Sermons

Pity, Mercy, and the Good Samaritan

But a Samaritan, while traveling, came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. Amen.

“Reading the parables keeps moving. It never seems like quite the same story.” Those words come from Julia Gatta, an author and seminary professor. And I offer them to you now because, as Dr. Gatta says, parables are like gems that we can pick up and turn and look through. They have different facets depending on how you encounter them at different times in your life. Today, we encounter this parable of the Good Samaritan in a time of fracturing in our city, country, and world, and look for what it has to offer.

This story, the parable of the Good Samaritan, is one of the most famous stories in all of scripture. And even now, in the 21st century, the term “good Samaritan” is often used as a synonym for “good person” or “do-gooder.” In the DC/Maryland/Virginia area, we even have Samaritan Ministries, a direct service provider sponsored by Episcopal churches to provide services for those who need it the most. St. Mark’s is one of the churches that sustains the work of an organization named after this story. There is so much cultural context around the Good Samaritan that we may come to this parable already with a lot of assumptions, but I invite you to hear it anew today. 

The parable comes to us through a lawyer who asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. It’s easy to forget that narrative framing device because it’s not part of the parable itself. But it’s important to know what question Jesus is answering when he speaks about this parable. The lawyer wants to know who is his neighbor. He wants to know who ‘counts’ as someone whom he must love as himself. 

Because of this narrative entry point, it’s easy for us to see ourselves as either the priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan. I know I am most comfortable encountering this story as the one choosing whether to help another person. But what if we each place ourselves in the part of the person who has been beaten and is half dead on the side of the road? This is a story about whom we would choose to help, but it’s also a story about from whom we would receive help.  The Samaritan in the story is a member of a rival sect, someone who is not of the Southern Kingdom of Jews, which is why it is extraordinary that he is the one who stops to help. I wonder what our equivalent would be now? If you were a federal worker left on the side of the road and a DOGE employee came by to help you, would you accept their help? What about an immigrant and an ICE officer? The parable works differently depending who you place at its center.

The two words that struck me when reading the passage are “pity” and “mercy.” Those words make me uncomfortable because they name a power differential that I would really prefer to ignore most of the time. Both words imply a better off person and a worse off person. To have pity on someone else requires that you see their suffering as distinct from your own. I can’t remember the last time I invoked the word pity or pitiful in my day to day conversation, not because I don’t experience those things but because I think I’m maybe not supposed to feel them? It almost seems uncouth to admit to pity, which seems somehow to place a distance between me and another person.

Mercy also is given from a place of privilege to those less fortunate. Nowhere was that more evident than when our bishop, Mariann Edgar Budde, pleaded for the President of the United States to have mercy on the LGBT and immigrant communities at the inaugural prayer service earlier this year. Mercy can only be given from those in a seat of authority, once again admitting to a power difference. Those power differences have a way of separating us from each other.

But I think another important note here is how the text says that the Samaritan comes near and sees the distressed person, not just lays eyes on, but sees them in a deep way. To see someone’s pain, to allow our pain to be seen, these are radical acts of humanity that transcend our divisions. Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative calls this becoming proximate. When we allow ourselves to get close enough to actually see the suffering of another, we cannot help but be moved by it. When we do so, we realize that the other person is not so different than us. And, on the flip side, allowing your pain to be seen is also a brave act of generosity. We need to see each other deeply in this way because we will all be in need of mercy at some time in our lives.

There’s no one in popular culture who I think embodies mercy more than the character of the bishop from the musical Les Miserables, based on the novel by Victor Hugo. Many of you probably know the story, but let me briefly summarize for those who do not. When the main character of the show, Jean Val Jean, is caught having stolen the silver candlesticks from the bishop who offered him a meal and a place to stay, the bishop not only provides him an alibi, but gives him even more silver to help him on his way. I always cry at that part of the show because to me, it embodies the compassion that is absolutely central to Christianity. 

In the lyrics of the show, the bishop sings to Val Jean, that he has bought his soul for God. We see as the show unfolds that this one night changes the trajectory of the main character’s life and he is able to flourish and even help others. And in the parable, we see that the Samaritan doesn’t just provide for the injured person, but also sets them up in an inn, providing for their future. There is a multiplying effect to this goodness when it is put into practice.

I have a sticker on my laptop that depicts the parable of the Good Samaritan and the words on it say “refusing to harden your heart is a radical act.” There are so many forces at play that encourage us to harden our hearts: polarization and propaganda chief among them. To keep our hearts open and soft means they can be broken. But that is the risk we are baptized into. It’s the risk we commit to at the table.

It’s the risk we must take to follow Jesus.