15th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 2025c
Old Testament Lesson – Amos 7:7-17
New Testament Lesson – Luke 10:25-37
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Be Kind
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INTRODUCTION: So on the first Wednesday of this month, Bethany and I, with two other adults, piled into the church bus with 6 senior highs to go eat at a Palestinian restaurant in Nashville. The restaurant, by the way, is called Jerusalem Reebar and the food is fantastic!
Since I was driving, I fired up Google maps and began faithfully following the directions from that monotone voice coming from my phone. (In a quarter mile, turn right.) Taking I-24 into Nashville, when the voice prompted me to get off at Harding Place Road, I immediately started to get a little squeamish.
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You see, if you know Nashville well, then you also know that the Harding Place exit off of I-24 is a favorite spot for the unhoused to seek assistance. Yep, more often than not, there is usually at least one unhoused person waiting to catch people at the light looking for donations. Throw into the mix I am one of those people who uses a debit card to pay for everything, and I thought to myself before we even got off at the exit, This is not going to look good!
And sure enough, as we got to the end of the off ramp, there was an unhoused man seeking donations. In hindsight, I guess I could have quickly asked Bethany to give me whatever cash she had on her, but I was anxious enough about the scene that was unfolding, I didn’t think about doing that.
So there I sat, in a big bus with First Presbyterian Church of Tullahoma plastered all over it, at what felt like the longest light in the history of the world, politely trying to act like I hadn’t actually seen the unhoused man as he walked down the line of cars hoping a few windows would be rolled down to offer him some money.
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And of course, as fate would have it, there were several cars, which by the way didn’t have First Presbyterian Church of Tullahoma slapped all over them, that did, indeed, crank their windows down to offer the man some money. This is a bad look, I kept thinking to myself, This is a bad look!
Needless to say, when the light finally turned green and I was able to shamefully drive away, Jesus’ famous parable about that good Samaritan came rushing into my mind. And then early this last week, when learning the very same parable was one of the prescribed texts for today, well, it was hard not to wonder if someone wasn’t trying to tell me something!
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So, let’s see if there is, indeed, something to learn from the passage.
ONE: Jesus, who has slowly been making his way through Samaria while headed for Jerusalem and that cross, finds himself somewhere along the way being quizzed by a lawyer.
First wondering what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus asks the lawyer what is written in the law. “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,” says the lawyer.
But after Jesus congratulates the lawyer for answering correctly, the poor fellow can’t leave well enough alone: “And who is my neighbor?” wonders the lawyer. And with that, Jesus responds with perhaps his most famous story of all.
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And it’s not like it takes a biblical scholar proficient in Greek surrounded by a pile of dusty books to tell us the meaning of the story. For the story can be boiled down to two words, I think: “Be kind,” the story tells us, “Be kind.”
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And by kindness, Jesus doesn’t mean some sort of amorphous, nebulous, schmaltzy, detached view that thinks fondly of other humans from a safe distance. Kindness isn’t simply having positive feelings about other people. It’s also concrete, tangible actions which seek the welfare of others.
Or as the great American-British author Henry James once famously put it, “Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”
Kindness, then, is kind of like love, it seems to me. Yes, love is an emotion, to be sure. But love is also deeds and actions, right? And so it goes with kindness.
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TWO: But now here’s the thing. While the ethical import of the story is surely important, there is also an aspect of the tale that often gets overlooked. (This is one of those times when a biblical scholar surrounded by dusty old books written in funny languages actually is helpful!)
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Because, you see, according to a lot of scholars, when Jesus first told the story, his Jewish audience would have been shocked to hear that the hero was of all things a Samaritan. Samaritans and Jews, after all, were hardly on friendly terms. Think the Hatfields and McCoys only worse.
Samaritans, for a variety of reasons, were considered to be inferior people racially, culturally, morally, and religiously by the Jewish people. So the idea of a “good Samaritan” would have been an oxymoron to Jesus’ audience.
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After learning that first the priest and then the Levite passed by the beaten and robbed man, Jesus’ audience would have been anticipating the next person in the story to be a good Jewish layman, who would then save the day. Instead, they get a Samaritan.
