Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity (26 Aug. 2018)

Promises, promises...

The men of Israel took captive 200,000 of their relatives, women, sons, and daughters. They also took much spoil from them and brought the spoil to Samaria.  But a prophet of the LORD was there, whose name was Oded, and he went out to meet the army that came to Samaria and said to them, "Behold, because the LORD, the God of your fathers, was angry with Judah, he gave them into your hand, but you have killed them in a rage that has reached up to heaven.  And now you intend to subjugate the people of Judah and Jerusalem, male and female, as your slaves. Have you not sins of your own against the LORD your God?  Now hear me, and send back the captives from your relatives whom you have taken, for the fierce wrath of the LORD is upon you."  Certain chiefs also of the men of Ephraim, Azariah the son of Johanan, Berechiah the son of Meshillemoth, Jehizkiah the son of Shallum, and Amasa the son of Hadlai, stood up against those who were coming from the war and said to them, "You shall not bring the captives in here, for you propose to bring upon us guilt against the LORD in addition to our present sins and guilt. For our guilt is already great, and there is fierce wrath against Israel."  So the armed men left the captives and the spoil before the princes and all the assembly.  And the men who have been mentioned by name rose and took the captives, and with the spoil they clothed all who were naked among them. They clothed them, gave them sandals, provided them with food and drink, and anointed them, and carrying all the feeble among them on donkeys, they brought them to their kinsfolk at Jericho, the city of palm trees. Then they returned to Samaria.  2 Chronicles 28:8-15

A Maskil of David. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.  Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.  For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.  For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah  I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD," and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah  Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found; surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him.  You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah  I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.  Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you.  Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the LORD.  Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!  Psalm 32

To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified.  Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, "And to offsprings," referring to many, but referring to one, "And to your offspring," who is Christ. This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.  For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.  Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.  Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.  Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.  But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.  Galatians 3:15-22

Then turning to the disciples He said privately, "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see!  For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it."  And behold, a lawyer stood up to put Him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"  He said to him, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?"  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."  And He said to him, "You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live."  But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"  Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.  Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.  So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.  But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.  He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.  And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.'  Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?"  He said, "The one who showed him mercy." And Jesus said to him, "You go, and do likewise."  Luke 10:23-37

The narrative of Scripture is, essentially, one long sting of promises from God to His people.  Granted, there are promises from one person to another, and even some promises from people to God, but the vast majority that matter are promises made by God.  The most well known of these are the covenants.

The cornerstone of these covenants might just very well be God's covenant with Abraham.  At that point, the promise of a messiah went from a bit vague to certain.  God promised, directly, that He would send the savior as a descendant of Abraham.  Its unfortunate that the grammar of said promise, as noted by St. Paul, has tripped up so many who think that the covenant is to Abraham and all the Hebrews.  The reality is that the covenant is between Abraham and his singular archetypal offspring: Jesus.

As the recipient of such a promise, as well as the author of it, Jesus knew about how these things worked.  So when a lawyer asked Him what he had to do to be part of the covenant, Jesus wasted no time letting the man know where his place was.

Jesus asked if the man fulfilled the law, to the letter.  And, seeking to prove himself righteous by his won merit, the man said he had kept the law of Moses.  He though that the covenant made to Abraham, and ratified at Sinai belonged to him.

But that's not how it works.

In his letter to Galatia, St. Paul notes a bit of grammar in the covenant made between God and Abraham.  The promise is made to Abrahams offspring.  Not "offspring," in the plural, as one would expect of the "father of many."  No, the covenant, the promise, the blessings, even the law, are given for a singular offspring to keep and uphold.  The ultimate and true son of Abraham: Jesus Christ.

But that doesn't mean the law is null and void for us.  The law is good, since it is the rules and norm we are to do so as to be good citizens, children, neighbors, workers, etc.  Hence one of Jesus's most well known parables: the Good Samaritan.

Jews in Christ's time hated Samaritans.  And the feeling was mutual.  The animosity goes all the way back to the reign of Rehoboam, who saw the kingdom of Israel that his grandfather David ruled split in two.  Over time the northern kingdom established its capital in Samaria, and in the end was conquered by Assyria.  Their peoples were assimilated into the culture, to the point of forced marriages that lead to, what the Jews considered, "mutts."

The promise, or more specifically the Mosaic law, had been given to the Jews, not those "Gentile pseudo-Jews" from up north.  This reason alone was seen as justification enough to look down upon those "half-breeds."

So when the young lawyer confronts Christ with his idea of what the law meant, the Author of the Law puts the law into proper perspective.  Christ tells a story about a man.  Who the man is does not matter, all that maters is that he had been attacked and left for dead.  So how does a law-abiding Jew react when the letter of the law meets the truth of the Law?

We know this story.  The priest, who had the Scriptures memorized, who had an intimate understanding of the purpose of the temple (or so he thought), ignored the man.  The Levite, who had the law memorized, who had an immense understanding of the traditions of the Jewish people, also ignored the man.  But the Samaritan, who everyone would expect to turn his nose up at some be-troubled individual, had a grasp of mercy and of the Law that exceeded the religious leaders.  He, alone, understood the purpose of the Promise.

What our hypothetical Samaritan understood, what the Jews failed to grasp, is what Hosea said: "For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice."  (Hosea 6:6a)  Some translations say "mercy" instead of "steadfast love," but the end result, and meaning, is the same.

The promise God gave was not contingent upon our sacrifices, or on any other action of ours.  Rather, the promise was contingent on the Sacrifice, and our reaction is showing love and mercy.