Who is Your Good Samaritan? / Luke 10:25–37 / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday July 13th 2025 / Season of Pentecost / Mount Olive Lutheran Church

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday July 13th 2025: Season of Pentecost / Luke 10:25–37 “Who is Your Good Samaritan”

And behold, a lawyer stood up to put [Jesus] to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “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 neighbour as yourself.” And [Jesus] said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbour to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends Saint John in the first of his epistles writes “We love because [God] first loved us.” This is very relevant to our Gospel Reading from the Gospel of Saint Luke today, but Saint John doesn’t stop there John continues to say, “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”[1] Regarding the Parable of the Good Samaritan we often want apply the parable first to ourselves in this way: We look to the Good Samaritan as an example of how we are supposed to be to those who find themselves in desperate need. We quickly start with ourselves as the potential hero of the story, we start with ourselves as the Good Samaritan … but by doing so we miss a couple steps and we can be driven into despair and anxiety because in our daily lives we simple don’t faultlessly embody the Good Samaritan of Jesus’ parable. Starting at the end we apply what Jesus says to the lawyer, who couldn’t leave well enough alone, when Jesus concludes with the command, “You go, and do likewise.” Today let’s start at the beginning of the parable and not at the end, as Saint John teaches, “We love because [God] first loved us.”

Who then is the Good Samaritan in the parable? In the Gospel of Saint John our Lord Jesus squares off with some of the Jewish authorities of the day, Pharisees and men who had planned to stone a woman caught in adultery and as they exchange words with each other Jesus’ detractors eventually say to Him, “Are we not right in saying that You are a Samaritan and have a demon?” Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon, but I honour my Father, and you dishonour Me.”[2] This shows us three things:

1) How little they think of Samaritans (who were a sort of cousin people of the Jewish people that traced their roots in the Old Testament back to the Northern Kingdom of Israel before it fell and they were dragged into captivity and were intermarried with the Assyrian people who had conquered them) at the time of the Gospels there was no love for the Samaritans among the Jewish folks, they saw them as broken misguided and evil as ones hopelessly outside the faith.

2) This also shows us how little some of these folks thought of Jesus if they were trying to lump Jesus in with the Samaritans, this was done in an attempt to discredit Jesus in the eyes of the onlookers who were growing in faith towards Him.

3) This gives us some insight into the plot twist that Jesus provides in His parable.

We call it The Parable of the Good Samaritan but the Lawyer and everyone listening, even Jesus’ disciples at that point, would have imagined that the Priest and the Levite in the story would be the heroes, they would never expect that a Samaritan would be the one to stop and help a Jewish man set upon by robbers and left for dead in the ditch. In fact commentators believe that the Priest Jesus mentions here could even be the High Priest who presided over the Temple in Jerusalem. For the Jewish folks who looked at the Samaritans as enemies this would be like having your enemy stop and help you, this was something they were not likely or open to do. Maybe you see where this is all going.

Who then is the Good Samaritan in the parable? First and foremost the Good Samaritan in the parable is Jesus Himself. He is the one who sees the man in his need, who has compassion, who binds up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, who then sets the man left for dead on his own animal and brings him to an inn to take care of him. Even paying two days wages out of His own pocket to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ Jesus is the unexpected Saviour of the parable and what then does that make you? When you understand Jesus first and foremost as the Good Samaritan in the parable then that makes you the man who had fallen in among robbers, who was stripped and beat and left half dead alongside the road. That’s you. If you are left half dead with no help, what will happen? You will certainly end up not just half dead but completely dead. There’s no way in this parable that the one left for dead could help themselves in their condition. And so we too see ourselves here and we see our need for rescue.

