Neighbors?

Received! Rooted! Replanted!

5th Sunday after Pentecost

7.13.2025

[Texts]

Deuteronomy 30:9-14 The Lord will take delight in your fruitfulness

Psalm 25:1-10 Show me your ways, O Lord, and teach me your paths. (Ps. 25:4)

Colossians 1:1-14 The gospel is growing, bearing fruit in the whole world, and the role of Epaphras

Luke 10:25-37 The parable of the merciful Samaritan

My dear church, the peace of our Lord Jesus be with you.

[And also with you.]

As I prepared this sermon, I imagined you responding, “And also with you.” That simple exchange is more than tradition. It is a sacred rhythm of blessing we’ve practiced for decades. In those few words, we affirm that the peace of Jesus dwells in each of us and is shared among us. It's the very peace we reflected on together last Sunday, "Ordered! Shipped! Delivered! Received!".

Today, as we continue in Luke 10, we explore how being rooted in that peace shapes the way we engage the question: Who is my neighbor?

Understanding Our Neighbors

Geographically, Samaria lies beside Judea. Jews and Samaritans were literal neighbors. Theologically, they were like cousins or perhaps in-laws, connected by sacred lineage. Historically and socially, that closeness led to comparison and competition, stirred by the tensions woven into each of their identities and beliefs.

Luke tells us about a Jewish lawyer, perhaps connected to the scribes or Pharisees. He asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus pointed him to the law, so the lawyer recited the law like a diligent student:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

Then he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

I’ve been wondering, if he was well regarded as a lawyer, how could he not know the answer? Luke tells us he asked the question in order to justify himself. Or perhaps he simply wanted to hear how Jesus would respond. So Jesus told a story. A story set along the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, deep within Jewish territory. Two familiar figures appear: a priest and a Levite, both deeply familiar with the law, not only its rituals but its ethical teachings as well.

The Essence of Neighborliness

In this parable, the neighbor isn’t defined by proximity or tribe. A neighbor is someone we meet along the road: wounded, vulnerable, in need of mercy. A neighbor is someone who longs to be restored to fullness of life, or whose healing leads them back into the wholeness God intended.

Last week, I saw a pastor interviewed on the news. His story shed light on the deeper meaning of what it means to be a neighbor.

Pastor Kenneth was carjacked at gunpoint while visiting Baltimore on June 29, right outside a restaurant. A teenager in a ski mask approached his car, pointed a gun, and demanded he get out. At first, Pastor Kenneth fought back, but when he realized the assailant was a youth, he tried to show mercy. “I’m a pastor,” he said. “I’m not going to press charges.” