Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Have Mercy” Luke 10:25-37

It was a Sunday morning and Rev. Stephen Farris was late. He was filling in at a small church for a few months, and it was an icy day, not unlike today. By the time he got his car defrosted, he knew he was cutting it close. Wouldn’t you know that he hit every red light along the way? At the biggest intersection, while he sat anxiously waiting for the light to change, an older man, leaning on a cane, started to slowly cross the road in front of him. As the crosswalk light turned amber and then red, the older man tried to hurry. His cane slipped on a patch of ice and he fell, heavily.

In the split second that it took Pastor Stephen to put the car in park and reach for the door to get out, many thoughts flashed through his mind. He thought about the time it would take to help the man, call the rescue squad, and ensure he got to safety. He thought about the disappointment of his parishioners, who would sit in the pews waiting and wondering. Another thought crossed his mind. He could just drive away. He would make it to church in time to start the service, and he could trust that someone with more time would come along to ensure that the fallen man got the help he needed.

The story of the Good Samaritan is so familiar to us that most of us know it by heart. It all starts with a provocative question, “Who is my neighbor?” As Jesus tells his story, we can imagine the steep and windy road where the poor man was attacked by robbers and left bloodied, bruised, naked, and nearly lifeless in a ditch. We can see first the priest and then the Levite hurry by, even though they are righteous men who should help. We can see the Samaritan, that hated outsider, stopping for pity’s sake: tending wounds, transporting, lodging, and arranging for further needs. It’s an example story in which the enemy is held up as the neighbor by virtue of his extraordinary mercy, and we are told to go and do likewise.

Mercy, in Hebrew hesed, is a fundamental virtue of Judaism. Our Israelite ancestors believed that they were called to be merciful because God is merciful. God had chosen Abraham and Sarah to be a blessed covenant people, even though they were old, childless, and as good as dead. Later, in God’s mercy, God had heard the cries of the Hebrew people in bondage to Pharaoh and sent Moses with ten plagues to soften Pharaoh’s hard heart and set the people free. God had brought Israel through forty years in the wilderness to a land flowing with milk and honey. God’s mercy was a freely given gift to a people in special need.

The prophets called the people of Israel to see that mercy, hesed, wasn’t just for some. A close translation of Micah 6:8 calls us to “seek justice, love mercy (hesed), and walk humbly” with God. Mercy involves active concern for the wellbeing of all the people of God, not just those known personally to us. In fact, God spoke through the prophets that the people of Israel had a particular duty to show mercy to the most vulnerable people of the community: the widow, orphan, and resident alien (Jer. 22:3, Zech. 7:9-10).

The early church was founded upon this ancestral virtue of mercy, hesed. From its earliest days, the church saw Jesus as the ultimate revelation of God’s mercy. Jesus was God’s shocking and merciful choice to be flesh, live among us, and suffer for us. Jesus, of course, served as both role model and instructor in the way of mercy. Whether feeding crowds or reaching out a helping hand to heal the leper, Jesus showed his followers what mercy looks like. He also left them with a few roadmaps, like the story of the Good Samaritan, to show us the way.

Jesus’ friends followed his example, responding to God’s incredible mercy by sharing their own acts of mercy. The first office of the church—deacon—was created by the apostles in Jerusalem to address the needs of widows. The first churchwide offering, collected by the Apostle Paul from the Gentile churches in Greece, was received to help victims of famine in Jerusalem.

In his book, The Rise of Christianity, sociologist Rodney Stark argues that Christianity was transformed from a marginalized sect of Judaism to the leading religion of the Roman Empire in only three centuries because Christians practiced mercy. The apostles and those who would follow them, tended to souls and to bodies. They shared the core practices of mercy that Jesus taught in his Parable of the Sheep and Goats. They fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, tended the sick, visited prisoners, and welcomed strangers. As they did so, they trusted that they were serving Jesus, who promised to come to them in the least of these, his little brothers and sisters. In the year 1281, the Archbishop of Canterbury John Pecham called for a council of the bishops of the church to gather at Lambeth. There they established the “Seven Acts of Mercy,” which codified those merciful practices and the burial of the dead as the core mission of Christians.

