The Path with Sonja Knutson

So this morning, as Greta read, I picked the Good Samaritan story because lately, as I watch the news and I listen to social media, I often think, oof, da, we read, we really need some good news and some good Samaritans in this world.

Amen.

And so I don't care who you are in this world, if you're a Christian, a follower, or not, how many of you know the Good Samaritan story?

Well, we should because we're in this building, right?

But how many of you went out in the streets and were talking to somebody about the Good Samaritan?

How many think you would maybe find somebody that perhaps isn't a follower, but they would still know the Good Samaritan story?

Yeah, most likely, right?

I mean, we are filled with it everywhere.

We have institutions and chap churches and hospitals named in honor of the Good Samaritan.

In fact, my great aunt Goody was in a Good Samaritan home, nursing home, way back in the 1970s.

I loved going to visit her.

She even in her deathbed had more bright red, big lipstick, and her hair was always done up a mile high and big blue eyeshadow and gaudy jewelry, and I loved it.

I loved that was one thing.

I didn't love going into the nursing home because, you know, back then they kind of had smells about them, not so much anymore, but I didn't care for that.

But either way, she was in a Good Samaritan nursing home.

We also have laws named after the man.

In Minnesota alone, we actually have two: the Good Samaritan law that protects you.

So if you're stopping along the road and you're giving someone like CPR and you happen to break their rib, the Samaritan law will protect you from being sued for that.

But also, Minnesota carries a law that if if you um see an accident or you are seeing someone that is being beaten up and you don't call for help, you can be legally held accountable for that too.

In fact, most of the world, not just Minnesota, not just the United States, but most of the world have some type of a good Samaritan law outside of Pakistan, South Africa, New Zealand, and Singapore.

So if you are the type of the person that doesn't really like helping anybody, you can go live there.

Fair?

Most people would know a good Samaritan when they see one, right?

It's a person that randomly shares an act of kindness or love without anything in return.

So I think of Mother Teresa, right?

Who else do you think of?

Albert Schweitzer.

Oprah Winfrey, who donates millions of dollars a year to do good.

Who else do you think of?

Nobody?

Really?

How about who?

Santa, yes! You could come and live at my house because Santa is the Bob or Ben's house.

Pick one or the other.

I know you're gonna pick Ben because you like Maya, but my house is pretty cool with Santa's everywhere, right?

You know good Samaritans yourself, don't you?

Missionaries, right?

Random people that stop to change a tire on the side of the road.

My parents are beautiful Good Samaritans.

Our house church, I would say our house church is full of Good Samaritans.

We love to serve others without expecting anything in return.

People that love on one another because it's the right thing to do.

They expect nothing in return.

I love finding posts in social media or seeing news clips about Good Samaritans, which kind of come few and far between, unfortunately, because we hear and see the complete opposite.

We hear about another killing or robbery or an act of road rage or theft or tax evasion, and the list goes on and on.

So those Good Samaritan feeds kind of make you feel good, don't they?

So let's then talk about this good news for today, which Greta read in our story.

And I have titled my sermon today, The Path.

Let's begin in prayer.

Father, we thank you for this beautiful day, this opportunity to come out not only to share in our freedoms that this country provides for us, but the freedom of choosing to follow you.

And as we dig into the story of the Good Samaritan, God, may we see ourselves in the different paths of all of these characters that live in this story.

Speak through me today.

Give me your words and your thoughts.

And for those who have ears to hear, Jesus bless their hearts with a new thought of who you call us to be in our lives.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

So we are in the tenth week of our story context symbols series today, which teaches us to break down.

Oh, I'm like, it's not on the back screen.

Is it not running?

That's okay.

I don't need that one.

No problem.

To break down God's word and learn to apply it to our lives and to this world a little bit better.

We hope this series has been helpful for you.

Has it?

Yeah, I think so.

We have one more week.

Uh, Pastor Ryan's back next week, and he's gonna be talking about Jeremiah 29, which is a blessing.

It's also kind of a you pick, someone asked that question, so he's gonna speak, but he's gonna actually use this series as um as the base of that teaching next week.

