Sermon by Pastor Brian - September 16, 2026
Sermons
The Despised Other
Luke 10:30-37
Bloody Pass is the eighteen-mile stretch of treacherous road spiraling down from Jerusalem. The steep descent negotiates blind curves and blackened caves, a lawless desert where marauding bandits plot their next raid. Leaping from the shadows, they ambush a nameless man headed for Jericho, pocketing his wallet, stripping him naked, and chucking his beaten body into the ditch.
Minutes later, a priest and his acolyte, on their way to church, hear the primal groans before coming upon the man begging for rescue. They check their calendar and announce, “Sorry, it’s an inconvenient time. Vestments need ironing; lambs need sacrificing; candles need wicking; organs need tuning; the bulletins can’t fold themselves. Worship may end with the Spirit, but it starts with the clock.”
After the clergymen depart, a foreigner approaches. Disturbed into action, the Samaritan kneels beside the dying man. He sterilizes the wounds with wine, applies oil as a balm, and wraps the purple skin with gauze. He hoists the stranger onto his donkey and heads for town. At the Comfort Inn, he rents a room for two months, nurses the patient back to health, and leaves the clerk with a blank check.
In this parable, the most domesticated of all, listeners for two thousand years have heard one directive: be a do-gooder. That’s why thousands of hospitals and non-profits worldwide have chosen this story as their namesake. Yet, to the lawyer trying to earn eternity and to Jesus’ disciples since, we are commissioned to something far more troubling.
To exegete this text, our discussion question today is: What makes the Good Samaritan good?
Luke 10:30-37 “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, 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 while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
Congregational Responses:
He risked getting ambushed by dismounting.
After befriending the enemy, he may have been banned from going home.
The Samaritan experienced discrimination, making him more sensitive to the suffering around him.
The night after a drive-by shooting east of Denver, Sharletta Evans parked her car in front of a relative’s house. She went inside to pick up her grandniece, leaving her two young sons in the backseat with an older cousin. The gunmen returned, unloading a scattershot of munitions. In the crossfire, three-year-old Casson took a bullet to the head. Sharletta rushed back, cradling him until the medics arrived, who pronounced him dead. Seventeen years later, she was the first person in the Rocky Mountain State to volunteer for a restorative justice pilot program. The victim and offender entered counseling to prepare for a future face-to-face meeting at the Limon Correction Facility. Raymond Johnson was now thirty-two years old and serving life without parole. A changed man, he owned the wreckage of his actions, expressed sorrow, and offered reparations. Before the meeting, Raymond sent Sharletta a Mother’s Day card. “Will you take me,” he wrote, “as your son?” When the day finally came, they gathered for eight hours holding hands until she prayed over him. Pulling out the card, “Yes, I’ll be your mother.”1
In Aurora, Colorado, it was Casson’s triggerman; in New York City, it’s Al Qaeda; in Cherokee, it’s Andrew Jackson; and in Shechem, the religious center of ancient Samaria, the Jewish people were hated rivals. The Israelites believed the Samaritans were damned for opposing the rebuilding of Solomon’s Temple, straying from Torah, and disavowing Jerusalem as the Holy City.
While his identity is obscured by the absurd acts of charity, the battered man on Bloody Pass is Jewish. After this shocking realization, proximate to his archenemy, the Samaritan is justified in cursing him and leaving his body to the vultures. Instead, defying his nationalistic instinct, he gathers the man up into his arms, and into his soul.
Any secular saint can caregive the neighbor back to health or pay a few bills for the family at the end of the cul-de-sac. But only the Christian is asked to initiate fellowship with the very person you hope never moves in next door. What makes the Samaritan good is his belief that liberation- God’s intention for us to be set free on this side of heaven- is bound up in being with the despised “other.”
Of white supremacists, Dr. King preached, “No longer can we afford the luxury of passing by on the other side. Such folly was once called moral failure; today it will lead to universal suicide. We cannot long survive spiritually separated in a world that is geographically together. I must not ignore the wounded man on life’s Jericho Road, because… his agony diminishes me, and his salvation enlarges me.”2
To those who’ve been spat upon and dismissed as inferior, we honor your suffering. Still, hating for a lifetime- and we all carry a sturdy grudge- is exhausting work, requiring daily self-harm. God is asking us to stop by starting with the hardest thing we’ll ever do. But in crossing over, you may end up saving two people.
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1 Shane Claiborne and Michael Martin, Beating Guns: Hope for People who are Weary of Violence (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2019), 140-142.
2 Martin Luther King, Strength to Love (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2010), 30.