Sermon: I Love You - No Ifs Ands Or Buts

Rev. Laura Johnson - May 17, 2026 North Raleigh UMC

The parable of the Good Samaritan reveals a profound truth that transforms how we understand love and community. When a legal expert asked Jesus who his neighbor was, Jesus responded with a story that completely reframed the question. The tale of a Samaritan helping a beaten traveler wasn't just about helping those in need - it was about fundamentally changing how we approach relationships with others.

The revolutionary insight is that neighbor is not a noun but a verb. Instead of treating neighbors as objects we identify and help when convenient, Jesus calls us to live as neighbors to everyone we encounter. The Samaritan didn't stop to calculate whether the injured man deserved help or whether he was required to assist. Love was simply his default mode of interaction with the world, making compassion as natural as breathing.

This parable also reveals Jesus as the ultimate Good Samaritan who came down to rescue us, tended our wounds, and paid the price for our healing. Through the Holy Spirit's transforming work within us, we can move beyond religious checklists and become people whose lives naturally express love to everyone we meet, regardless of who they are or what they've done.

Transcript

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Our second reading today comes again from the Gospel of Luke, this time from the 10th chapter, verses 25 to 37. I invite you to hear now the word of the Lord. A legal expert stood up to test Jesus. Teacher, he said, What must I do to gain eternal life? Jesus replied, What is written in the law? How do you interpret it? He responded, You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said to him, You have answered correctly, do this and you will live. But the legal expert wanted to prove that he was right. So he said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor? Jesus replied, A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. He encountered thieves, who stripped him naked, beat him up, and left him near death. Now it just so happened that a priest was also going down the same road. When he saw the injured man he crossed over to the other side of the road and went on his way. Likewise a Levite came by that spot, saw the injured man, and crossed over to the other side of the road and went on his way. A Samaritan, who was on a journey, came to where the man was. But when he saw him he was moved with compassion. The Samaritan went to him and bandaged his wounds, tending them with oil and wine. Then he placed the wounded man on his own donkey, took him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took two full days worth of wages and gave them to the innkeeper. He said, Take care of him, and when I return I will pay you back for any additional costs. What do you think? Which one of these was a neighbor to the man who encountered thieves? Then the legal expert said, The one who demonstrated mercy toward him. Jesus told him, Go and do likewise. This is the word of God for us, the people of God. Let us pray. O Lord, by the power of your Holy Spirit, open our hearts, our minds, and ears to hear you speaking to us today, that as we explore these holy scriptures, we might meet you in these moments and be transformed by your Holy Spirit. Amen. I think of my early twenties as my days of religious zeal. I was trying to live in such a way that I fulfilled Jesus' commands as completely as possible. I was living in Tallahassee, Florida at the time, attending university at Florida State University, and I was driving a Tallahassee Road one evening, heading to church, actually. And it was a busy road. There were at least four lanes. There might have been six, I can't fully remember, but there were sidewalks lining both sides of the street. And I was cruising down the road, listening to my music, when I saw a woman slowly pushing a shopping cart packed full of what I presumed was everything she owned: clothing, food, bags upon bags were haphazardly piled into the cart. She appeared to be in her 60s. She had a warm hat on her head because it was winter. And what I remember most was that the street was on an incline and she was heading up. The cart looked mighty heavy. My heart constricted as I considered how far she must have to go because there were no homes nearby. The previous evening I had discussed with my friends this parable of the good Samaritan. We talked about how to live this parable out, especially as young women. We had lots of questions. What if we're driving alone at night on a road and a stranger is stopped on the side of the road, their car's broken down? Do we, is it safe for us to stop? Like, do we have to stop and help? These are the kinds of questions we asked, and that's a fair point, but it belied a deeper question. When are we required to care for a stranger and need, and when are we off the hook? And we never arrived at a satisfactory answer. And that was still on my mind as I drove past that woman struggling up the hill with what I assumed were all her earthly possessions, and compassion overcame me. So I switched lanes all the way through traffic. I pulled over to the next street. I parked on the side of the road. I grabbed the blessing bag that I always carried in my car. You know, the one we have one here with socks and water bottles and non-perishable foods that I usually gave to people who asked for help. I took a deep breath and I marched down that hill to meet that woman. It didn't go very well. Spoiler alert. She was kind, but she was extremely confused about what in the world I was doing. I mean, she hadn't asked for any help at all. And here I was approaching her out of the blue, and I kind of knew it as soon as I reached her and I saw her face and I considered what I was doing, but I had committed. So I said, Hi, I saw you struggling up the hill, and I thought you might want some more things. And I held out the bag to her, and she looked at it with amusement, and she graciously accepted it. And I waved an awkward goodbye and I hustled back to my car and wondered why I didn't feel better. Why I didn't feel better doing what I believed Jesus had commanded me to do. I saw a