The Price of a Life

The Rev. Joseph Winston

July 11, 2010

Grace and peace are gifts for you from God, the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ.1
At one time in your life or another, you have been keenly aware of your finan-
cial limits, of what you can afford and what you cannot.2 This might first happen
when you turned sixteen and desperately wanted a shiny new car to go along with
your brand new driver’s license. “Look at the cost,” your parents said. As you cal-
culated car payments, insurance required by your parents, and fuel costs to take
you around town you soon came to the harsh realization that your minimum wage
job summer job would never pay for that new car you really wanted. That sinking
feeling in the pit of your stomach clearly told you that you would enter your junior
year of high school with that old hand-me-down that no one else wanted.
Maybe this realization of how much things cost came a few years later as you
1
Romans 1:7, 1 Corinthians 1:3, 2 Corinthians 1:2, Galatians 1:3, Ephesians 1:2, Philippians
1:2, 2 Thessalonians 1:2, Philemon 1:3.
2
This sermon is based on one given to Trinity Lutheran Church in Liberty Texas on July 15,
2007.

1
prepared to go off to college. As you went through your budget for the year, you
soon saw that room and board along with books and tuition left very little money
for your planned beer budget. Parties were totally out of the question because
you simply could not afford them. As time went on, a bound formed between all
the other freshmen that found themselves in the exact same situation of having
champagne tastes on a beer budget.
The most sobering experience that shows how little you are really worth comes
when you participate in that great American ritual of buying your first house. You
have grand dreams of a nice four-bedroom house with a large yard in a respectable
neighborhood. It seems like you have enough money for the payments since you
have been saving a bit of your paycheck every month. After sitting down with the
realtor, you soon see what you can really afford: a fixer upper with a tiny yard in
an area of town that has seen its better days. Finally, you find that one house that
you want to buy. Before you can make this house your home, you must have your
loan approved. The banker patiently tells you that in addition to closing points and
transaction fees you must deposit one month’s mortgage with the bank to cover
expenses if you happen to default on the loan. You scrape together all of your
spare cash and write that huge check. The cost for all the things you did not know
about means that you and your spouse will have franks and beans for the next
month and any repairs to the house will have to wait until next year.
At its heart, today’s well-loved Gospel lesson is a study in economics. It asks
you a very difficult question. How much is one life really worth?
The financial discussion around this issue begins in earnest when the lawyer

2
first asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”3 On the surface, this
question from the lawyer might seem to be nothing more than asking for a list of
things that you must perform during this life. Go to temple. Check. Love the Lord.
Check. Follow the commandments. Check.
No matter how attractive this idea that doing something earns your way into
heaven along with eternal life might be it completely forgets a basic truth known
by both Jews and Christians. Parents give inheritance to their children. This en-
dowment from one generation to the next does not occur because a child somehow
forces their parents to bear them. Rather, children receive life as a gift from their
parents. This is also true with inheritance. Parents scrimp and save so that their
heirs have something.
As the earlier examples show, the flow of life or property is from parent to child
and not the other way around. The lawyer completely ignores this fact. Maybe he
does this because he is trying to see exactly what this Jesus fellow knows about
the Law.4 Or perhaps the lawyer really wants to understand the cost of entering
heaven.
Upon hearing the first question posed by the lawyer, Jesus immediately real-
izes that the lawyer wants to know how little he can get away with and still live
forever. You know the type because they still are with us today. They are the ones
3
The covenant from God to the people of the promise is not eternal life but land (Genesis
28:4; Deuteronomy 1:8; 2:12; 4:1.). Luke Timothy Johnson; Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., editor, The
Gospel of Luke, Volume 3, Sacra Pagina, (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical
Press, 1991), p. 172.
4
The use of ἐκπειράζω as the verb for testing indicates that the challenge issued by the lawyer
is hostile. Ibid..

