Fifth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 10

Church of the Atonement

The Rev’d Charles Everson

July 13, 2025

It happens all the time in a city like Chicago. You’re walking to the train, waiting for your coffee, heading into church, and someone crosses your path. Maybe it’s a neighbor you don’t speak to, someone asking for help, or someone whose politics make your stomach tighten. Maybe it's someone you’ve decided is just too difficult to engage. And in that moment, your mind begins calculating: What do I owe them?

Are they even my responsibility?

That’s exactly what the lawyer is doing in today’s Gospel. He asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”—but Luke tells us plainly why he asks it: “wanting to justify himself.” It’s not an innocent question. He knows the command: love your neighbor as yourself. But now he wants to know where the line is. How many people am I required to love?

Just how far does this duty extend?

Jesus, as he so often does, answers with a parable. It’s a familiar story. A man is traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, a famously dangerous road, and is attacked by robbers, left beaten and half-dead. A priest comes by, sees him, and crosses the road to avoid him. A Levite does the same. Then comes a Samaritan. The Samaritan, moved with compassion, tends the man’s wounds, puts him on his own animal, brings him to an inn, and pays for his ongoing care. And then Jesus asks: “Who was a neighbor to the man?”

The Samaritan was, which most interpreters take as a surprise choice because the

Jews and Samaritans didn’t exactly like each another. In short, “Even someone from a despised group can be a neighbor.” But as Fr. Andrew McGowan, New Testament scholar, argues, that is too simplistic. In truth, the scandal of the parable lies not in the Samaritan’s difference, but in his nearness. He is what McGowan calls a “proximate other.” Samaritans were not total strangers to the Jews—they were estranged family. Samaritans were the descendants of the northern Israelite tribes, and Jews were the descendants of the southern tribe of Judah that had remained loyal to David’s successors. They worshiped the same God, held to the same Torah, shared a common ancestry, but with bitter disputes over temple locations, history, and legitimacy. Jews and Samaritans were not alien to each other—they were uncomfortably close. It’s the kind of closeness that makes conflict sharper, not softer.

And that makes the parable even more poignant. The Samaritan is not simply an outsider who shows kindness to someone who is not like him. He is someone with whom the wounded man would have had deep, painful tension. That’s the point. The shock isn’t that mercy comes from a stranger, but from someone you know all too well and were conditioned to mistrust.

The priest and the Levite aren’t heartless villains in this story. They might have had good reasons for passing by. Luke says the man was “half-dead”, meaning he might die while being cared for. Touching a corpse, in Jewish law, would have rendered them ritually unclean and unable to serve in the temple. But the text says they were “going down”, traveling away from the Temple, likely after they’ve completed their duties. Their excuse begins to unravel. They are bound more by ritual than by compassion. And in doing so, they fail to fulfill the very law they claim to serve.

And the Samaritan? He isn’t bound by temple purity laws. But he is still an Israelite. He too is shaped by Torah. And what he embodies—compassion, care, practical mercy—is nothing less than what the law of God actually requires. When he sees the wounded man, he “comes near,” and is moved with splagchnizomai (splangkh-NEE-zom-ahee )—a Greek word used elsewhere only for Jesus himself. This is not simple kindness. This is divine mercy.

So who are our proximate others today?

In a city like Chicago, they’re not hard to find. They’re your political opposite. The family member who’s hard to forgive. The neighbor who keeps making noise at 2 a.m. The person in the pew next to you whose theology makes your blood pressure rise. The people we cross the street to avoid—not because they are strangers, but because they are too close for comfort.

I encountered a literal proximate other the other day. Charles Bonilla and I were on our way back from visiting Joaquin, a long-time Atonement parishioner who is sick and in the hospital. As we were walking to the L station downtown, a thin man came up to me and said, “Father, I need help.” I expected his next line to be, “Do you have a few dollars”, but instead, he said, “Would you please buy me a hamburger to eat?” We were in a rush to catch our train, and by default, I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t have any cash” which would have been a decent excuse if he wanted money. The truth is, I couldn’t be bothered to extend our trip back to Edgewater by the 15 minutes it would have taken to walk with this man and charge a $6 hamburger to my credit card.

The next day, I took some time to begin preparing for this sermon and read today’s gospel reading. The memory of that man that I chose not to help flooded my mind, and I instantly remembered how quick I was to excuse myself, how easily I slipped into the logic of the priest and the Levite. And so I went and bought a few fast-food gift cards that I can carry with me in my backpack. I may be tempted to make an excuse next time, but at least I won’t be able to claim convenience as an excuse.

Today’s parable isn’t about a general principle of kindness. It’s about the concrete, disruptive act of seeing someone in need and recognizing them—not as a threat, not as a nuisance, not as a moral test case—but as a neighbor. Someone to whom we owe not only tolerance, but mercy and care.

If we’re honest, this parable is about us—not just as those called to help others, but as the helpless. Every one of us has been that traveler on the side of the road. We’ve been beaten down by life, stripped of our dignity, overlooked, wounded. Sometimes by the world. Sometimes by the church. Sometimes by our own choices. And in that moment, it was Christ who came near. Christ who bandaged our wounds. Christ who carried us when we couldn’t walk. Christ who brought us into the inn and paid the price for our healing—not with money, but with his own body and blood.

This altar is the inn, the place of healing. When we receive Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament into our bodies, we receive the forgiveness of our sins and the strength we need to bring that healing and forgiveness to others. Christ doesn’t welcome us to the altar because we’ve followed all the rules and rituals to the tee, we are here

because we’ve been half-dead and picked up off the road.

So when Jesus says, “Go and do likewise,” he’s not just giving us a moral instruction. He’s inviting us to participate in his mercy. To be the ones who cross the street, who break boundaries, who touch wounds, who take 15 minutes and $6 to buy a guy a hamburger, the ones who spend our time and money and comfort on the healing of someone who may never say thank you. Because that’s what he did for us.

So who is your neighbor? Your neighbor is the one in front of you. Your neighbor is the one who needs mercy—and gives you the chance to be merciful. May we, in Christ’s name, go, and do likewise. Amen.