Homily 664 – 23 APE
Holy Transfiguration, Ames, Iowa
November 16, 2025
Epistle:  (220) Ephesians 2:4-10 and (131) 1 Corinthians  4:9-16
Gospel:  (53) Luke 10:25-37 and (30) Matthew 9:9-13

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

So this gets tricky.  Christ takes a conversation, and in essence turns it on it’s head.  The question, which never gets answered by Christ, is “who is my neighbor?”

It seems a reasonable question.  Who am I responsible for?  Or, another way of asking, who am I instructed to be responsive to?  Better said, who am I supposed to love.

Christ answers that question with the story which we recount this morning.

Now, I need to take a moment and explain that I have recently finished reading a book written by my friend and fellow diocesan priest, Fr. Silviu Bunta.  Rev. Dr. Silviu Bunta.  Called “The Life of our Fathers”, the book uses this particular periscope to illustrate something extremely important to understanding how to use scripture, how to interpret scripture, in Orthodoxy.  I will be borrowing a lot of what he wrote this morning.

The most important point that Fr. Silviu makes is something like this.  We cannot study scripture.  We cannot use our intellectual faculties alone to derive the meaning of scripture for us.  We have to live it.  We have to experience it.

If we study scripture, we set it outside of our existence as an object.  We objectify scripture – intentionally.  As a result, we miss everything important.

The text itself will, if we experience it, interpret itself, as we live it out.

This is a difficult concept to understand, so let’s dig in here.  The story, the parable, we know.  I won’t rehash it now, since we just heard it proclaimed.  What I will do is comment that the Lord doesn’t offer the ending we expect.

We halfway expect the final conclusion of our Lord to be “the neighbor is the Samaritan.  Be the same.”  And that would not be an inappropriate conclusion, but it is incomplete.  What Christ does is this:  instead of answering the question, He asks another one.

Since He is being tested by the religious lawyer, the canon lawyer we might say, Christ turns the table to test the lawyer.  “Who in the parable is the neighbor?”

Remember – the essence of the question is “who is my neighbor?”  But now, Christ does a little sleight of hand, a little misdirection, and turns the question on its head.  Instead of “who is my neighbor?” Christ asks, “who is a neighbor?”

It’s subtle.  “My neighbor” to “A neighbor”.

Now, this puts the lawyer in a bit of a dilemma.  He doesn’t want to say “the Samaritan” because as a Jew, he believes Samaritans to be worthless.  Heretics, or worse than heretics.  So he says, “the one who was merciful.”

The lawyer can come to this conclusion because he has to place himself in the story.  His thought process looks like this, perhaps.  He knows that the priest and the Levite are the wrong answer, because even though they have excellent reasons, they fail to act.

They have to maintain their purity to serve the greater good, that is, God in the Temple.  They cannot defile themselves with blood and sweat and everything else involved with a man who has experienced a beating.

There is a mini-lesson here as well.  There are times when we should not prioritize our service to God.  There are other places this lesson is expressed, but we won’t get into those now.

So, eliminating the priest and the Levite, we are left with two characters:  the Samaritan and the beaten, injured man.  The lawyer has to make a choice, and there is no way he is choosing to be the Samaritan.  He concludes he must be the man who has been beaten.  He is the one in need.

But then the question is asked – who is the neighbor?  Who behaves in a neighborly manner?

And to that, well, there is only one character left – the Samaritan.  But instead of that answer, which the lawyer cannot bear to express, he utters the words that cause him to fall into this subtle trap – “the one who showed mercy.”

And Christ responds, “Go and do likewise.”

Now this sets up a very, very interesting situation.  The answer to the original question?  Doesn’t matter.  Who is my neighbor?  Doesn’t matter.  Or, maybe better said, the one who shows mercy.  So it isn’t about who we owe mercy toward.

It isn’t about who deserves mercy.

It is about who shows it.  It is about who does it.  Not who talks about it, not who encourages it.  The one who does it.

Brothers and Sisters, we are called to be merciful.  Not out of obligation.  Not because the Golden Rule says that we must love others as we love ourselves.  That isn’t the right way to interpret this.

If we use what we learn here, by participating in this scripture passage, to apply the lesson to the Golden Rule, we get a different interpretation.

The Golden Rule becomes “be merciful to others in the way you want to receive mercy for yourself.”

At the end of the day, we are called to mercy.  Not to criticism.  Not to judgement.  Mercy.  We are called not to say to the beaten man, “well, you shouldn’t have come this way.”  “Your choices led you here.”  Not even “Repent, and go another way.”

We are called to meet the need that we encounter.  To show mercy, as Christ showed mercy, as the Samaritan showed mercy.  And, we are called to meet people where they are.  In the ditch, by the side of the road.  Off the path.

We need to expect to get dirty in the process.  Be made unclean.  Put our reputation at risk.  Give up our resources – our time, our possessions, our comforts and our money even.

All that we might provide Christ to someone in need.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.  Glory to Jesus Christ!