There’s a story about an 11-year-old boy named Tommy who saved up his allowance and bought a slingshot. He took it out in the woods near his grandparents’ farm, and took aim at a number of targets, including a few live squirrels, but got pretty discouraged after awhile because he couldn’t hit anything with the slingshot. As he was walking back to the house past the pond, he impulsively took a shot at one of the grandma’s pet ducks. The rock hit the duck square in the head and killed it instantly. Tommy was mortified. With tears in his eyes, he scooped up the duck’s lifeless body and carried it behind the woodpile and buried it. As he threw dirt over the duck he looked up to see his sister, Katy watching from a distance. She had seen the whole thing. But she didn’t say anything.

The next day after lunch, Grandma said, KATY, WOULD YOU HELP ME WASH DISHES? But Katy explained, “Tommy told me he really wants to help you in the kitchen.” As Katy turned toward her brother she mouthed to him, “remember the duck”.  Later that day Grandpa asked the kids if they wanted to go fishing, but Grandma intervened. OH, I’M SORRY BUT I NEED KATY TO HELP WITH SUPPER. “I’d love to Grandma, but Tommy told me he really wants a turn helping prepare supper.” So Katy went fishing and Tommy stayed in the kitchen.

This went on for a few days. Finally, Tommy couldn’t take it anymore. The guilt, the fear of that moment when Grandma noticed one of her ducks was missing, and of course the indentured servitude he had bought into as the price for his sister’s silence. Tommy stood before Grandma with tears in his eyes and confessed to having killed her duck. Grandma walked over and hugged Tommy and whispered to him, “I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. I SAW THE WHOLE THING FROM THE KITCHEN WINDOW. AND I SAW YOUR FACE AND KNEW HOW SORRY YOU WERE. AND I FORGAVE YOU BECAUSE I LOVE YOU. I WAS JUST WONDERING HOW LONG YOU WOULD LET KATY MAKE YOU HER SLAVE.”

St. Paul speaks frequently in his inspired word of how our sins enslave us, just as Tommy’s sin had enslaved him to his sister, Katy. Paul paints this picture of enslavement to sin so that he can explain what it means to free as a Christian and no longer enslaved. You know, a lot of people outside the church, even many people who would describe themselves as Christian, are quite convinced that it is the Christian faith which enslaves us, simply because it appears the Christian faith is determined to deprive us. We are deprived of the vices which endanger our health. We are deprived of the enjoyment of carrying around grudges and the satisfaction of getting revenge when we have been wronged.

If you take nothing else from the message today, be assured that it is not our faithfulness which enslaves us but our sins.  In Romans chapter 6, Paul tells us “DON’T LET SIN BE YOUR MASTER – BECAUSE YOU DON’T LIVE UNDER THE LAW NOW, YOU LIVE UNDER GOD’S GRACE.” And by the way, there are some well-meaning proclaimers of the Christian faith today who secretly wish we still did live by the law and not by God’s grace. Because it would be so much easier to manipulate you to do what you are told if you could be convinced that our God is judging the world in the present and not allowing us to live under His forgiving grace.

Now that brings us to our Gospel lesson for this morning –one of the most famous stories Jesus ever told, the story of the Good Samaritan. I’m not going to regale you with Bible history like the typical Good Samaritan sermon does – pointing out just how outrageous it would be for a hated Samaritan to help a Jewish man in great need.  A Samaritan is basically a mixed blooded Jew. They practiced a slightly varied form of Judaism but in Jesus’ time they lived in their own part of Palestine and no faithful Jew would ever travel through their land and would instead travel great additional distances on foot to avoid passing through Samaria. By the way, there were nearly a million Samaritans in Jesus time. And there are still Samaritans today in Israel practicing the same brand of Judaism as their ancestors, although the number is down to less than 1000.

So we establish that a Samaritan being so generous to a Jew was simply outrageous. Which is why Jesus tells this story! Jesus has just been cornered by a young professional in the community who wants to know what he must do to earn eternal life. And Jesus explains, with men it is impossible. You are to love God with all your heart and love your neighbor more than yourself! When the guy comes back with “UH, I see, I see. Well, then who is my neighbor?” Jesus wants to scream, “You’re not listening! You can’t do this by yourself, bigshot! You need a Savior! But Jesus doesn’t say that. Instead, he offers the story of the Good Samaritan. As if to say, “THAT’S who your neighbor is my friend. Good luck with your plan to find your own way to heaven.”

It’s ironic that so many hospitals and nursing homes and shelters have been founded on the lesson of the Good Samaritan, when in fact, Jesus told that story for no other reason than to hold up before us an example so impossibly hard to follow that we would finally awaken to our need for an advocate, a representative before God who would argue for mercy on our behalf. In short, we would finally see why we need Jesus.

Not until we understand that will we be free. Being free means we love our enemies simply because it is the right thing to do. Being free means our failures to love as we should don’t condemn us. Again, St. Paul says, YOU DON’T LIVE UNDER THE LAW, YOU LIVE UNDER GOD’S GRACE.

It isn’t God who keeps track of everything in your past that you have done, it’s the devil. It isn’t God who continually throws it up in your face and encourages you to beat yourself up about it, it’s the devil. God stands at the kitchen window just as Grandma did that day, and He sees everything! And because we live under God’s grace and not under the law, God forgives us and removes our previous sins from us. The Psalmist says, AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST, IS HOW FAR GOD’S UNDERSERVED FORGIVENESS HAS REMOVED US FROM OUR PAST SINS. That is freedom, dear friends! Free to do better tomorrow than we did today.

Remember Grandma wondering how long Tommy would go on living in fear of punishment, with his sin of killing Grandma’s duck hanging over him like some kind of Sword of Damocles. God wonders the same thing at times. Don’t you guys want to be free? Submit to the Lord Jesus. Confess your need for a Savior. And be a good Samaritan yourself whenever the opportunity arises. Now you are free to love everyone else because you want to, because God loves you even when you are at your worst, love everyone else because it’s the right thing to do. AMEN