neighbor, I helped her. Why didn't I feel like the good Samaritan? It took me years of spiritual growth to realize what was off about my misadventures with Samaritanship. It wasn't her that was the problem, it was me. It was my general approach to the command to love your neighbor. You see, I was approaching it as a to-do list, something I was required to do to make Jesus happy. And so I started to see my neighbors, especially neighbors who I believed were in need, as objects to dote upon, as objects through which I could win Jesus' approval or admiration, or at least the approval or admiration of my Christian friends. What I've learned in the intervening years is this. In Jesus' dictionary, neighbor is not a noun, it's a verb. Neighbor is not defined as someone in need that you dote upon. Neighbor is a way of life, how you live in love. In Jesus' dictionary, neighbor is not a word to describe someone else. Neighbor is a word to describe your own orientation to everyone else. I treated that unsuspecting woman as an object to fulfill my religious duties because that's what I assumed. The parable was telling me to do. I didn't yet realize I'd missed its main point. Jesus told this parable in response to a question posed by an expert in the biblical law. He was trying to prove that he was smarter than Jesus. And so he asked, What must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus did what he often did with smart Alex. He said, Well, what do you think? And the man said, Love God and love your neighbor. And Jesus says, Yep, I agree. And gave the man an amiable way to end the conversation. But the legal expert was not satisfied because he hadn't bested Jesus yet. So he he uh threw another question Jesus' way. Who is my neighbor? There's a Japanese word that I think Jesus would have used if he spoke Japanese. The word is moo. And it basically means unask the question. Moo is what someone might say when a question is too small for the truth of the answer. Moo is what someone might say when a question misses the point entirely. If someone were to ask me, do you love your older child or your younger child more? I would say moo. Because I disagree entirely with the premise that there's a finite amount of love that I have for my children, so one has to have more and one has to have less. Who is my neighbor? The legal expert asked. And Jesus basically said, moo. Wrong question. He disagreed with the premise entirely because the assumption of the legal expert's question is that neighbor is an object that affords us opportunities to check off our holiness list. Jesus instead wants us to think of neighbor as a verb. It's not about who we're supposed to love, what object we're supposed to seek to put our love upon. Rather, it's about how we love, how we live so that love is our primary mode of action, so that whoever we encounter, love is the default mode by which we interact. So to make this point, Jesus told a parable about a man who was taking a trip from Jericho to, or from Jerusalem to Jericho. And this was about a 17-mile trip alongside a very deep ravine, a treacherous journey. And on this road, this man was attacked by robbers. They stole his possessions, they beat him up, they left him for dead on the edge of the road, or maybe even in the ravine. A priest came by, heading from Jerusalem to Jericho, which meant he'd finished his work. He'd been in Jerusalem for weeks, months, doing his duties, and now he was heading back home to Jericho for his vacation. When he saw the man, he skirted around him and kept going. Now the priest knew the law. Love God and Love Neighbor was the building blocks of all the law. So he knew this, but he saw the man as an object that needed help, and he excused himself from the needs of the object before him. He was off duty. He was on vacation. He'd worked hard for God for weeks and needed some R. Caring for this injured man was not his job, not today. Notice that neighbor was not a verb for the priest. Behaving as a loving neighbor was not his primary orientation to the world. The second person who came by was a Levite. And here's what you need to know about Levites They were the tribe set aside to be the ministers. So every priest had to come from the tribe of Levi. And the rest of the Levites, who were not priests, were still schooled in the biblical laws, were still set apart as teachers and ministers. And so this Levite, he also knew the law. But when he saw the injured man, he also passed on by. This injured man was an object in need, but it wasn't his problem, not today. Again, neighbor was not a verb for the Levite. Behaving as a loving neighbor was not his primary orientation to the world around him. And then the Samaritan came along. Now for the original Jewish hearers, this would have been an unexpected plot twist. The listeners would have expected Jesus to say, and then an ordinary Jewish person came along, but rather Jesus introduced a Samaritan. Samaritans were Jews by heritage, meaning they were descended from Abraham, but for a variety of geopolitical reasons over the centuries, they had become estranged from their Jewish cousins. They lived apart, they worshipped at different places with different customs, they had different theological beliefs, and this estrangement was so severe that violent skirmishes sometimes drove the wedge even further, so that Jews and Samaritans generally despised and mistrusted one another. But the Samaritan, the one whom Jesus' audience would consider theologically backwards and fundamentally untrustworthy. He's the only one who defined the word neighbor as a verb. Like the priest and Levite, he too was on a journey, but unlike them, he was a foreigner on this road. And still he stopped. He got off his donkey, went down to help the man. He tended him with oil and wine, and like a servant would care for his master, he put the man on his donkey and led him into Jericho, where he found him lodging, and paid a hefty sum for his care. And if that wasn't enough, the Samaritan promised to return and pay whatever cost the man incurred. And then, before Jesus' hearers could wrap their head around the idea that a Samaritan would behave so compassionately and generously, Jesus turned the