July 13, 2025: The Good Samaritan

DeAnna Miller

 

The Good Samaritan

DeAnna Miller

July 13 2025

 

In order for the gospel reading today to make the most sense, it’s important to understand that Jews and Samaritans were all descended from Jacob, but they grew apart in ways that the Jews considered completely unacceptable. The Samaritans allowed intermarriage with Gentiles, they had their own temple, their own version of the Torah, their own customs. The Jews considered Samaritans to be idolatrous apostates – they were family who turned their back on Yahweh. Nothing cuts so deep as a rift in the family. This story would have been shocking and uncomfortable to Jesus’ audience who would have thought, “Good Samaritan is a contradiction in terms.”

By the time Jesus tells this parable, the Jews and Samaritans had had bad blood for centuries. In fact, the gospel reading two weeks ago was the story of how Samaritans wouldn’t let Jesus and his followers stay in their village, so John and James wanted to call heavenly fire to rain down on the Samaritan village.

The lawyer kicks off our story by asking, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Now, “eternal life,” I always think of the creed. “We believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting,” referring to a heavenly afterlife. But often in the Bible it means an ongoing relationship here and now with God. A present-tense indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In John 5:24, Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word, and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” That’s what the lawyer wants to know.

When Jesus asks, “What is written in the Law?”, the lawyer responds by quoting

Deuteronomy 6:5: “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 Leviticus 19:18: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

And Jesus is all, A+, buddy! And that’s gotta feel pretty good, right? If I’m that lawyer, I’m looking for someone to high five. Jesus said I nailed it.

And then I would take the win. Walk away. I can love my neighbors: Bring a meal to a new parent. Help shovel an old man’s sidewalk. But the lawyer, “wanting to justify himself …” gets a little twitchy.

Leviticus 19:18 – love your neighbor as yourself – is in the middle of a really provincial section of law. It’s written for Jews on how to deal with Jews: How to be a Jew in a Jewish community. Jesus was a Jew. His disciples were Jews. But at the time of Jesus, the holy land was filled with not only Jews but also Gentiles, Samaritans, Roman occupiers. So the lawyer asks Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Where does “neighbor” end?

As Maceo says in Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man,” “Next time don’t ask no questions you don’t want answered.” Because Jesus’ answer is going to break your brain.

There’s this guy traveling alone. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho is 18 miles long. There’s half a mile drop in elevation; it’s rocky, barren, parched, no shade. I would not travel that alone. But this guy did, which means he probably had no choice, not a lot of resources, he’s going alone, and of course he’s beaten up, robbed, and left for dead.

When the priest comes by, the audience must have thought, “A priest! You’re saved! A man of God!” The priest sees the robbery victim and—to the shock of Jesus’ audience—passes by on the other side. It is easier and safer not to get involved.

Because if the man is already dead, then touching him makes the priest ritually impure and he can’t do his job as a priest until he does this seven-day purification ritual … it’s a whole thing. He would not want to leave the temple short-staffed for an entire week. The messy reality of human suffering can be very inconvenient.

Then along comes a Levite – a man with temple responsibilities but not a priest. A prominent person in the community. And what does the Levite do? Same thing. Walks right by.

And now I bet the audience was ready for just a regular Jew to be the hero. Jesus loved to call out the hypocrisy of religious leadership, so naturally the third person who comes along is going to be … Excuse me, what? I am so sorry, Jesus, it sounded like you said Samaritan. Oh, you did say Samaritan.

And the Samaritan approaches the victim … He doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t demand ID. He doesn’t inquire about the victim’s country of origin, his religious beliefs, or judge his worthiness in any way. The Samaritan sees a human who needs help. He tends to the victim’s wounds, and when he lifts the man onto his own animal, the Samaritan surely sacrifices his own comfort on his own journey – which is delayed when he detours to take the man to an inn. The Samaritan has decided they’re in this together. And then the Samaritan says he’ll return. This isn’t just radically inconvenient compassion – it’s the start of a relationship.

When Jesus asks, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” the lawyer cannot even bring himself to spit out the word “Samaritan.” He says, “The one who showed him mercy.”

Jesus’ closing command echoes through two thousand years: “Go and do likewise.”

