  In self-justification before God, there are only two options:  either we can lie to ourselves and pretend that we have achieved righteousness, or we can confess our failures.  The Law of God always accuses us, because we never fully keep it.  Love God and love your neighbor, please.  But don’t imagine that by your love you are justifying yourself.    

 

   The Good Samaritan is about justification.  Which is to say, the Good Samaritan is about Jesus.  We tend to separate our thoughts about being righteous, before our neighbor or God, off into an abstract corner of our minds.  Indeed, in our minds we can work out elaborate schemes for achieving right-ness.  But in the flesh, in the day to day interaction with other justice-seeking humans, justice has skin and bone.  In this broken world full of needy people, we find that trying-to-be-just gets really messy really fast.  We may retreat into our minds, and ignore the justice-needing world around us, like the priest or the Levite did.  We may try to separate our justice before God from living justly with our neighbors.  But not Jesus.  Indeed, while Jesus in the story of the Good Samaritan is certainly teaching us a truth about how we should behave, about God’s Law for us, He is also, and in the end more importantly, teaching us about Himself. 

 

   You see, the Jews hated the Samaritans because they were half-breeds.   Part Jew, yes, ethnic cousins, but not fully Jewish.  And not following the Jewish way of doing things.  Jesus was a Jew, but He was accused of being a Samaritan by the Jews, because He challenged again and again the ways of the Jews.  You see, the Jews pretended to follow Moses, but really cut a lot of corners with God’s Law. 

   Even more, while Jesus was fully a Jewish man, he was also fully the LORD God of Hosts.  And this was the thing that ultimately made the Jews hate and reject Him.  Jesus proved His God-ness, through His miracles and teaching.  Jesus declared His God-ness with His Words, words like “I and the Father are One.”  And He accepted the worship of believers, who fell on their faces before Him and prayed to Jesus, acts of worship which can rightly only be offered to God Himself.  Refusing to believe that Jesus was God, despite all the evidence, the religious lawyers, the Pharisees, Priests and Elders all considered Jesus to be a blasphemer, a mere man who pretended to be the LORD.  And for this, they judged Jesus worthy of death.    

 

   Like the Good Samaritan, Jesus came on a journey, from heaven to earth, and happened upon dying humanity, terminally sick sinners, dying by the side of the road.  And Jesus had compassion on us.  He, whom angels ceaselessly serve and praise, got down off His heavenly steed, and stooped to touch the uncleanness of humanity.  He washed our wounds with His eternal medicine.  He placed us on His donkey and carried us to the Inn of His Church.  There He provides for our care until that day when He will return, to transfer us from our temporary lodging with the communion of the saints on earth, to our eternal, glorious, heavenly lodging, to the glorious communion of all the saints of every time and place, who with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven are gathered in joyful worship around the Good Samaritan.  Jesus is our Good Samaritan, who has justified us with His own suffering and death, declaring righteous everyone who believes that God’s Son has done all this, for me. 

 

   Self-justifying is a dead-end.  Literally, an eternal dead-end.  But in Jesus, our Good Samaritan, we have been declared righteous, just, right with God, by the forgiveness of all our sins.  We live each day in this life from the ongoing justification that He provides for us, through His Church, through His Word, through Water, Wheat and Wine, through the Gospel, the Good News of free justification, in Jesus Name.  To our Good Samaritan be the glory, and to us the peace and the joy, today, and forever and ever, Amen.