Sermon for July 13, 2025

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The Rev. Taylor Vines

I don’t know about y’all, but these days it’s easy for me to feel overwhelmed by all the competing needs in the world. Everywhere we turn, there’s another urgent appeal, another headline, another person hurting. And every day we’re faced with decisions: Who should I help? What can I give? Where do my responsibilities begin, and where do they end?

That’s why I have some sympathy for the Torah scholar in today’s Gospel. He asks Jesus the question of questions: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” But then he presses further: “And who is my neighbor?”

That question — Who is my neighbor? — is really asking: How much is enough? What’s the minimum I have to do? Surely I can’t help everyone. Surely I don’t have to notice every need or stop for every stranger.

And if we’re honest, we don’t always ask those questions out loud, but they live in the back of our minds every time we look away from someone hurting. Every time we say to ourselves: Someone else will stop. Someone else will help. Someone else will give.

It’s not a bad question; it’s an honest one. And as he so often does, Jesus turns it around. Instead of answering “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus tells a story.

A man is robbed, beaten, and left half-dead on the side of the road. A priest passes by and does nothing. A Levite passes by and does nothing. But a Samaritan, someone who had every reason to walk away, stops. He binds the man’s wounds, puts him on his own animal, and pays for his care. Then Jesus asks: “Which of these three was a neighbor?”

When I was growing up in Mississippi, the pastor at my grandmother’s little Southern Baptist church used to preach this parable about once a year. And every time, he’d say with a little grin: “Now in the Jewish church, the priest was like the preacher… and the Levite was like the deacon.” And all the people in the pews would go, “mmmhmmm” and “that’s right,” because they all knew just how easy it is even for church folks to walk by on the other side.

And the truth is, so do we. We’ve all walked by. We’ve all looked away from the hard thing we needed to do, or the hurting person who needed comfort.
We don’t like to think of ourselves as the priest or the Levite. But if you stop and think about all the times you’ve crossed the street, closed your eyes, or changed the subject, you realize just how easy it is to walk by.

That’s why Jesus doesn’t just want us to feel guilty. He wants us to see something deeper. The real question isn’t: Who counts as my neighbor? The real question is: What kind of neighbor will I be?

My seminary pastoral theology professor, Mother Julia Gatta, used to tell us that this parable refuses to let us hide in abstractions. Christian love, she said, is never just a theory. It’s particular. It’s concrete. It’s about the person right in front of you: in your home, your workplace, your town. You can’t just love “humanity” in general while failing to love the actual people God places in your path.

And for me, that’s the hard part. It’s easy to care about “the poor” or “the marginalized” in theory while walking right past the one who’s hurting nearby. It’s easy to write a check, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but never actually touch the wound. Never risk getting your hands dirty. And that’s why Jesus says, simply: “Go and do likewise.”

Like I said earlier, this can feel overwhelming. So where do we even begin? The answer is to start with ourselves. Because before we could be a neighbor to someone else, God became our neighbor. We are the ones lying by the roadside, wounded by sin, beaten down by life, half-dead in spirit. And Jesus Christ is the Good Samaritan who refused to pass us by.

He stooped down into our humanity, touched our wounds, carried us to safety, and paid the price for our healing. He didn’t ask if we deserved it. He simply loved us. And now, having been loved in this way, we are free to love others without first assessing whether they’re “enough” of a neighbor to us. We can simply be their neighbor regardless.

That’s the kind of love Jesus calls us to. A love that risks being inconvenienced, interrupted, even stained by the messiness of real life. A love that notices the person right in front of us. A love that begins right where we are.

And this kind of love isn’t just good for the other person. It’s good for us too. Jesus says: “Do this, and you will live.” If you’ve ever stopped for someone, really seen them, and they really saw you, then you know what Jesus means. You feel more alive in that moment than you do almost anywhere else.

Because that’s what eternal life really means. It’s not just what happens when you die. It’s a way of living now, fully alive, fully awake, fully engaged in the life God made you for.

So, friends: Who has God placed in your path? Where is there a wounded soul waiting for you to notice; someone whose pain you’ve maybe walked past before, someone who needs more than just your pity?

The good news is, you don’t have to fix everything. You just have to begin where you are, becoming a neighbor to the one God sets before you. Because according to Jesus, a neighbor is not someone you find. It’s someone you become.

And so after you are nourished at the Lord’s Table today:

May your eyes be open to see the wounded on the road.
May your hands be ready to bind up their wounds.
And in imitation of the Good Samaritan, may you go, do likewise, and truly live. Amen.

St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Ypsilanti, MI

All are welcome!

Sermon for July 13, 2025