Sunday, July 13, 2025

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Leviticus (18:1-5) 19:9-19
Psalm 41
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37

He said, ‘He who showed mercy on him.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’

It is hard to think beyond the news that is happening right down the road from me. Our hearts are with those who are suffering, grieving, and working hard to overcome. It has only been days, but it seems like weeks. There have been so many miracles and stories of good-hearted moments, but there have also been stories of heartbreak. Sadly, I’ve already heard the warnings that people are beginning to prey on the victims. There is always someone who will take advantage of the situation.

There was a story a few years ago following a major hurricane. A man owned a trailer that was vacant in the storm ravaged area, and he offered it to a family who had become homeless because of the storm. Soon after moving in, the couple decided to sue the Good Samaritan to gain possession of the trailer. The couple were legally considered squatters, so according to state law, so the man could not evict them. He tried to turn off the electricity they were not paying for. They borrowed a child to live with them and because of a state law meant to protect the welfare of children, he was required to keep the electricity turned on. Something that started as an act of compassion turned into an act of injustice.

It is heartbreaking to think that similar things could happen to the people who are trying to help during any of the disasters that our neighbors are experiencing. These times are dangerous for both the helpers and the suffering. Unfortunately, there are always people that dwell who are determined to harm to their neighbors. This is not the way God intends for us to live.

I once attended a lecture with Keith Bowden the author of “The Tecate Journals, Seventy Days on the Rio Grande.” He began the speech with tales of his youth and his intense dislike of school. He dropped out as soon as he turned sixteen and he set out to travel around the country. He ended up in Florida and hung out with some other transients he met along the way. They worked as farm hands, picking oranges for $7.00 a day. They lived day to day, partying with their paycheck every night, never thinking about tomorrow. One morning they overslept and missed the truck to the farm. They had no money for food, so they went to the local grocery store where they had already spent so much money. They decided that they had already spent so much money there that they could use the five-finger discount to eat whatever they wanted. When Keith opened a carton of milk and began drinking from it right there, he was arrested for shoplifting. He said that he thought it was unfair because he deserved that food.

There are homeless and hungry people who need our help and God has called us through faith to act as His hands to provide mercy and justice to those who are suffering in our world today. Unfortunately, there are always people who abuse the systems that have been created to protect. Stories like the one with the mobile home make good Samaritans hesitant because they are afraid that their kindness will be turned against them. The stories coming out of natural disasters also make victims wary of those who claim to want to help.

The world in which we live is much different than the world of those who followed Moses to the Promised Land, who lived by the rules in Leviticus. Do farmers still leave some of the harvest on the edges for the poor and the foreigner to use? Do they leave the gleanings? We know it is wrong to take something from our neighbor, and yet we steal and deal falsely with our neighbors in so many ways that are acceptable in our society. We lie. We even justify our lies as being for the sake of those to whom we have lied, even though the truly merciful thing is always to tell the truth. We know it is wrong to oppress our neighbor or rob him, and yet we do not always realize that the things we do have the same effect on our neighbors as blatant theft and oppression. Employers no longer pay wages on a daily basis; sometimes we have to wait a week or two, or sometimes even longer, to receive the payment due for our work.

Justice has been skewed. We favor people for what they can do for us, and do not do what is right if it doesn’t fit our agenda. And we slander one another in so many ways, particularly when discussing the heated issues of our day. I have seen far too many examples of misinformation coming out of the disaster here in my backyard. Why? For some it is a way to get “clicks’ which is how they get money. Others use this type of disaster to destroy reputations. Some are trying to take advantage of others.

Sadly, we have lost our way. In verse 15, God says, “You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor show favoritism to the great; but you shall judge your neighbor in righteousness.” Like Keith in the grocery store, those who do not live according to the standard God intends, set their own standard. “I deserve this,” they think, so they steal a trailer from a good Samaritan, walk out of the grocery store with a gallon of milk, or take advantage of those who are suffering.

