Service for July 13 Fifth Sunday of Pentecost
Sermon for July 13, 2025 Fifth Sunday of Pentecost
There’s a meme going around on the socials that says, “The test of Christianity is not loving Jesus, it’s loving Judas.” Of course, there are no ‘tests’ we need to pass to receive God’s love and forgiveness. We are saved because God is love and in love God sent Jesus to put an end to the power of death and evil. Full stop. But we who follow Jesus have a harder road to follow than the average person who’s just trying to be ‘good.’ We are called to follow Jesus who tells us not only to love those who are easy to love, but to love our enemies.
“The test of Christianity is not loving Jesus, it’s loving Judas.” It’s more of a self-check, than a test. A way for us to check in with ourselves to make sure we’re on the right path. We should ask ourselves, “How am I doing at loving Jesus? How am I doing at loving Judas! Am I loving those who are kind and agreeable but failing to love the unlovely and loveable?”
The lawyer, in the reading questioning Jesus is an expert in Biblical law. That’s what being a ‘lawyer’ in Biblical terms meant. So when he asks Jesus, hoping to wiggle out of any responsibility, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus asks him, “What is written in the law?” What is written in the Torah, that part of the Bible that attempts to order our life together? Jesus invites the lawyer to refer to his own Scripture, the compass for his life. The “law” or Torah that is also our Scripture says that we are to love God completely with our whole being and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18) Jesus reiterated that that was to be our guide and even intensified the command for those who follow him when he said, “I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you.” (Luke 6)
The lawyer knew the law but “wanted to justify himself;” He was looking for some wiggle room and so he asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”
In answer, Jesus tells the story of the “Good Samaritan.” Of course, for those hearing Jesus that day and for the people of the time it was the commonly held perception that there were NO good Samaritans. It was an impossible idea, an oxymoron, that a Samaritan could be “good.” Jesus turns the lawyer’s question around and asks him, “Which of the three who encountered the desperate man acted as a neighbor to him? And the lawyer cannot deflect any longer. He answers, “The one who showed him mercy.” The good Samaritan!
The moral of the story is obvious, “Be like the Good Samaritan. Help everyone.” A moral that sends us on our way feeling good about ourselves as we think of all the ways we ‘help’ those in need and are determined to do even more.
But parables as Jesus used them are never a morality tale. Parables are meant to turn our ideas of right and wrong upside down. They are meant to leave us feeling unsettled. They are meant to leave us feeling seen for who we truly are, with our deepest selves revealed to God and to ourselves because it’s only in that exposed state that we are able to see ourselves clearly and perhaps to change.
Amy-Jill Levine is a Jewish scholar who says the real point of the parable is that the disciples who first heard it “would have identified more with the victim in the ditch than the Samaritan.” She says, “For the perspective of the man in the ditch, Jewish listeners might balk at the idea of receiving Samaritan aid. They might have thought, “I’d rather die than acknowledge that someone from that group saved me”; “I do not want to acknowledge that a rapist has a human face”; or “I do not recognize that a murderer will be the one to rescue me.”
Again, Diana Butler Bass, says it so well, “That’s what the Jews in Jesus’ day thought of the Samaritans — that they were descended from rapists and murderers, collaborators with rulers who oppressed God’s people and who worshiped at a corrupt Temple. That’s who showed up as the hero in the story, the person who administered mercy — their enemy.” “Who is my neighbor?” asked the lawyer. The answer? The very worst person you can imagine, Jesus responds. Your enemy.”1
That “worst person you can imagine” is the one you are called to love, to help and maybe most difficult of all, that worst person you can imagine, is the one you are called to accept help from. That is who you are called to acknowledge your dependence upon.
We have all experienced a time when we saw someone in need and gave them real help. We helped an elderly person who dropped their groceries as they walked out of the grocery store, or we helped a stranger change a flat tire, maybe even when it was inconvenient to do so, maybe we loaned money knowing it would probably not be repaid.
But have you ever been in desperate need of help yourself? Were you ever the one in the ditch? If you found yourself beaten up and robbed, could you accept help from a murderer or a rapist? Or a white supremacist or an undocumented immigrant? Or a homeless person? Would you accept help from a MAGA follower or a self-avowed socialist, or Hamas member?
Diana Butler Bass tells the story of crossing a street in Alexandria Virginia, outside of Washington DC where she lives. She says, “I tripped, landing spread eagle in the crosswalk. My purse flew one direction, my glasses another. My hands were scuffed and bleeding from my feeble attempt to break the fall. And my knee was hurt. Dazed, I looked up, and saw that the crosswalk signal was about to change. I couldn’t pull myself together in time to get out of the road before the light turned green. I started to cry, searched for my glasses, and hoped for help.
