Luke 10:25-37
July 20, 2025
When I was in seminary, I was
sitting with outside with some friends and classmates on a warm spring evening.
We were talking about our next day of classes and someone remarked that they needed to go and study because we had a
test in Survey of the Bible the next day. I was going to do the same thing
because I was also in that class, and I knew I needed to study. My friend,
Ellen, was part of this group and when she heard that we had a quiz the next
day, she said,
“The
test is tomorrow?! I thought it was next week.”
We
assured her that it was indeed the next day. And with that assurance she was
gone – back to her room to study in a panic. I went back to my apartment to do
the same thing, regretting that I had taken any down time at all to sit with
friends when I should have been home studying for the quiz the next day.
When
I had chosen my classes for that semester, I was assured by other classmates
that “Survey of the Bible” was a good choice for me because I had not really
read the entire bible before, cover to cover. I’d read lots of portions of the
bible, but I had never managed to read the whole thing straight. I remember
trying many times when I was a kid, but the only bibles I had access to at that
time were the King James Version, and I would always get bogged down in the
“begats” in Genesis.
So,
I was told that “Survey of the Bible” would be a great resource for me. It
would teach me the arc of the whole of scripture, and yes, Elizabeth Achtemeier
was a strict professor and her tests were hard, but she was fair and brilliant,
and I would learn so much.
All
the above is true. That class was a tremendous resource for me. I learned so
much about scripture, and I was able to see the connections of the whole cannon
in a way that I had not seen before. Dr. Achtemeier was brilliant and fair, but
to say that her quizzes were hard was a profound example of understatement.
Each quiz in that class was like having all my teeth removed without Novocain by
a buffalo. And they relentlessly came every week for an entire semester. They
were awful. You have no idea how similar the psalms are, or Paul’s letters are
when you’re trying to identify them by chapter and verse. I dreaded those
quizzes, but miraculously I scraped by with a passing grade. And I hoped and
prayed that the adage attributed to Walker Percy, “You can make all A’s and
still flunk life,” would be true in reverse in that I could barely pass this
class and yet not flunk ministry in the long run.
Whenever
I read about Jesus being tested by one of the religious elites, I remember the stomach
churning trepidation I felt for those quizzes in “Survey of the Bible.” And I
wonder if he also dreaded them or just got annoyed by their frequency; as in,
“Oh brother, here comes another test. Do they every get tired of this? When are
they going to realize they’re not going to get me, not this way anyway.”
That’s
how our passage starts this morning, with another test. This story from Luke’s
gospel is so well-known and so familiar
that it makes it hard to preach, because we all think that we already know it. It’s
not just well known in churches and biblical circles; it’s well known in the
culture. Nursing homes and rehab facilities are named after this good
Samaritan. There are Good Samaritan laws to protect people who help strangers
after accidents from unnecessary litigation. This story is so well-known that surely
nothing about the Good Samaritan can surprise us anymore. But let’s dig in and
see what we find.
As
I said, it begins with a test. A lawyer, who would have been a professional of
the Law of Moses, stood up to test Jesus. Jesus’ fame has been growing. Along
with the original 12 disciples, he has just sent 70 followers out to spread the
good news and to heal and preach in his name. On their return to him, they tell
him that in his name even demons have submitted to them. Clearly, Jesus’
ministry is causing both a clamoring of joy from the growing crowds surrounding
him and consternation among the religious professionals who view him as a
threat. This lawyer is one of the latter.
He
stands up to test Jesus, asking him what he must do to inherit eternal life. It
is clear that the lawyer thinks he already knows the answer, but he wants to
see what Jesus will say, looking to catch him blaspheming. But Jesus knows what
he’s up to, and he turns the question back on the lawyer. What is written in
the law? The lawyer quotes the Shema from Deuteronomy.
“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.”
Jesus
responds that the lawyer has given the right answer. Just do this, follow these
commands, and he will live. But the lawyer, knowing that he has not gotten to
Jesus, pushes back, trying to justify himself, trying to save face.
“Okay,
Jesus, but who is my neighbor?”