Are you kidding me.

Well-meaning Minnesotan here. I am generous with the people in my life – with my friends and my family. As for strangers, I joyfully – well, ok, cheerfully, willingly – pay taxes, because, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “With taxes, we buy civilization.” I pay taxes so that we have a 911 system, so I can call that man an ambulance. I’m not stopping my trip and putting him on my donkey and giving an innkeeper two denarii – two denarii was two days’ wages for most people – and returning to check on him.

That’s what the taxes are for. I don’t want to get involved. And I really don’t want to be inconvenienced. Lisa says it at the end of every service: Life is short, and we don’t have much time – yes, I know. I don’t have time for this. I am busy.

I willingly contribute my resources to the victim’s care. That’s how I love my neighbor, even the ones I don’t like very much.

But this story isn’t The Parable of the Two Denarii. It’s the parable of a Samaritan who lives our faith better than our priests and Levites. This Samaritan – who so truly loves his neighbor that he cultivates a relationship with his enemy. This Samaritan – whom we despise – has shown that he is our neighbor. We are his neighbor.

Who are our Samaritans today? Who are our impure enemies from whom we actively distance ourselves because we believe that everything about them is so intrinsically wrong and they deserve nothing? Some people would answer trans folk. Immigrants. Refugees. Those are not Samaritans. Well-meaning Minnesotan, so I’m pretty good at indignation and being smug. Clearly this parable doesn’t apply to me.

Oh yes it does. I have my own Samaritans. A whole group of people I cannot abide. At the top is an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness and is revered by millions trapped in a silo of manufactured grievance, who laugh and cheer at each increasingly egregious violation of law, of human rights, of basic decency.

And Jesus is telling me that if I encounter one of these people, probably wearing an Alligator Alcatraz T-shirt, beaten and robbed and left for dead on the road to Jericho, I have to stop? And not to do a Fortnite dance, but to help them? all the way through? I have to inconvenience myself because they didn’t have the sense not to travel alone on the road to Jericho? I don’t get to say, “You’re in the Find Out Phase now, buddy”? I have to love them as I love myself?

They are as other to me as Samaritans were to the Jews. I have a high need for justice. I want people to reap what they sow. I want good work to be rewarded and I want a reckoning for evil. I don’t want to help anyone who delights in the suffering of the most vulnerable. I will call 911 and my taxes will pay for it. I do not want to develop a relationship with people like that.

But what does Jesus want? “Go and do likewise.” This is not a suggestion. It’s a divine imperative.The lawyer wants to know: Where does “neighbor” end? Jesus says, “It doesn’t.”

Every couple years the New York Times runs an article with a headline like “Why Doing Good Is Good For The Do-gooder,” and “The Science Of Helping Out,” and “How Volunteering Can Help Ease Loneliness.” There is a lot of research around how helping others is good for ourselves.

But it’s not just oxytocin and dopamine release. Psalm 51: You probably know it even if you don’t know you know it. “Fill me with joy and gladness … Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” In that we hear the familiar cry of someone who wants to be good. Who wants to be better. Who wants to be worthy of the magnificence of our Creator. We are here in this church right now because we feel this lure toward the divine.

But it’s not a passive process. We are not standing by, waiting for whenever God decides to flip a switch and change our hearts. Jesus tells us today: The inconvenient compassion of loving our neighbor as ourselves is the way God answers the prayer of Psalm 51, how we welcome the present-tense indwelling of the Holy Spirit, how we inherit eternal life.

We want God to fill us with joy and gladness? Then we need to love our neighbors, no matter who they are, no matter what it costs us. Not just our denarii. Not just my tax dollars.

When I reach out to someone who needs help – even someone wearing a red hat upon which I want to call down heavenly fire (I feel you, John and James) – and this is the hardest part for me – it doesn’t mean I’m approving of their political agenda or taking their side in a culture war. I am, like the Samaritan in the story, putting all that aside so that I can see a suffering human. I’m saying, you are my neighbor. We’re in this together.

The gospel today is a call to inconvenience. It’s an invitation to embody Christ’s heart in a world desperately in need of healing. Neighbor does not end. Amen.

10am Service