Co-Lead Minister
Luke 10: 25-37
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Last week we considered two of Jesus’ short stories told in the form of a parable. Today we have a third, a story not only familiar to many church goers but referred to often in our culture – the story of the good Samaritan. Indeed, it’s a story that many of us are so familiar with it is easy to miss what the writer was pointing to. As I said last week, Jesus told parables to illustrate what the kindom of God would look like. And given that the kindom was and still is so foreign to the world and culture we live in, the stories have a twist or a shock, that give witness to the radical nature of God’s fulfilled dreams for us and all creation. So let’s look again at the story of the good Samaritan, and see what we might have missed.
In our reading from Luke a lawyer is testing Jesus. He wasn’t a lawyer in the same sense we think of lawyers today. In Jesus’ time a lawyer was ‘learned of the Law’, of Torah. So, he was a person who knew the religious law inside and out. This lawyer is testing Jesus, poking away to measure Jesus’ understanding of and adherence to Jewish law. He asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
There is a trap in this question. In Jesus’ time Jews knew that one didn’t need to ‘do’ anything to have eternal life. God’s grace was offered to all God’s people – what one ‘did’ was in response and gratitude to this gift of grace, not to earn it.
So Jesus turned the question back to the scholar, aware that the man knew the answer. “[Jesus] said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’” (Luke 10: 26) And indeed, the lawyer responded with what he would have learned early in his life, from some of the writings of Deuteronomy and of Leviticus. (Deut 6:5, Lev. 19:18) “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) But the scholar/lawyer wanted more detail. He wanted some policy or terms of reference to limit the call upon his compassion. He was looking for a loophole for this enormous call on his life, as do we all. So, he asked, “’And who is my neighbour?’” And Jesus responds with this story.
A man, and in this story it could be any man, rich or poor, free, slave, it’s Everyman, a man is travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho and he is brutally mugged. Not only are all his possessions taken, but he is also stripped naked, beaten, and left for dead. Two people, who should have known and done better, pass him by. First a priest, and then a Temple assistant. They pretend to not see him and hurry away. And then along comes a Samaritan.
The Jewish people in Jesus’ time held the Samaritans in great distain. This was a full-on hatred. This was Palestinian refugees and Israeli settlers. Radicalized Muslims and radicalized Christians. Trump supporters and everyone else. The antagonism and contempt were mutual.
So imagine the shock of Jesus’ listeners when they hear that the one who was moved with pity, and who acted on that pity, was a Samaritan. It was this contemptible loser who did the right thing. It is this much judged, distained, unworthy man, who acts as an agent of God, who keeps the Law to love the neighbour and to care for the stranger. And he didn’t just act in the moment – he left essentially a blank cheque with the inn keeper for the man’s care. And he promised to come back and see how he was. This wasn’t just a one-off act of charity, but a relationship that was formed.
As I was last week, for some of this sermon I am leaning on the writings of Amy Jill Levine, a Jewish woman and Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies. Dr. Levine has written a great deal about Christian misunderstandings of Judaism and offers more accurate insights into some of Jesus’ parables. She writes: “…the lawyer’s question is misguided. To ask, ‘Who is my neighbour’ is a polite way of asking, ‘Who is not my neighbour?’ or ‘Who does not deserve my love?’ or ‘Whose lack of food or shelter can I ignore?’ or ‘Whom can I hate?’ The answer Jesus gives is, ‘No one.’ Everyone deserves that love – local or alien, Jews or gentile, terrorist or rapist, everyone.” (Amy Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus, p.93 “
But, if we’re honest, we can have some reservations about being able to act in the same way as the Samaritan, in the same way Jesus calls us to. What happens when we are just not able to be that person? What happens when we’re the ones who hasten by? What if we’re just too overwhelmed to speak to yet one more person who needs something? What if, women in particular, we just don’t feel safe being in close conversation with some of those people we encounter on the streets? What if we spend our days taking care of a partner or grandchildren or other neighbours and this brief walk out alone is our one and only moment to ourselves?
Dr. David Kuhl works with medical practitioners who are burned out, and he has done some workshops with clergy also. He suggests that perhaps the priest and the Biblical scholar who passed by the man in the ditch were quite simply done in, burned out, at the extreme end of compassion fatigue. They weren’t bad – they were done. They are the doctor who passes by the patient’s room and leans in saying, “Oh by the way, your test results are back. It’s malignant.” And then continues down the hall. One of our sons is a paramedic and for years worked in the Downtown Eastside. On one occasion, reviving someone from a fentanyl overdose, the same person for the second time that day, and surrounded by others insisting on help and angry that he had ruined the patients’ high, and being yelled at and spit on he signaled to his partner, “We’re out.” And they gathered up their supplies and left. Sometimes, we’re out.