A couple chapters earlier in the Gospel of Saint Luke Jesus teaches, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.”[3] The Samaritan of the Parable who the first Jewish listeners would have considered an enemy does unto them as he would have them do unto him, if he found himself in need. When Jesus Himself would find Himself hung dead upon the cross un-helped by the High Priest and Levites, who both participated in orchestrating His death and while dying upon the cross of His crucifixion passed by Jesus, it was not them but a Pharisee, named Nicodemus, and a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish parliament of the day, named Joseph of Arimathea who asked for Jesus’ body from the Roman Governor Pontius Pilot and took it down from the cross and cared for it and buried it with dignity and honour in the tomb. For some this too is a surprise plot twist.

Let’s drive back into you and me being the enemy left for dead in the ditch alongside the road of life, the one in need of rescue. Saint Paul in his letter to the Christians of Rome writes, “While we were enemies [of God due to our sin] we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son,”[4] Yes, “while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly,”[5]  “God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”[6]  By Jesus’ shed blood He reconciles us to God His heavenly Father. Jesus in this way takes us while we were enemies and dead and makes us alive and cared for against all odds by His grace. This is what the Parable of the Good Samaritan is about 1) the grace of God towards you in Christ Jesus and 2) our response to “go and do likewise” showing mercy even to our enemies because of what God in Christ has done first for us. Which brings us back to what Saint John teaches, “We love because [God] first loved us.” Remember Saint John would have heard this very parable of Jesus first hand from Jesus Himself that day with the lawyer.

In that same passage from earlier in the Gospel of Saint Luke where Jesus says “love your enemy as yourself,” He continues to teach us saying, “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. But,” Jesus says, “love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for He is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”[7]

Dear ones this then is how we are to live: consider now the question first asked by the lawyer and the answer Jesus gives: The lawyer asks, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” [Jesus asks] him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And [the lawyer] answered, “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 neighbour as yourself.” And [Jesus] said to [the lawyer], “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” Let’s put a pin in that. We know from Scripture that “the wages of sin is death,”[8] and so because we do not perfectly love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength and with all our mind, and we do not perfectly love our neighbour as ourselves we are both dead in our trespasses and sins and will die a physical death. Jesus Himself died, but not because of sins of His own, He is, in fact, the only person who ever faultlessly loved the Lord His God with all His heart and with all His soul and with all His strength and with all His mind, and faultlessly loved His neighbour as Himself; Jesus died because of our sins that He took upon Himself to rescue us from our sinful condition. Those sins and death itself died with Jesus upon the cross and were buried into the tomb with Him that first Good Friday. And for His part because Jesus was without sin of His own and had in fact perfectly loved the Lord His God with all His heart and with all His soul and with all His strength and with all His mind, and faultlessly loved His neighbour as Himself means that Jesus then received the very thing He said the lawyer would receive when He said “do this, and you will live,” because what happens three days later after his crucifixion and death? Jesus is risen from the dead, “do this, and you will live.” So while “the wages of sin is death, [Saint Paul goes on to teach] the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[9] The merciful gracious gift given by this unexpected Good Samaritan, our Lord Jesus Christ, is our rescue from sin, death, the devil, the world and rescue even from ourselves, rescue from all the things that come upon us like robbers, that beat us and strip us naked and leave us for dead along the road of this life.  

With all of this in mind now we can ask: How then are we to live once we know this? Now with Jesus as the Good Samaritan of the Parable and He then as our example, we as ones rescued and made alive in Christ Jesus can indeed begin to endeavour at being the Good Samaritan to those we find in need as we walk the road of our life. We who have faith and are religious are not to pass by the one in needs without giving assistance as best as we are able, and why is that? It is because Christ has not passed by us. When we fail at this we are to seek forgiveness in Him, the one who perfectly acted as the Good Samaritan. And so we arrive where we began “We love because [God] first loved us.” Amen.  

Let us pray:

Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] 1 John 4:19–20
[2] John 8:48–49
[3] Luke 6:27–31
[4] Romans 5:10
[5] Romans 5:6
[6] Romans 5:8
[7] Luke 6:32–36
[8] Romans 6:23a
[9] Romans 6:23

Photo Credit: tinted montage of detail from a stained glass window of Christ as the Good Samaritan from wikimedia commons.