A car stopped, and a woman opened the driver’s side door. I felt relieved — someone was going to assist me. Instead of helping, however, she began to yell at me: “What’s wrong with you? Get up! You’re blocking traffic!” When I didn’t answer, she shouted, “Are you deaf?” and she leaned on her car horn. I crawled across the street to the far corner. “Idiot,” she shouted as she drove away. I sat on the curb sobbing. No one asked me how I was; no one helped. Several people walked by without comment, turning their gaze away from the rattled woman on the sidewalk.”
And then Butler Bass says, “that’s the thing about this parable. Occasionally, you get to be the Samaritan. But sometimes you’re the one in the ditch.”1 Sometimes you are seen not as the person you know yourself to be but as the enemy, one to be ridiculed or ignored.
That’s a hard thing for us to fathom, we who live most of our lives in relative stability and safety and comfort. Eventually we’ll all be the one in the ditch. For some of us the ditch is an accident, or loss of a job or a devastating illness or falling into the depths of addiction. Maybe it’s just growing old that puts us at the mercy of others making decisions about our lives. Sooner or later all of us face the end of our lives when no one can save us. And God is with us then and always has been. Because we were the ones in the ditch all along, God sent Jesus to show us how to live and how to love each other, how to be neighbor to each other, even our enemies.
In the meantime, in this life we’re given, Jesus asks us, “To whom are you being a good neighbor?” The question is not, who do we have to help but who am I being neighbor to, who am I helping? Am I fulfilling God’s commandment to love God and love my neighbor, even when that neighbor is my enemy? And when I’m the one in the ditch, am I willing to receive help and love? Am I willing to be in relationship with one who does not look like my idea of neighbor and may even appear to be an enemy?
The Samaritan was no better than the priest or the Levite. When the person from Samaria saw the man, beaten and bleeding he was probably just as afraid for his own safety and annoyed at the diversion of his time as the other two who encountered the man. The difference between the people is in the question they asked of themselves. Instead of trying to justify themselves to God or anyone else, the man from Samaria asked what difference his help would make to the man in need.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “…the first question that the priest asked -- the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"3
That is a huge leap for most of us mere mortals, to move from counting the cost to ourselves to putting the needs of the other ahead of our own. We often make this complicated, asking all sorts of “reasonable” questions when applying it to our everyday lives. We ask, “Shouldn’t we take care of ourselves, and our own families first? Is it wise to put ourselves at risk interacting with someone who may be mentally ill or under the influence of drugs?
Today, we see reports of masked men, we’re told their ICE agents grabbing men, women, and children out of farm fields, off street corners, out of offices where they have shown up for their regularly scheduled immigration meetings. Do we assume that because the agents have the power of the government behind them that they are doing what is right and that the person they are grabbing must have done something to deserve this treatment? Do we justify sending people identified simply because of their race or country of origin to camps in a swamp or a foreign country where we know the conditions are subhuman because someone in authority has told us that they are violent criminals with no proof offered, no opportunity for due process? Or can we imagine that something has gone terribly wrong with this logic and the person with no power, no say, no proof that they have done anything wrong is actually the victim of state sanctioned violence and they deserve our loud and vehement response? Can we imagine that in defending this person who maybe speaks a different language, or originally came from a different country, who has arrived in this land of the free and home of the brave, came here for reasons we cannot fathom, facing adversity we hope never to experience; can we imagine that “loving our neighbor” may require defending them? Can we put ourselves in their shoes and ask how we might want to be treated if the tables were turned?
The message of the parable of the Good Samaritan is stunningly simple “The one who shows kindness is acting as neighbor and sometimes our neighbor is disguised as someone we’re afraid of, maybe even as our enemy.”
We desperately need to internalize this message today when empathy is so often absent from our daily lives; in a world where caring for the vulnerable is seen as weak or woke; in this world driven by competition, consumerism, greed and individualism, kindness is the balm our collective souls need.
The writer Kurt Vonnegut was once asked by a young man in Pittsburgh, “Please tell me it will all be okay.” Vonnegut, who has written so many stories filled with cynicism and displaying the weaknesses of humanity, was being asked to offer hope to this young person! And what was his answer?
Vonnegut said, “Welcome to earth, young man. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside Joe, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of: Goddamn it, Joe, you’ve got to be kind.”
What might it mean for our relationships individually and for our community or even for the world if we listened to the voice whispering to each of us, “For God’s sake, Christian, be kind!”3 For God’s sake, love even your enemy for you too will be in the ditch someday.
1 https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com
2 Amy Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi.
3 Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love
3 Kurt Vonnegut, A Man without a Country.