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Rather than assume the man in the ditch was saved, after hearing a Samaritan had arrived on the scene, the assumption would have been that the beaten man, if not dead already, was about to be. For everyone knew Samaritans couldn’t be trusted to do the right thing.
So imagine the gaping mouths and the shocked expressions when people learn the Samaritan is actually the hero. It’s the Samaritan, of all people, who actually remembers that one basic rule of life - that we’ve got to be kind.
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Kenneth Bailey, a Presbyterian minister who spent his career working in the middle east, claims to fully understand the risk the Samaritan is taking, we need to think about the American west in the 1850s. Imagine, suggests Bailey, a Native American stumbling across a cowboy with two arrows in his back face down in a prairie.
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But instead of leaving him for dead, the Native American puts the cowboy on his horse and hauls him to Dodge City where he pays a saloon operator to tend to the fallen cowboy - paying enough for a week's lodging and meals, to boot.
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Well, just imagine how the good citizens of Dodge City might have reacted to such a scene. I can easily picture a crusty old cowboy with his hand on the gun in his holster saying to the Native American, “Son, I believe you must be lost. I suggest you get unlost right quick.”
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Well, that’s the kind of gamble the Samaritan was taking when carrying the beaten man the rest of the way to Jericho. And surely he got a similar response from the people of Jericho: “Boy, I think you got off at the wrong bus stop. I suggest you make haste to the nearest terminal.”
And yet, there’s the Samaritan, of all people, being kind.
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THREE: Of course, these days the idea that we should be kind can sound almost archaic and antiquated, right?
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After all, being unkind actually seems to be the preferred way to behave for many in our world right now. In 2021, the contemporary Christian artist Josh Wilson released a song called Revolutionary. The lyrics of the song are a frank assessment, I think, of the current state of our world. Or as the song begins:
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Maybe you're not like me
Maybe we don't agree
Maybe that doesn't mean
We gotta be enemies
Maybe we just get brave
Take a big leap of faith
Call a truce so me and you
Can find a better way
To which he then actually asks:
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Why does kindness seem revolutionary?
When did we let hate get so ordinary?
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Well, good question, right? For we seem to live in a world that is growing increasingly unkind, so unkind, actually being kind is almost a revolutionary act.
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Back in 1998 a bunch of non-profit organizations got together from all over the world to establish World Kindness Day, which has been held every November 13th in nations around the globe ever since.
Well, given the state of the world, we have to wonder if maybe World Kindness Day shouldn’t be expanded to a week, or maybe a month, or how about just a whole year?
FOUR: Steven Petrow, a writer who lives in North Carolina, recently wrote an article about waiting in a long line one morning at his favorite bakery.
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Finally getting to the counter, he told the cashier he wanted the last scone remaining in the glass case. “Hey,” he heard the man directly behind him bellow, “that’s my scone! I’ve been waiting in line for 20 minutes!”
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And interestingly, even though Petrow could have said something like, “Sorry, but I’m the one next in line.” Or maybe even something snarky like, “Well, you know…the early bird gets the worm.” He didn’t.
Instead, in a moment of inspiration he claims to have replied, “Well, would you like half?”
The man behind him suddenly went speechless. And then in his own moment of inspiration he replied, “Why don’t I buy another pastry and we can share both.”
And with that they sat down as total strangers at a table in the bakery shop to share their pastries and chat. Of course, it turns out they had very little in common when it came to things like politics, careers, age, or even marital status. But they were still able to connect because of a couple simple acts of kindness. Or as Petrow writes in his article: “I felt happy, and, frankly, wanted more of that feeling.”
I don't know about you all, but I too would like to have more of that feeling myself.
CONCLUSION: Well, sometimes Jesus’ instruction for our lives is actually kind of simple to figure out, I think.
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Yes, Jesus is known to pass out some advice for the living that can seem odd at times. Just read chapters 5 through 7 from Matthew’s Gospel, which contain the Sermon on the Mount. Talk about some strange counsel!
But then there are times when it all seems pretty cut and dry, like with his story about that Good Samaritan. “Just be kind,” Jesus seems to be saying, “Just be kind.”
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Especially in a time when some people seem eager and quite happy to do the just opposite.
Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.