We do not live the life of holiness that God intends. How did it start? I do not know. It is a vicious circle that human nature travels. We show favoritism to the rich and then the pendulum swings to the opposite extreme where we show partiality to the poor. We know and understand the rules that God has given us, but we never quite seem able to walk the right path God has called us to live. So, how do we live that life of holiness? How do we act in good, right, and truly just ways? And most importantly, how do we really love our neighbors as ourselves?

We understand that rules are necessary and that they are given because God knows the best way for us to live, but those rules do not always seem very practical to us. My son went to college a few hours from home and the drive was through farmland, mostly cotton. During one trip that happened at harvest time, I noticed there were some plants at the edges of the field that were not cut. Did those farmers leave those plants because of the biblical injunction to leave some for the poor? What good is a tuft or two of cotton for a passerby? I doubt those farmers would appreciate me picking their cotton for my personal use. Many would stop me with a shotgun. I suspect most of the leftovers and the gleanings left behind by the harvest are just buried under by modern machinery or burned to the ground because it isn’t worth enough to spend the time to harvest it by hand. Cotton may be a bad example because we don’t eat cotton and it takes so much to be usable, but farmers do not leave the edges of other fields like corn or wheat and there are no gleanings because modern machinery is too efficient. Do farmers no longer care for the poor or foreigner, or do they find other ways to meet the needs of their neighbors? Is this an impractical command from God for our day?

God does not make laws to burden or oppress us, but to help us to be the best we can be. Martin Luther’s perspective on the Law is that it is meant to help us see how unable we are to keep it so that we will turn to Jesus Christ. This doesn’t mean that we have no responsibility to be the person God wants us to be. We are expected to live a life that takes care of others. There are different ways for us to do so today. How many of us are even farmers? Does that mean that we don’t have to ensure that the hungry are fed, the grieving are comforted, the naked are clothed, and things are made right for those who suffer from injustice.

The rules might seem impractical to us today, and we certainly are not living by them, but it is our responsibility to look at the way we are living our lives and make sure that our choices and our actions will not harm others. We have to look at the world through God’s eyes. How will our words and actions affect others? Do they seem harmless? There is no such thing as a victimless sin. When we do something wrong, someone suffers, even if it seems insignificant. Sin always has an impact.

Sometimes the hardest scriptures we use in the lectionary are the ones that have become too familiar to us. The story of the Good Samaritan was taught to us as small children. As a matter of fact, my husband and I are going on a mission trip and the lesson we are teaching the children and youth we are visiting is this story as part of a series on the fruits of the Spirit. We chose it because it shows kindness. This is a common story at Vacation Bible School and in Sunday School. Every Christian school teaches it at least once a year. It is in every children’s bible. It is a good story with a positive message, and it sums up God’s intent for our life as given to us through His Law: to love Him and our neighbors by showing mercy.

The familiar stories illustrate how God’s word is embedded in our hearts and our mouths. We can retell the story, almost verbatim. We can repeat the lessons with confidence. Yet, I wonder if we even listen to it anymore. When the passage is read on Sunday morning, will we actually hear the words, or will we think to ourselves that we’ve heard it all a million times already and tune out for a minute. Will we pay attention to the sermon since we know what the pastor is going to say? Will we actually read the text or just skim over the words, remembering what we have heard before without listening for what God has for us today?

In our modern point of view, we might wonder if those robbers were simply lost souls who happened upon the man o steal his things so that they might have enough money to eat and drink for another, perhaps like Keith in the grocery store. Yet, one commentator about this text suggests that the band of robbers was probably more sophisticated than that. The road on which this story takes place was used by many, including the rich and powerful. The priest and Levite used the road. The Samaritan was probably a wealthy merchant. We don’t know anything about the man who was beaten, but was he someone of importance? So, the commentator suggested that the robbers were something like Robin Hood who organized on that road to do more than steal a few dollars. Was the beaten man someone of consequence, perhaps someone that targeted Samaritans for being half-breeds? In that case, the Samaritan not only took care of a stranger that he happened to find on the road, but he took care of an enemy.