3
who come “to church” twice a year and still call themselves Christians. They are
the ones who never can be found when there is work to be done but cannot imag-
ine why someone else will not step up to the plate. They are the ones that finally
take Christ seriously one their deathbed but never had the time for Jesus during
their lives. The fundamental flaw with this approach back in the time of Christ
and in our own day is that by placing one’s focus on the smallest amount of work
needed you completely miss the big picture that everything belongs to God. Your
life: that is a gift from God. Your property: this is God also. In fact, all you have
is God’s.
Jesus challenges the lawyer’s viewpoint on doing as little as possible by asking
him two questions. Jesus first asks for references in Scripture that address the
specific point under discussion. There is nothing surprising about this request.
After all, a good lawyer knows the statutes just like the back of their hands. Next,
Jesus wants to know exactly how the lawyer interprets this Word. Once again,
nothing out of the ordinary. A lawyer must know how to apply the law in a given
situation.
The lawyer responds to both questions from Jesus with an absolutely brilliant
summery of the Old Testament. The lawyer replies that a person must completely
love God with your entire existence and you also must take care of your neighbor
just as you do yourself.5
Instead of arguing about the lawyer’s correct conclusion, Jesus completely
5
This is an amalgamation of Deuteronomy 6:5 plus the addition of “and with all your mind,”
along with Leviticus 19:18.

4
catches him off guard when He tells the lawyer to go and do it. As soon as Jesus
speaks these words, the lawyer realizes the fatal flaw in his line of reasoning. The
cost of being a follower is enormous since you must return everything you have
back to God.
Hoping to find something that might be excluded from this sweeping summary
that will take every bit of the lawyer’s resources, the lawyer quickly asks Jesus,
“Well then, who is my neighbor?” This is a move by a well-trained debater. The
lawyer fully expects Jesus to reply that only Jews and those becoming Jews can be
considered as neighbors.6 If this happens, the lawyer only needs to be concerned
with helping a much smaller group of people and thus limiting his losses.
Rather than directly answering the question, Jesus explains God’s position
using a story.7
A man begins the dangerous journey from Jerusalem down to Jericho.8 Before
he safely arrives at his destination, a group of robbers beat him within an inch of
his life and they leave him to die from his wounds.9 A priest making the same trip
sees this severely injured individual in dire need of help and makes the conscious
decision to pass him by.10 A Levite that happens to be going the same way also
6
Both Arland J. Hultgren, Chap. Parables of Exemplary Behavior In ‘The Parables of Jesus:
A Commentary’, (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), p. 94 and Johnson, Luke,
p. 172 agree on this important point.
7
The verb translated as replied in Luke 10:30 is ὑπολαβὼν. This indicates that Jesus literally
took up the question or that He entertained them what an answer.
8
This is a seventeen mile treacherous journey that has a 3,500 foot drop in elevation (2,700 feet
above sea level to 820 below sea level). Hultgren, ‘The Parables of Jesus’, pp. 95, 96.
9
The Greek word translated as “half dead” in Luke 10:30 ἡμιθανής is only used here and no
where else in the New Testament. The meaning of this word is questionable and it could be read
as the person is just about to die. Ibid., p. 96. If this is the case, then the priest and the Levite are
cold and heartless figures while the Samaritan is the exact opposite. ibid..
10
The text clearly states in Luke 10:31 that the priest “saw” what was happening. Ibid., p. 97.

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totally ignores the man. Both of these men trained in God’s law know the require-
ment that they must stop and help if a life can be saved.11 They both calculate that
the cost will be far too great. After all, maybe the robbers are waiting for their next
victim. Next on the scene is a despised outsider who plays by the same rules as
the priest and the Levite. If he touches a dead body, he will be unclean for seven
days.12 Despite all the risks, takes out from his traveling bags the same items car-
ried by the priest and the Levite: oil and wine.13 He this pores these expensive
items in the wound and he then gives his emergency medical supplies to the in-
jured man. Next, he takes him to a hospital. There he gives them enough money
for one or two weeks of care and he also offers to cover any other expenses that
might be incurred.14
Now that He had finished telling the story, Jesus once again asks the lawyer
to do what he is trained for: answer questions. “Tell me,” Jesus says, “which one
of the three men was acting like a neighbor.” The lawyer, well versed on the use
of logic, immediately realizes what Jesus had done. He has changed the original
question from one of identifying specific individuals as possible neighbors to a
much more costly question on the behavior expected by a neighbor.15
This means that the priest is not confused with the situation nor is he incapable of understanding
the man’s fate.
11
Hultgren, ‘The Parables of Jesus’, p. 97.
12
Because the Samaritan follows the same religious rules of the Jews, he just like the priest and
the Levite would be unclean for seven days. Ibid., p. 98.
13
In an irony that probably was not missed by the early audience, both the priest and the Levite
would have been carrying both for sacrifices in the temple. Ibid., p. 99.
14
This amount of money was two days wages for a common laborer and should have provided
enough funds for about one or two weeks of lodging and boarding. Ibid..
15
Ibid.

