“The Parable of the Good Samaritan”

Luke 10: 25-37

Pastor Deb Troester, STHPC, July 13, 2025

Joe and I sometimes listen to NPR’s “My Unsung Hero” - stories of people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else. This past week, Maureen Futtner of San Francisco told her story. Maureen’s older sister died earlier this year, suddenly and unexpectedly.  She says, “I walked around in shock for quite a while. And just a few days after she died, I had to attend a work event. So I slapped a smile on my face, and I got on a downtown BART train …I sort of took up a two-seat space on the train, hoping I could just be left alone. It’s rush hour, and the train is getting more and more crowded, and a woman with a cane gets on. I jump up to offer her my seat, and she immediately gestures for me to sit down, and she sits beside me. She promptly turns and looks directly at me, and asks, “So how’s your day going?”

This isn't something people generally do on BART. But in that moment, something in me knew I just had to be honest. It’s been a rough week, I said. We lost my sister. Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that, she says. And she went on to share that her wife had passed away, that it had been 10 years, and it had been hard for her to move on. So she joined a bereavement group recently, and that had helped.

Well, pretty quickly, the PA message announced my stop. I had more to say to this woman. I wanted to let her know how bereft I would be if I lost my wife, who’s my rock. I decided just to simply introduce myself, and she extended her hand. I’m Simone – You take care, Maureen. On the radio program, she added, “Simone, if you happen to hear this, your connection and your honesty helped buoy me that evening, and I hope you continue to heal on your journey with grief.”

A Good Samaritan reached out to Maureen that day with sympathy and kindness. Someone she thought was a stranger sat down by her, but it turned out to be a neighbor.

“Who is my neighbor?” asked the expert in the law, a scholar of religion, an authority on God’s commandments. Jesus answered him with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, a story that never grows old. This parable is so well-known that it’s hard to look at it with new eyes. Yet some people seem to have forgotten it. Last week in a New York Times opinion piece, Dr. Craig Spencer of Doctors Without Borders wrote about his experiences in Guinea, caring for Ebola patients in the 2014 outbreak. He contracted Ebola himself, but thanks to excellent medical care, fully recovered. It was a risk he knowingly took, as he cared for patients who differed from him in nationality, culture, language, and skin – tone.

He writes, “America’s leaders are increasingly casting aside empathy and compassionate care as dangerous liabilities. Elon Musk has called empathy ‘the fundamental weakness of Western civilization…’ [Yet] the belief that we have a responsibility to others isn’t shortsighted sentimentalism; it’s the moral foundation of a meaningful life… In a world defined by worsening pandemics, climate instability and global interdependence, empathy is a necessity. Politicians may slash budgets and dismantle institutions, but they cannot erase the principle that built them: that caring for others is a moral obligation, not a partisan position.” (end quote).

People talk a lot about our Judeo-Christian heritage; some insist that the U.S. is a Christian country, although freedom of religion is enshrined in our Constitution. For those who believe in Jesus Christ, the story of the Good Samaritan is foundational. It has almost come to define what it means to be a good Christian and a good person: one who assists others in their time of need. How can we claim to be Christians and not help our fellow human beings, no matter who they are or where they are from? After all, Jesus told this parable to help explain what he said were the two greatest commandments, “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 expert in the law who asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” seems less interested in actually helping people than in justifying his own behavior. He wants to know exactly what he has to do to inherit eternal life – no more, no less. His main concern is himself and proving that he is right and others are wrong. Sadly, there are still plenty people who fall into that category –

People who want to prove that their interpretation of Christianity is the right one and others have the wrong one – maybe all of us fall into that category at one time or another. Author and poet Wendell Berry writes, …there are many Christians who are exceedingly confident … They appear to know precisely the purposes of God… They are confident, moreover, that God hates people whose faith differs from their own, and they are happy to concur in that hatred.”

My friends, hating people of a different faith, national origin, sexual preference, race, political party, or whatever reason, is not Christianity, nor does it in any way resemble the teachings of Jesus Christ. The parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us that we are all neighbors, including those we consider to be our enemies. After all, we are so familiar with this parable that it’s easy to forget that Samaritans and Jews were ancient enemies. They both claimed Judaism as their faith, but because of religious differences and intermarriage with non-Jews, Samaritans were not considered “real Jews.” Furthermore, there were times when the Samaritans sided with the enemies of Israel.

There weas no love lost between the two groups. In telling this parable, Jesus specifically chose characters who would normally not be seen together, much less be friends. He wants to make it clear that our “neighbor” is anyone in need, even someone belonging to a hated ethnic group. We can’t pick and choose who is our neighbor, or limit them to people who are just like us.

A few months ago I talked about Mr. Rogers and how he always opened his beloved children’s TV show with the song “Won’t you be my neighbor?” “It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine? Could you be mine? …So let’s make the most of this beautiful day. Since we're together, we might as well say, would you be mine? Could you be mine? …Please won’t you be my neighbor?” Mr. Rogers’ question “Please won’t you be my neighbor?” is the opposite of the lawyer’s self-serving question, “Who is my neighbor?”  The expert in the law was hoping to limit the extent of his care for others, but Jesus, like Mr. Rogers, expands the horizons of our neighborhood to potentially include everyone.

The question, “Please won’t you be my neighbor? Is really an invitation. Pastor Burkhart comments that “…[It] was a countercultural idea then and continues to exist in contrast with a secular narrative that describes outsiders as a dangerous intrusion into our comfortable neighborhoods. Jesus invites us to embrace this sort of boundaryless approach, [the “Mr. Rogers’ approach,”] It is an approach full of anticipation rather than dread. When there are tangible ways to serve others and to share mercy and kindness, taking them up is not our obligation but our delight. When we recall how Jesus related to others, it confirms the wisdom that there are two kinds of people: those we love and those we haven’t yet met.”

There’s a famous poem by William Blake that reads, “I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see; I sought my God, but my God eluded me; I sought my neighbor, and I found all three.” Someone has said that the church is a “we” institution living and serving in an “I” cultural moment. I don’t know that we live in the only time when people thought of themselves first,

nor do I know that the church has always functioned as a “we-institution” –  an inclusive body, one where we think of others, not just ourselves, but as poet Wendell Berry said, “…Jesus is asking his followers to see that the way to more abundant life is the way of love. We are to love one another, and this love is to be more comprehensive than our love for family and friends and tribe and nation. We are to love our neighbors though they may be strangers to us. We are to love our enemies. And this is to be a practical love; it is to be practiced, here and now. Love evidently is not just a feeling but is indistinguishable from the willingness to help, to be useful to one another.”

This is our challenge – to live up to Jesus’ teachings, to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. This is the challenge Jesus placed before his listeners that day, and this is the challenge that faces us still. “Who is my neighbor?”

Let’s pray:

God, in Whom we live and move and have our being, help us live every day seeking your way and moving on your path. Help us to see our neighbors. May we have clear vision to see those who need food, clothing, and shelter that we may supply their need. May we see those who are victims of injustice, to stand up for them and to be a voice for the voiceless. Help us commit to extravagant love, and resolve to extend the abundant grace and mercy we receive from you to all our neighbors. Amen.

Berry, Wendell. “The Burden of the Gospels,” Christian Century, September 20, 2005. 

Burkhart, Gina. “July 13, Ordinary 15C (Luke 10:25–37)” Christian Century, July 13, 2025.

Spencer, Craig. “You Don’t Have to Be a Doctor to Understand This,” NYT, July 7, 2025.

Sermon ©Deborah Troester 2025