Have Mercy -- July Sermon Series

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.