For those people, and sometimes for us, in those times when we’re just quite finished, there is no solace to be found in a preacher who exhorts you to just keep doing, serving, listening. Who tells you week after week to keep offering unlimited compassion as if you carry around a bottomless bucket of it. Nor is it Christ’s intention that we drive ourselves into the ground with a Protestant work ethic and works righteousness that knows no limit. “Love your neighbor, as YOURSELF’ says Scripture. “Come to me all you who are weary, and I shall give you rest.” said Jesus. Christ recognizes the best efforts of his servants and, fully aware of our human frailty, circles us in loving assurance that we remain his beloved, no matter what. Perhaps especially when we are just done.
I’ve read a couple of articles recently reflecting on the reality that many, if not most of us, are at the end of our rope, we are despairing and beyond hope. Jennifer sent me one written by Gabrielle Feather, a PhD candidate working in the field of Climate Related Mental Health. Ms Feather names this time we are in as a time of the Great Unravelling. She points out that the collapse we are experiencing is not towards one cataclysmic apocalypse but rather a process towards a society and ecosystem breaking down, a long decline in how society functions. Now I recognize how this sounds on a sunny summer morning as we cling to the last days of relaxing, but there is good news, or the potential for good news.
There is also she writes, the possibility of a Great Turning, towards a Great Regeneration. The process she describes takes place over 100 years, and I’d say, right this moment. Because some of the elements she describes as part of the possibilities for the Great Turn and Regeneration are what we find right here – the elements of community, deep breathing, of a faith in something beyond ourselves. She writes that recognizing that the collapse is a process actually empowers us – because processes can be anticipated, influenced, and even navigated. Naming collapse she writes, helps move us through despair and into action. The unravelling might contain an invitation to re-member our humanity, and summon other worlds in the shell of the old. To resolve to prepare, adapt, and care for one another. https://open.substack.com/pub/gabriellefeather/p/mapping-collapse-and-its-alternatives?r=3pu15v&utm_medium=ios
Does this call to mind anything you recognize? Does it make you think of anything you already participate in? Like church? Like your faith? Like this community that holds each other up? Like the kindom of God. She writes about a ‘new narrative’ of ‘sufficiency and solidarity’. I actually think this isn’t such a new narrative – I’d suggest in our tradition it’s about 6000 years old. But it’s gotten layered over with accretions and misinterpretations and our historic desire like the lawyer in Luke’s story to make it more complicated that it is. Or, ironically, less radical than it is. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself. Simple, and life changing.
Sometimes we are the ones lying in the ditch. Sometimes we are just so tired, or worried, or sad or angry that we don’t have what it takes to lift ourselves out of that deep place, let alone anyone else. And sometimes, we are the one who reaches out, who offers a hand or a home or a welcome at a meal, or sends a donation or offers a prayer, or sidles up to the person beside us in the pew. And sometimes we are the one who walks on by, because we are so lost in the fog and fatigue of worry and despair that maybe we didn’t even see the person in the ditch, let alone have the energy to help. And that is OK.
Rebecca Solnit has written: “…the grounds for hope are simply that we don’t know what will happen next, and that the unlikely and the unimaginable transpire quite regularly.” [often, usually, without us having a hand in it.] (quoted by Anne Lamott, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 27,2025)
Sometimes we need to remember, and lament, that God’s time is not yet fulfilled, that there is still hurt and brokenness in our world, and that we can’t care for it all. And, eventually, when we’re able again, to take a deep breath and a long pause, and wonder about what we CAN do, where we CAN contribute even ever so slightly to the Great Turning and Regeneration. Or in Christian language, to the fulfillment of God’s dreams for creation.
I got excited writing this sermon because I got thinking about this transition time and how we might dust off our understandings of how we can be part of the Great Regeneration, how we can name what you already do, collectively and individually, and how we/you might identify how to lend your efforts towards pulling creation out of the ditch, how we can be part of turning things around in our time and our place with our finite capacities, remembering we are part of something so much bigger, something beyond ourselves. How we can breathe deeply, get calm, scootch closer to each other, and be consciously part of the inbreaking of the fulfillment of God’s time on earth.
With every act of mercy, every movement towards the other, we are part of God’s ongoing reconciliation of all creation. But it’s not all up to us. That way lays functional atheism. That thinking inflates our capabilities with those of God. Every time we fall short, every time for whatever reason, we just aren’t up to being a perfect saint, or our efforts to help fail or are rebuffed, we are assured that we are not Christ, but Christ followers. And the love of Christ and the grace of God and the strength and solidarity of the Holy Spirit are with us, whether we’re the ones offering help, or the ones in desperate need.
Thanks be to God and thanks be to each of you, God’s faithful Samaritans.
Amen