question back on the legal expert. Who was a neighbor to this man? Notice how Jesus never answered the original question, who is my neighbor? Because for Jesus, the question is never, who is my neighbor? As if neighbors are nouns that we can define and objectify and control. Rather, the question is who is a neighbor? Whose life is so animated by the love of God that they live the commandment to love as automatically as breathing? This distinction cannot be overstated. There will be times in your life when you are tempted to ask Jesus if you are required to love that neighbor, and he's going to say, moo. And then he'll turn the question back on you and he'll ask, does living in love come as automatically to you as breathing? That's the bigger question. That's the real question. When I think back to that awkward encounter with the kind lady in Tallahassee, who I definitely insulted by my paternalism, but she didn't treat me poorly for it. I inwardly wince because I was missing the point of Jesus' command altogether. He said, go and do likewise, but that didn't mean go and search out anybody that you deem to be a victim and do good for them, because it'll make you a hero. Rather, Jesus was saying, go and live in such a way that when your path crosses other people, you don't have to think twice. You automatically treat them with love. The woman I approached was not a man lying in the ditch needing care. She wasn't a neighbor who was asking for help. And I can't help but wonder what other neighbors I had passed that day metaphorically leaving them for dead because they didn't fit the box of what I thought a Samaritan needed to care for. What struggling friend might I have overlooked? What classmate at university needed to pick me up and I didn't think it was any of my business? Who else had I looked upon as an object and decided they weren't worthy of my love or my time? You see, the point of this parable isn't necessarily to tell us to go out of our way to help a stranger in need. Rather, it's to challenge us to let love guide our every interaction with everyone we encounter, to let love be the defining verb of our life. Today we're finishing up this sermon series, I Love You But. And throughout these several weeks, we have talked about all the ways that we put asterisks on our command to love, all the ways we qualify who to love. And underlining all of these asterisks is the assumption that neighbor is a noun, that the task of faith is figuring out when we are required to love. But here Jesus is, he teaches us differently. When neighbor is a verb, as it was for Jesus, we automatically treat everyone with love because that's our primary orientation to the world. We don't have to define who is and who isn't a neighbor because neighbor is how we live with everyone we encounter. I think that is one of the main points of this parable. I think the other point that we often miss is that Jesus told parables in order to teach people about Jesus and his kingdom. And this parable is no different. The Samaritan in this story is not just a model for us to imitate. Rather, the Samaritan represents Jesus himself. Think about the pattern here. The Samaritan went down. He got off his donkey into the ravine to fetch the injured man, just like Jesus came down from heaven to earth to rescue us. The Samaritan tended the man with oil and wine, much like the prophetic texts of the Old Testament tell us the Messiah will heal the wounds of the world with metaphorical oil and wine. The Samaritan put the man on his own donkey and behaved as a servant to the injured man, just as Jesus knelt before his disciples and washed their feet, teaching them the holiness of servanthood. The Samaritan paid a vast price to bring the injured man to health, just as Jesus gave up his own life. And the Samaritan promised to return and settle any outstanding issues, and so Jesus promises to one day return to earth and settle all our outstanding problems. You see, when Jesus tells us to go and be like the Samaritan, he's really saying, go and be like him. Today is Ascension Sunday, the day in our church calendar when we remember that 40 days after Jesus' resurrection, he gathered his disciples around him and he gave them final instructions before he ascended into heaven. On Ascension Sunday, we remember that Jesus didn't just disappear from the earth. Rather, Jesus is at the right hand of God the Father, always being our good Samaritan. Unlike the priest and Levite who were off duty and didn't help, Jesus is never off duty. He's always pulling us out of our messes and pains. He's always tending our wounds. He's always bringing us back to life by the power of the Holy Spirit. And when we invite this Holy Spirit into our lives, what that means is the Spirit of Jesus chooses to dwell within us. Think about that for a minute. The Spirit of Jesus chooses to dwell within us and makes us become like Jesus, the ultimate good Samaritan. This transformation isn't something that we do on our own. It's something the Holy Spirit does within us. It's God's gift to us. And when we allow the Holy Spirit to work within us, the Spirit helps us redefine neighbor. It rewrites our internal dictionary so that neighbor is no longer defined as an object, like it was for the legal expert and the priest and the Levite. Rather, the Spirit redefines neighbor as a verb, transforms us into the person whose love is not defined by words, but by actions, one whose life clearly proclaims, I love you, all of you, no ifs, ands, or buts. So with that, let us take a moment and pray for this Holy Spirit to dwell within us to transform us more and more into this reflection of Jesus. I invite you to open up your hands if you are comfortable doing so and let us pray. Oh Lord, we invite your spirit into this place and into our hearts. We thank you that you are our good Samaritan, that you are never off duty, that you are always with us. We ask, Oh Lord, that your spirit would make a home within us and transform us into people who live with love as our defining verb. May love be our primary orientation to how we interact with all. May neighbor not be something we see, but something we We do. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.