When we hear this story, we often think in very small terms. The Samaritan found one person who needed help, and he did what he could to help. That is the way our faith leads us into service, one person, one day, one problem at a time. Yet, when we look at the problems in our world we often do so in a much broader sense, overwhelmed by the scope of the problem. When we look at hunger, we think globally and wonder how we will ever be able to overcome the problem, forgetting that the child next door hasn't had a decent meal in days because her mom's paycheck ran out before payday. We look at the damage that is happening by flash floods not only in Texas, but also in North Carolina and New Mexico. The impact in just one very small town is overwhelming. How will we ever help everyone who needs us?

Our church often fills buckets with a list of cleaning products that are kept in a warehouse for moments like this. We were preparing to have a workday to fill a bunch of new buckets, so our supplies were already in stock. This meant we could immediately, even while the flood waters will still high, create a bunch of buckets that were delivered Monday morning. More, many more, will be needed, but in thirty-five minutes more than a hundred people worked to fill three hundred. In a moment when everyone needed to “do something,” we did something. It was simple and seemingly insignificant when so many were doing the hard work of search and rescue, but it was something. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something.

The Samaritan was humble; humble because he saw the need and took care of it without trying to be the one to solve the root of the problem. He didn’t try to find the gang or seek vengeance for the man’s injuries. He helped the man. Too many people were trying to solve the problem of why the floods happened, playing the blame game, ignoring the real work that needed to be done: feeding the hungry, comforting the grieving, clothing the naked, and keeping those that would take advantage of the victims and the good Samaritans from doing whatever evil they might have planned.

There is a place for us to work together to take care of big things in this world, but we can always do something much smaller. We can serve the needs of our neighbor and have mercy on them. Humbleness and love of God makes us more aware of the small needs that we can solve on a daily basis even while we are joined together with others trying to solve the bigger problems.

The people in Colossae had accepted what had become common as real. The people had been heard the Gospel message of Jesus Christ from a man named Epaphras. We know that Epaphras was a good leader, a sound teacher and a faithful minister because of Paul’s words in this passage. The message they had been given was the message of faith, love, and hope. Paul knew they had been given that message of truth.

Yet, things in Colossae were not perfect. Other messages were making their way into the thinking and faith of the people in that community. False teachings had become part of their message. Ritualistic requirements, mandatory self-denial, angel worship, diminution of Christ, special knowledge, and reliance on human wisdom, Jewish or Gnostic, were becoming the norm in the congregation. Paul was concerned that the message of Christ was being lost to the fallible human message that was being integrated into the Gospel.

Paul’s letter lifts up the faith of the people in Colossae. He doesn’t thank them for being faithful, he gives all the credit to the One who deserves it: God. He thanks God for their faith, their love and their hope. He prays that God will continue to fill them with knowledge of Christ and keep them worthy to walk with the Lord. He lifts up Christ, reminding the people of Colossae that He is supreme and that it is by Him, through Him, and for Him that we are saved.

The Leviticus text reminds us not to hate our neighbor. Hate, in the Jewish understanding, is not like it is defined in our world today. Hate has an angry or violent connotation, but in Hebrew the word means something perhaps even stronger. We should not separate ourselves from our neighbor, which is what we do when we ignore the poor or gossip about our neighbors. We separate from our neighbors when we treat them with unrighteousness.

It is easy to talk about loving our neighbor, but I’m not sure it is quite so easy to live according to our words. When Jesus asks us what the scriptures say about how to inherit eternal life, we easily say, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” But, like the lawyer, we want to justify our actions and we ask, “Who is my neighbor?”

There were people that the Jews should hate according to the Law as it was defined in Jesus’ day. There were people from whom the religiously “righteous” should be separated: the sick, foreigners, the grieving, and women at certain times of the month. This was especially true for the leaders; the rules set them apart to keep them clean, to make them right before God. If they touched someone who was unclean, then they could not do the work they were called to do.