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 The lawyer knows the burden of proof stands against his original intent to
limit how much he gives back the God and he wisely answers Jesus, “The one
who showed him mercy.” Jesus replies to him, “Go and do likewise.”
Even though two thousand years separate us from the lawyer, our concern is
just like his. We want to know the minimum that we can do and still be called
Christian.
Our basic assertion in this church is that we are friendly. How can we make
this outrageous claim when we do not even know what other people need? What
do the tattooed and pierced twenty somethings working at the Starbucks down
the road need from us? What do the single teenage mothers attending our schools
need from us? What do the under and unemployed all around us need from us?
We, along with the priest and the Levite, clearly see what need to be done but
we do not want to get our hands dirty. We do not want to stop and find out what
these people need for fear it will cost too much.
The Samaritan does something completely different. At a great personal cost,
he gets involved with the injured man. This is exactly what Jesus calls us to do. We
are expected to take care of everyone without taking into account economics, race,
or religion.16 After all, Jesus tells us very little about this injured man. We never
learn his position in the community or how much he owns. Unlike all the other
major characters in the story, Jesus does give us this man’s racial identity. Jesus
also never provides a clue about the man’s religion. We do not know if he was a
Jew. We also do not know if he was a member of a synagogue, a mosque, a church,
16
Hultgren, ‘The Parables of Jesus’, p. 100.

7
or even if he was an atheist. This lack of knowledge about the specific identity of
the injured man does not prevent the correct interpretation of the parable.
It does not matter to Jesus, nor should it matter to anyone else, if the hurt one
was a Jew or if he belonged to any faith tradition at all. It also does not matter
to Jesus even if this man believed in anything. It does not matter if the injured
person does not look like you. It does not matter if the man is at the bottom of the
economic ladder. The only thing that matters to Jesus is that aid must be rendered
to those in need. This only can happen when we ask these people what they need
and then give it to them to the best of our ability.
Will this work be painful? Will this service be costly? Will it cost us our lives?
The answer to all of these questions is yes. These encounters will hurt us. These
interactions with the people all around us will take precious resources from us.
The calling to save others might even kill us. All of this happened to Jesus.17 Why
do we expect it to be any different for us?
Everyone has failed miserably in the task that Jesus has set before us. We have
all carefully calculated the cost of Christianity and found that it is too expensive
for us to bear. In doing so, we have left the sick to find their own care, the hungry
their own food, and the prisoner their own freedom.
Despite horrific action on our part, Jesus has come to each of us so that He
can heal us. He has carefully cleaned every one of our wounds. He bandaged each
of them and found a place that would take care of us. Finally, when we came to
17
Arthur C. McGill; Lindell Sawyers and Ray T. Woods, editors, Suffering: A Test of Theologi-
cal Method, (Philadelphia, PA: The Geneva Press, 1968), p. 47.

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our senses, He tells us, “I completely forgive you for what you have failed to do.
I love you and I have given you a second chance. This freedom cost me my life.
Go and honor me be doing the same thing. Completely give yourself away so that
others may live.”
The world thinks this kind of spending is outrageous. It is. Only a fool would
take everything that they have and give it away to someone who they do not even
know and if you come right down to it, hates their guts. That is what Jesus did for
you. He gave up all so you might live.
“The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and
minds through Christ Jesus.”18

References

Hultgren, Arland J., Chap. Parables of Exemplary Behavior In ‘The Parables of

Jesus: A Commentary’, (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000),
pp. 92–128.

Johnson, Luke Timothy; Harrington, S.J., Daniel J., editor, The Gospel of Luke,
Volume 3, Sacra Pagina, (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN: The
Liturgical Press, 1991).

McGill, Arthur C.; Sawyers, Lindell and Woods, Ray T., editors, Suffering: A Test
of Theological Method, (Philadelphia, PA: The Geneva Press, 1968).

18
Philippians 4:7.