So come back next week.

So this whole idea, story, context, symbol, it teaches you to break it down.

So let's start with story, which asks us who are the characters, what's going on, and where does it take place?

First of all, we find this story in the book of Luth.

It's also shared in the book of Matthew and Mark, not in the book of John.

And our characters are Jesus and the lawyer, who are in the middle of a conversation, and then out of that conversation, then we meet a priest, a Levite, an attacker, an attackee, an innkeeper.

Um, I think that's kind of it for those characters.

Where does it take place?

Who remembers as Greta read the story?

Between two cities, Jericho and Jerusalem.

And so what's happening in this story?

Well, Jesus and a lawyer are having a conversation together.

It's really a debate, and throughout that debate, then they come to this parable.

And a parable is what Jesus shares in the story, and it is just that.

It's a story to teach or guide us as his followers in a life lesson.

Some believe that Jesus gives us more than 30 parables in the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

And many people would argue that there's even more, up to 50.

This story is in Luke chapter 10, if you want to follow along with us, and it describes a lawyer asking Jesus, really, he was testing him this question, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

Luke 10 · chapter mention

Now, a side note is this lawyer is a Jewish lawyer of religion, not the traditional lawyer that we think of today.

So he is one that studies religion, he knows the Torah, he knows the word, and yet he still asks, What must I do to inherit life?

And Jesus throws the question back at him.

Well, what do you think?

Now, how many of you ever been in a teaching situation where you're asking the teacher something and he throws that back at you?

Don't you hate that?

It's like, why I wouldn't have asked you.

But most of the time, as teachers or coaches, I would say spiritual coaches or life coaches, they know you know the answer, so they're wanting you to dig a little bit deeper.

And that's what Jesus is doing in this.

And the lawyer throws it back at Jesus almost like they're playing catch with a ball, right?

What does it take to inherit the life?

Jesus says, What do you think?

And the lawyer says, back to him, then, well, the great commandment.

You should love your Lord with all of your heart, all of your soul, and all of your mind, and you should love your neighbor as yourself.

And then the lawyer asks Jesus, but who is my neighbor?

And Luke 10, 29 suggests that he's trying to justify his action.

So obviously he didn't love the answer, the great commandment.

You should love the Lord with all your life, all your heart, all your soul, and you should love your neighbor as your okay, fine, but you know, really, who is my neighbor?

Who are you really calling me to love?

Is it really the neighbor neighbor, or is it like a fictious neighbor, or is it like a neighbor across the way?

Do I have to really love everybody?

And Jesus then goes into this parable.

He says, A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho and was attacked by robbers on the way.

He was badly beaten and left for dead.

A priest and a Levite passing by him didn't stop, but rather they crossed over the road to avoid him.

The third person then to come along was a Samaritan who were known to be hated by the Jews.

Remember that.

When the Samaritan saw the man, he stopped, he cleaned his wounds, he took him to an innkeeper, and he paid for his care.

The parable ends with Jesus giving a commandment to go out and do the same as the Samaritan had done.

So as you've heard the story dozens, maybe hundreds of times, have you ever questioned the why and the what was happening in this story?

And that is where the context then comes in.

How can we understand it better so we can learn and interpret what Jesus wants for in our lives?

He's putting these parables and these stories out there, but if they're really not clicking for us, we don't understand, we don't dig deeper, then how do we change the way we do life?

How do we take the word of God and apply it to our life so then we can apply it out into the world?

I think the best way to understand this is to think about where it happened, first of all.

Why this long curvy road from Jerusalem to Jericho?

Why this desert?

I mean, if Jesus is making up this story, he could pick any place to place this story, right?

He could pick Disney World, that's where Ben would be, right, to tell a story.

He could pick Pike's Peak, he could pick the Mall of America, but he picks this desert road.

I was there in March, and here is a picture of the road that weaves from Jerusalem to Jericho.

It's a hot desert.

There are many curves and places to hide, perfect for any thief waiting to attack.

It was notorious for its danger and its difficulty.

It was known as the way of blood because of all of the blood that was shed by robbers and thieves.

This road was called the way of blood.

Now, I don't know about you, but if I'm traveling from Jericho to Jerusalem, or I'm going to be looking for a road called like Sweet Lane or a Penelope Lane, not the way of blood.

I might have had to call an Uber in that.

I'm sorry, but I just don't understand that.

But a Jewish man is attacked either way, and he's beaten, robbed, and he left for dead.

And he enters then our characters of the story, which is a priest, a Levite, both men of God.

And what do they do?

They pass by him.

They walk around this dying man.

Now, does anyone else think this is out of character for any human being, let alone a man of God?

But the backstory of this teaches us otherwise.

A priest and a Levite by law, and we know that they love their laws, cannot help an unclean man.

In Jewish culture, to contact, to have contact with a dead body would be defiling yourself as a man of God.

Priests were particularly instructed to avoid uncleanliness.

The priest and the Levite may therefore have assumed that the fallen traveler was dead, and so they avoid him to keep themselves ritually clean.

Then enters our third character, which is the Samaritan, the good Samaritan, which by the way is a bit of an oxymoron.

The good Samaritan.

It's like saying we have a cheerful pessimist, right?

Or definitely maybe, right?

Or my son's girlfriend shared the other day when she came to our home, I had good gas station sushi.

I mean, good gas station sushi.

This just doesn't happen.

And in the word of God, the good Samaritan, you're not going to find that anywhere.

The only good Samaritan to many of the Jews would have been a dead Samaritan.

So where does the hostility come from?

Well, the hostility between the Jews and the Samaritans was hundreds of years old.

It went back to a time of division between the north and the south kingdoms.

Samaria came to be identified with the north, and Judea was the south.

When the northern kingdoms fell in 721 BC, exiles from many nations settled in the south, creating something of a melting pot for people and beliefs.

And we all know how that goes, right?

From history or even today.

When you mesh a bunch of people of different race, different thoughts, different religions together, it becomes a melting pot.

And by the time Jesus came, the melting pot became a disgrace as the Samaritans and the Gentiles intermixed, making them half-breeds.

They had perverted the race and the religions, and the original breeds wanted nothing to do with them.

The animosity toward the half-breeds was so great that some Jews would go miles out of their way to avoid walking on Samaritan soil.

It is comparable to the hatred as of today between the Jews and the Arabs.

But in our story, the Samaritan, the hated man, sees the beaten Jew, and instead of distancing himself just as the priest and the Levite had earlier, he comes closer to him.

The text reads, When he saw him, he was moved with pity.

He went to him, he bandaged his wounds, he poured oil and wine on him to sterilize him, and then he put him on his donkey, took him to an inn, and cared for him.

Now think about that whole scenario.

A Samaritan, a well-known, hated person, stops by to help a Jewish man.

If the tables were turned, do you think the Jewish man would have helped him?

Most likely not.

He then touches him to clean him, which defiles him.

He places him on his donkey, meaning that he walked the rest of the way on this long, curvy, treacherous road.

He takes him then to an inn and pays his care with no timeline.

He says, whatever it takes.

Now I don't know about you, but do you know anybody, anybody in your life that's ever been that generous?

Especially to someone who you hate or who you know hates you, someone who is not kind to you.

But this man was living out the great commandment.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Even if your neighbor is a dork.

Even if your neighbor borrows your tools and doesn't give them back.

Even if your neighbor's dog poops in your yard and you do nothing about it.

Even if your neighbor has bonfires at 4 a.m.

in the morning and all the smoke bellows into your house.

Even if your neighbor is a liberal or has a Trump sign for 2024 in their yard.

What?

We love everybody?

Jesus says we are to love them as we love ourselves.

This is an oxymoron statement, if I've ever heard one.

And it's not possible.

Now I know what you're thinking, Sonia, that's not nice to say.

I love everybody.

I do.

But I can prove to you that you don't love everybody as much as you love yourself.

Okay?

So I'm gonna show you this by taking a picture of us.

We're gonna take a selfie.

So you need to squeeze in.

You need to squeeze in.

You need to squeeze in.

Thank you.

Okay.