The lawyer wanted to justify himself and he thought he knew his neighbor according to God’s Word. The lawyer knew the law and knew that the law separated God’s people from foreigners and other outcasts. Holiness meant living according to those expectations. Jesus’ parable shows us just how much they had twisted God’s instructions into a set of rules that did not fulfill the intent of His Law. Jesus told the story using extremes to make a point that could not be disregarded. He chose the characters on purpose: a priest, a Levite and a Samaritan. The requirements for the priest and Levite to remain active in their jobs made it impossible for them to do any good for the beaten man and the Samaritan was as far from acceptable as Jesus could get. Jesus’ point was not to lift up the Samaritan and make it seem as if he were the better man, but to show the lawyer that God does not see the sacrifices but the mercy we share with those in need.

The parable shows us that our neighbors are anyone who is in need, no matter what it might mean for us. The Samaritan was willing to give above and beyond the call of duty, even to the point of making a covenant with an innkeeper so that the man would receive all the care he needed.

The priest and the Levite did not do anything wrong according to the Law. As a matter of fact, they were doing exactly what they believed was expected of them. I don’t think it was easy for them to pass by, after all even the hardest hearts can be compassionate, but they had to remain clean to serve the people of Israel in the Temple. Helping the beaten and dying man would have made them unacceptable for their work. They could not serve God. They did not pass by because they had no compassion. They passed by because they had interpreted God’s Law to mean that they could not risk their holy position and the people of Israel for the sake of one dying man. They may have been motivated by self-preservation, but they might also have been thinking about the bigger picture. Mercy for one would mean that they could not provide mercy for the masses. It is sometimes hard to know just what we need to do. How would we have responded if we were in their shoes? Can we really say we would be like the good Samaritan?

How do we know what to do? We pray and listen. God will answer. He will give us the courage to do what we should do. The priest and the Levite did not listen for God’s voice; they were too busy listening to their interpretation of the Law, ignoring a neighbor in need. They missed the opportunity to live God’s commandments in a positive way. They missed the opportunity to live that life of holiness that God was calling them to live.

That’s why Paul talked about praying for the people of Colossae. He’d heard of their faith. He knew that they wanted to do what is right, to glorify God in their works. He knew they wanted to be good stewards and to be obedient to God’s Word. Paul wrote, “...that you may walk worthily of the Lord, to please him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all power, according to the might of his glory, for all endurance and perseverance with joy...” Doing what is right according to God’s Word will always lead us to joy.

As Christians we are called to lives of mercy. Mercy shows itself in many different ways. It shows itself in the way we deal with those who make us angry, with how we deal with difficult circumstances, with how to deal with our relationships. It is easier to make God’s Law into a long list of specific rules we have to obey so that we will be perfect in our actions because we know what is expected of us. It is tempting to use those rules to keep ourselves separated from those who we don’t want as our neighbor. It is tempting to justify our actions based on our interpretation. Jesus told the lawyer to go and be like the good Samaritan. This is holiness: to be humble before God and merciful to our neighbors.

The greatest example of the Good Samaritan is, of course, Jesus Christ. We are the ones who have been beaten and robbed, left on the side of the road to die. Our enemy is sin and the devil, but Jesus is willing to sacrifice everything to make us well. Unfortunately, we are not only those who are left on the side of the road. We are also those who pass by those in need. We ignore the needs of our neighbors.

The psalmist wrote, “Blessed is he who considers the poor. Yahweh will deliver him in the day of evil.” We like the sound of that, but we know that it doesn’t mean that we will never suffer. We will face natural disasters like flash floods. We will get sick. We will be hurt by other people. We will experience hardship. We may be the one left to die at the side of the road. God doesn’t promise that our life will be happy all the time. He promises we will be blessed. I tend to shy away from the “warm fuzzies” of faith, but only because our feelings, good and bad, should never be our motivation. Our motivation is always to glorify God. But the icing on the cake, so to speak, is that we do feel good when we help someone in need. We are blessed to be a blessing, and then we are blessed when we are a blessing.