Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity - August 30, 2026

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Good Samaritan is probably one of Jesus’s most visual parables. Although, Jesus does have a lot of parables that are easy for us to envision. He helps our imagination in that way. You can almost put yourself in the shoes of the Prodigal Son, coming back home with your tail between your legs. You can understand the joy that a shepherd has at finding a lost sheep, or a woman at finding her lost coin. Jesus even tells some very visual End Times parables about waiting for Him to arrive at last or seeing the sheep and the goats be divided on Judgment Day. But the Good Samaritan is also extremely visual because it’s not hard to imagine at all. We may not regularly deal with seeing the results of a violent robbery, but we can understand the utter physical helplessness of many. Yes, it might be the result of violence like a car accident, but more often it is a loved one who is in the hospital. It might be a beggar in the median at a stoplight, but it may also be a baby who wakes you up three times during the middle of the night.

The point of the Prodigal Son is two-fold. Jesus wants us first to understand who our neighbor is and why to show charity to them.

The Who question is the easiest. It’s actually the setup to the whole parable. A lawyer gets up to ask Jesus about fulfilling the Law. He’s asking about earning salvation: “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (25). Jesus probably didn’t need mind-reading ability to see that he was testing him. So Jesus answers the question with a question: “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” (26). He answers, “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” (27).

He is correct: yes, the Law, the Torah of the Old Testament says this. What the Lawyer is conveniently omitting is the fact that original sin prevents us from doing this perfectly, living up to God’s expectations. Nonetheless, it’s interesting that he goes into great detail with how we should love God—with our heart, soul, strength, mind, and so forth—but almost adds on “and your neighbor as yourself.” But here’s the thing: he wasn’t content with Jesus’s answer, “Do this, and you will live” (28). He wanted to justify himself. In other words, he wants to show proof that he is doing all these things. He assumes that after Jesus gives an answer, he can go back to his buddies and brag that he’s doing everything that that Rabbi told him was necessary for salvation.

Or, he could be asking about who isn’t his neighbor. Will Jesus exclude non-Jews from being a neighbor? So that little question, “Who is my neighbor?” carries a lot of weight.

Jesus answers him with the Parable of the Good Samaritan. A man is beaten up and left half-dead on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho—a notoriously violent road. Both a priest and a Levite pass by on the other side, but a Samaritan has compassion on the man, binds up his wounds, sets him on his animal, and takes him to an inn to recover, even paying the costs involved. There is a lot going on here. First, why did the supposed “good guys” not stop to help the beaten-up man? Quite possibly, they are so obsessed with the same law that the lawyer is, that they don’t want to get ceremonially unclean by touching a dead body. They would need to wait a week before cleansing themselves and going back to work. Perhaps they were repulsed by the beaten man. Perhaps they weren’t sure if he was a Jew or not—was this man deserving of help or not?

The Samaritan in Jesus’s parable doesn’t care about any of that. The man could have been a Jew who hated him. What was important was that the man was in need—dire need. He perhaps imagined what he would want anyone else to do if they came upon him in a similar state. Jesus’s Golden Rule here stands out: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matt 7:12). What Jesus is teaching the lawyer is that anyone can be your neighbor if they are in need and you are able to help them. It doesn’t matter if they are your enemies; Jesus says “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27–28).

The next question that I posed at the beginning of my sermon is equally important: Why show charity to others? The who question is important, for the lawyer and for us, but the why question goes deeper. After all, the lawyer is asking these questions in order to justify himself. He wants to tell himself and others all the good things he’s done for God and his neighbors. If someone has this view, then they want to use the Law as a bargaining chip with God—if I do these things for you, then you’ll do things for me. But this just turns our works into a pretense. What if you gave money to a beggar at the side of the road, but told him, “I’m only doing this so God will like me.” He’ll take your money, but there’s an impersonal barrier between the two of you. You didn’t help him out because you cared for him; you did it because you cared about you!

So Jesus is trying to break the lawyer of this Law-oriented mindset. Do good works because they are good for other people. Do these things because Jesus has first done everything for you: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). One way to understand this parable is to see yourself in the place of the beaten-up man. The law is symbolized by the priest and Levite, who keep on walking. It’s Jesus who is full of compassion yet hated by the world who stops, heals you, lifts you up, and cares for you. Jesus is the one who promises to come back again to pay for everything.

Once we realize this, we can notice people who are in a similar need as ours. It might be physical need, but it also might be spiritual need. Our country is growing less Christian year by year. Many more people than we realize do not know the love of Christ. We ought to show the compassion of Jesus for those who are beaten up and beaten down by the doubt and despair of this world.

So how do we go about this? For one, recognize that every single person you interact with is an embodied soul. They will be spending eternity in one place or the other. They are probably also going through much more than you realize. You might be grumpy about a cashier at the check-out line or a waitress who is slow or confused. The truth is, you never know what someone is going through, what burdens they’re carrying. It’s good to be compassionate with those who are upset. Sometimes people say insensitive things. Sometimes, it’s just better to brush them off and forgive them for saying things that they may not have meant.

As we think about showing physical compassion for people, there are probably a range of things that we can do. We can think in the short-term, medium-term, and long-term. Often in the short-term, people need immediate needs like food, a place to sleep, or clothes. Many of these needs are met by local food pantries—and those are good places to donate to. They almost never need money. I find giving money to panhandlers is somewhat impersonal. You don’t know the person, they don’t know you—they just want money at the traffic stop. I know a pastor who works in the inner city who often carries sandwiches for such occasions. He has noted that often they reject the food and even a conversation and only want money. Money is more helpful in the medium- and long-term, getting someone an education and back on their feet.

Regardless of how you show compassion, the purpose of this parable is to recognize the needs of those around you, not only your family and friends but also perhaps those you don’t like. Help them because they need help and because Jesus has loved you first. He is the one who has done all for you, healing you of your hurts and binding up your wounds by his that he earned on the cross. Our Christian compassion flows from that love that has first been shown to us. We are animated not by the Law, but by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The peace of Christ, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.