So I'm gonna turn this around.

Oh my gosh.

Oh, Brenda Collins, I don't see you over there.

Oh, there you are.

Okay.

Okay, you're ready?

I'm gonna do it like a panoramic.

Are you ready?

Smile.

Smile.

Okay, we're good.

Okay?

Okay, just a minute.

Okay, we're gonna post this picture.

Ready?

And who's the first person you're gonna look for in this picture?

That's not us.

But who did you look for?

You looked for yourself, didn't you?

My hair is not looking good today.

Look, Stella's still looking.

I'm in there somewhere.

Where am I?

Can you retake it, Sonia?

It's not very good of me today.

Oh, I look pretty good today, actually, right?

We look for ourselves, we love ourselves.

And that's not a bad thing, but when the challenge of loving ourselves as much as our neighbor, then we're kind of questioning it a little bit.

What does that really mean?

Love your neighbor with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.

The priest couldn't do it, the Levi didn't do it, the hated man did it.

And he did it beyond expectations as he told the innkeeper, I will pay whatever it takes, even if I don't like the guy.

I will love my neighbor as myself and I will pay for whatever it takes.

Jesus responded to the lawyer's question, Who is your neighbor?

With perceived limitations of neighborliness.

And then he turned the question back to the lawyer again to throw the ball, right?

And he asked him, Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robber?

And his answer was the one who showed him mercy.

And Jesus challenges him with, Now go and do likewise.

Now go and do likewise.

Can you imagine the Jewish lawyer's reaction?

What?

This is not the answer that I wanted to hear.

You want me to go and serve and love on someone just like myself?

And what if it's someone that I don't really like?

This is a challenge that leads down a path that spiritually, legally, feasibly, and ethically tested him.

A path that should be a symbol in our lives when we choose the routes that we take as humans.

Today, a path that was walked in theory by a lawyer, a priest and a Levite, a Samaritan, a beaten man, and an innkeeper, and even an attacker that we don't hear much of today, all taking their own journeys down their own path.

So who do you find yourself in, and what path in your journey of life are you as a Christ follower?

And I want you to think about that today.

As you wear that badge, Christ follower, what path am I leading?

So the outside world looks at me as a Christ follower?

Do you walk the path of the lawyer, making choices that may be questioned, and then trying to justify them?

A path of self-justice?

Or do you take the path of the priest and the Levite, living in and out of the laws they know, not taking risk to harm your image, your profession, even if it means leaving a broken person behind?

What about the innkeeper?

We don't really hear much about him, do we?

We can only hope that his path, after witnessing such kindness in a dark world, would be to live out kindness.

Is your life path optimistic or pessimistic?

Or perhaps we should consider the path of the attacker.

Why did he attack?

Rather than assuming the worst in his action, maybe his path drove him to crime.

Maybe he needs help.

Maybe he lives in poverty and has a sick child at home.

And the only path that he could grasp onto was a path of crime.

Maybe your path is the path of the beaten Jewish man, the victim.

And as a victim, you walk a path of self-destruction, finding ways to self-medicate.

After all, it's a perfect path to hide in life, isn't it?

I see myself here often, living in my sin, a puddle of destruction and hurt, just waiting for the man on the donkey to stop and to help.

And who is that man on the donkey?

Who is that good Samaritan?

It's Jesus, the symbol of perfect humanity, who places himself in danger to rescue and to restore us at his own expense, namely his perfect life and innocent death.

This is the path that we should aim for.

This is the path, the symbol that we should act on.

This is the path as his followers that we should model for others.

And yet, what are we doing?

We're just taking more selfies in a world that seeks false worth.

Friends, the parable of the Good Samaritan shows us that our society, our communities, and our relationships are not permanently broken.

We can restore them, and it can all begin with reaching out to the other, whoever they are, whatever state they are in, to be the brothers and the sisters in Christ that we are called to be.

And we are called to be a new creation, to heal, to help, to be present, and to be attentive to the needs of this world.

Central today and in the days to come, let's be a people that walks a path, not because it will get us into heaven, but because it is the right thing to do for us as humans.

Amen.