This ruling on the Seven Acts of Mercy led to a flowering of medieval artwork as churches and patrons commissioned paintings, stained glass, and murals that would teach their parishioners what mercy looked like. In 1504 in the Church of St. Lawrence in Amsterdam, the Master of Alkmaar painted a series of seven panels to show the seven acts. In the panel entitled “Feeding the Hungry,” a woman holds a basket of freshly baked bread. Her husband stands with his back to a crowd of hungry neighbors and distributes the bread, passing it without prejudice to the unseen hands that wait behind him. A disabled man with twisted legs, who scoots along on his bottom, reaches up for a loaf. A poor woman with a naked child waits her turn. A blind man in a tattered cloak with a little person tied to his shoulders holds out a hand in hopes of bread. As you look at the panel, it gives you a little shock to see Jesus, standing at the back of the crowd. He is dressed like a medieval peasant. He isn’t looking at the bread. He looks directly at you.

Acts of mercy continue to define vibrant churches like this one. We feed the hungry through the food pantry and Jubilee Garden. We give drink to the thirsty with shallow wells for sub-Saharan Africa. We clothe the naked and meet pressing needs with the help of our Deacons Fund. We tend the sick with home-cooked meals, caring calls, prayers, cards, and visits. We have visited prisoners over the years at federal, state, and county penitentiaries. We make it a practice of welcoming all—and we affirm that each week in worship. The example of the Good Samaritan and the Seven Acts of Mercy continue to inspire us to reach out in love in response to God’s great love for us and the needs of our neighbors.

Perhaps the most pressing questions of our time is “Who is my neighbor?” Is the refugee my neighbor? How about the undocumented migrant? Is the single Mom in section-8 housing my neighbor? How about the suburban soccer Mom? Is the disabled child, who takes up classroom time and needs a special aid hired at tax payer expense, my neighbor? Are LGBTQ people my neighbor? How about the white supremacist? The Christian nationalist? The gang banger? The bleeding-heart Yankee liberal? The Q-anon conspiracy theorist? Do we draw lines, and if so, where? Believe me, there are powers and principalities who are drawing the lines even as I speak. They will be glad to tell you who is not your neighbor, who is beyond the pale of mercy.

In Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan, the wounded man receives critically needed help from a traditional enemy. The wounded man receives the help even though, if not in such distress, he might hate, reject, and despise the Samaritan who helped him. The Samaritan proves that he is a neighbor by choosing to cross centuries-old lines of hatred and prejudice in order to be merciful to someone who needs it. When John Calvin wrote about this story, he said that it forces us to admit “that our neighbor is the man most foreign to us, for God has bound all men [and women] together for mutual aid.” Perhaps we can only truly appreciate this holy bond that makes neighbors of us all when we are the one who is lying in the ditch, weeping as we are passed by.

I’d like to return to Pastor Stephen at the icy intersection. As he put his car in park and reached for the door, his mind was flooded with possibilities. Stay and help the fallen man, even if he would be late for his responsibilities at church. Turn his head and go, let it be someone else’s problem. No one would be the wiser. Before he could pull the handle to open the door, the fallen man got up. He looked around and gave Pastor Stephen a dirty look for witnessing his icy tumble. He limped away, leaning on his cane. Pastor Stephen put the car in drive and continued to church. He made it there just in time for the service. He still wonders what he would have done if the situation had taken a different turn.

May we go forth to be merciful as God is merciful.

Resources

Douglas Otati. “Theological Perspective on Luke 10:25-37” in Feasting on the Gospels: Luke, vol. 1. Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.

Mary Miller Brueggemann. “Pastoral Perspective on Luke 10:25-37” in Feasting on the Gospels: Luke, vol. 1. Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.

Stephen J. Farris. “Homiletical Perspective on Luke 10:25-37” in Feasting on the Gospels: Luke, vol. 1. Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.

Katherine Sakenfeld. “Love (OT)” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 4, K-N. Doubleday, 1992.

Philip H. Towner. “Mercy” in Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology. Baker Books, 1996.

Steven Croft. “The Seven Acts of Mercy” in Letters from the Bishop, The Diocese of Oxford, Feb. 27, 2016.

Rodney Stark. The Rise of Christianity. Harper Collins, 1997.

Luke 10:25-37

²⁵ An expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” ²⁶ He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” ²⁷ 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 neighbor as yourself.” ²⁸ And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

²⁹ But wanting to vindicate himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” ³⁰ Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and took off, leaving him half dead. ³¹ Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. ³² So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. ³³ But a Samaritan while traveling came upon him, and when he saw him he was moved with compassion. ³⁴ He went to him and bandaged his wounds, treating them with oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. ³⁵ 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.’ ³⁶ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” ³⁷ He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Master of Alkmaar. Seven Works of Mercy, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57901 [retrieved March 30, 2025]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Master_of_Alkmaar_-_The_Seven_Works_of_Mercy_(detail)_-_WGA14368.jpg.