Another
question. Another test. But Jesus does not answer the question. Instead, he
tells a story about a man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho on a road known
for its lurking danger. The danger proves real, and the man is robbed and
beaten almost to death. His attackers leave him by the side of the road to die.
Three people passed by. One was a priest, who sees the man and crosses to the
other side of the road to avoid him. The second is a Levite, and he does the
same thing. The third is a Samaritan.
Let’s
pause for a moment and let me point out two things: Jesus never calls the
Samaritan good. He just refers to him by his ethnic and cultural designation.
He is a Samaritan. But just hearing that it was a Samaritan would have riled up
the people around Jesus. They would have had many associations with that, and I
doubt that any of them were good. The Samaritans were enemies of the Jews. The
Jews were enemies of the Samaritans. No Jew would have considered the
possibility of a Samaritan being good, and probably vice versa. But the
Samaritan does not follow the lead of the first two men and cross to the other
side of the road. The Samaritan was moved with pity and compassion for this man
left to die. The Samaritan does not walk away from the man; he goes to him. He
pours oil and wine on his wounds and bandages them. He puts the man on his own
animal and brings him to an inn and cares for him there. The next day, when he must
leave again, he gives the innkeeper money to continue taking care of the
injured man, and he promises to give him whatever more he spends when he
returns. Jesus ends the story here, but now he asks the crucial question, the
test question that the lawyer probably dreaded as much as I dreaded my bible
quizzes.
“Which
of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fill into the hands
of the robbers?”
“The
one who showed him mercy.” “Go and do likewise.”
Jesus
doesn’t answer the lawyer’s question, not really, not directly. He does not
fall into the trap the lawyer set of trying to define neighbor because it seems
to me that what the lawyer really wanted was for Jesus to define boundaries. Tell
me who is my neighbor, Jesus, and more importantly who is not. Tell me who I must
treat as neighbor and who I do not. Show me the boundary lines of
neighborliness that I am allowed not to cross. But Jesus turns all of
this on its head, as he always did, and essentially said, there are no
boundaries. You are a good Jew, and in this story two good Jews, two religious
professionals saw the man and kept on going. Others have tried to defend the
Priest and the Levites’ actions by saying that the Law prohibited them from
touching a potentially dead body and becoming unclean themselves. But Dr. Amy
Jill-Levine, a renowned Jewish studies and New Testament scholar, debunks this
saying that the Law always allowed people to come to the aid of a hurt person
without risk of defilement. The Priest and the Levite could have helped. They
chose not to. They messed up, just as anyone of any culture or place or time
can mess up. They chose not to be a neighbor to the man on the side of the
road. But to the shock of everyone listening, especially to the shock of that
lawyer, a Samaritan stops and helps. A Samaritan cares for the injured man. A
Samaritan binds up his wounds and puts him on his own animal and takes him to
an inn and continues to care for him, continues to show mercy. Because of the
Samaritan that road, that dangerous, treacherous road became holy ground.
Because that’s where mercy was shown.
If
you can make all A’s and still flunk life, then that lawyer was facing the distinct
possibility of flunking life. He knew the law, but he couldn’t pass the test of
mercy. And Jesus would not be caught in his trap of defining boundaries around
neighbor. He would not be tripped up by a quiz that wanted him to say
specifically who is a neighbor and who is not. He would not give the lawyer the
benefit of thinking that he could leave some for dead and not others. Have
mercy was his response. You want to know who is a neighbor. It is the one who
has mercy, who shows mercy, who lives mercy. Have mercy. To be a neighbor is to
have mercy. To recognize a neighbor is to recognize the one who has mercy, even
if it’s the one you least expect. Dr. King said, and I paraphrase, that the
Priest and the Levite both thought about what would happen to them if they
acted, but the Samaritan thought about what would happen to the man if he
didn’t act.
Have
mercy. That’s the test. Maybe you dread it. Maybe you feel unprepared and
ill-equipped. But that’s the test and to have mercy is the way you avoid
flunking life. Have mercy. Recognize that the whole world is filled with
neighbors and we are called to have mercy on them all. Have mercy just as God
has mercy on us. And when you have mercy, when you show mercy, when you live
mercy, you will be on holy ground.
Let
all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”
Amen.