5th Sunday after Pentecost 2025

Sermon: 5th Sunday after Pentecost 2025

Text: Luke 10:25-37

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is probably one of Jesus’ most famous and beloved, and for good reason. It is one of these texts that are candidates for encapsulating what Christian living is all about. It is a centerpiece of Christian ethics, and it cannot be more timely for us to hear and re-hear it today. The setting of the parable begins with an important question from a lawyer, that was meant to test Jesus: “How am I to inherit eternal life?” If the goodness of eternity was graspable, how would one come about it? Jesus, kind of catching his bluff a little bit, responds to the lawyer, well have you read the law? And of course, the lawyer gives the right nutshell answer, which truly is correct: “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”. The golden rule. And Jesus commends him and affirms the answer. But the lawyer was not satisfied, perhaps he thought Jesus to be too vague, because the ramifications of eternal life hinging on loving God and your neighbor has radical implications. So he drops a tricky question: “Who is my neighbor?” And one must say, this question is still tricky! How much has humanity distanced itself from the love command when “who is my neighbor” is asked. Sometimes people prefer to condemn themselves to hell if the neighbor isn’t the “right one”. Some might even mangle God’s love commandment precisely because they limit who the neighbor can be, and who is deserving to be a neighbor.

Jesus however flips the script and turn this question on its head. Because the parable of the Good Samaritan is not only a story that emphasizes the mercy of a man who belonged to a group disliked by most of the 1st century Jewish population, but Jesus also redefines what being a neighbor means, and therefore transforms the question completely. It is no longer who is the neighbor that is to be loved, but how am I the good neighbor? What am I to do to be the neighbor that God desires me to be? It is said that in ancient Israel, when someone thought of the neighbor, it was more about who received help. Jesus is redefining the neighbor as the person that bestows kindness. So it is no longer about who is worthy of receiving my help, who fills the criteria for charity. Now, it falls on me. Will I be merciful? Will I love? Will I help out those in need? Will I be like this Good Samaritan? That even though the injured man did not belong to his tribe, he was still merciful and kind. The man on the side of the road was met by many of his own, a priest and a Levite no less, people of important moral and societal status, yet because they did not want to be unclean, they decided to ignore this wounded man. Their own skin was more important than the wounded man. Jesus however, sees in the expansive mercy of the Samaritan, to be in God’s wavelength. “Who is the good neighbor? The one who showed mercy” It’s almost like God prefers mercy as an identity rather than any other marker of belonging. To have mercy beyond the strictures of law or convention, a mercy that arises from a heart of compassion, that is the God banner. For Jesus, mercy is at the center of what eternal life with God is.

I believe there is much we can learn from Jesus’ parable and His call to live mercifully above all else. We are living in times where mercy is not desired, but cruelty. We see many rejecting Jesus’ own call to be the neighbor that bestows kindness, to instead be implacable, devoid of common feeling, even worst than those who passed the injured man by, to instead wound the injured man even more. I believe there are so many illustrations we could conjure that signal to us that God is very much on the side of the merciful, that in expanding our circle of kindness, we witness the arrival of God’s Kingdom in our midst.

I’d like to share with you a close example. We have been hearing from the news a lot lately, a massive gaslighting campaign as to the humanity of migrants and immigrants. We are being bombarded with messaging that says migrants are criminals or gang members. Rarely do we hear the ways migrants, immigrants, and those who are not of one’s own group are actually the good neighbor that Jesus desires people to be. I read recently how after the horrible flooding in Texas and the unfortunate loss of life there, a brigade of Mexican firefighters and volunteer first responders traveled to Texas to help out in looking for survivors. The founder of this group, Ismael Aldaba, said the following: “When it comes to firefighters, there’s no borders. There’s nothing that’ll avoid us from helping another firefighter, another family. It doesn’t matter where we’re at in the world. That’s the whole point of our discipline and what we do.” I think this can also apply to those who want to follow Jesus. That God’s mercy knows no bounds, that there is no law or convention that should supersede mercy for those who are downtrodden. That God’s mercy and love can come in surprising and unexpected ways, never bound by the limits of our worldviews. I believe that last phrase that Ismael Aldaba said should matter to Christians too. Isn’t representing God’s mercy “the whole point of our discipline and what we do”? Aren’t we fed and equipped with God’s Word here in this church so that we go out into the world and share of what we’ve received, which is grace upon grace? The enemy would love it that we would not do so, I can tell you. He would love to see grouchy and sour Christians, so we are constantly reminded how little we can do to be merciful, or how difficult it is to bend the moral arch of our society. Beloved, do not believe the Enemy, instead listen and follow Christ. Know that his yoke is easy and His burden light, that He will provide the strength and means to be merciful, our shortcomings and weakness notwithstanding. Better to err on the side of mercy than to be complacent in injustice. In Deuteronomy, God says to the people He gave His Law to:

“Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”

With and through Christ, mercy is always near in our heart to observe, because Jesus’ heart is mercy. And how grounded and ordinary God wants His mercy to be known, for God Himself declares, you don’t need to wait to apply it in Heaven, look at the face of your neighbor, look at the face of your loved ones, look at the face of the poor who are with you, look at the expanse of creation around you, you have in every time and place the chance to be merciful in unity with Christ. Beloved, the grace and mercy we receive from God is so abundant, that even in the ordinary that we not merciful, God forgives us and gives us a new chance to inhabit the mercy He desires. This is the atmosphere of grace that God has built for us. And how much do we need this mercy today, from God we have it, but we also need it from each other. And it can come in the most beautiful of small ways, that little by little, mercy becomes the air we breathe.

So as Jesus instructs to follow the example of the Samaritan, I extend His instruction of mercy to all of us “Go and do likewise”. Let us pray: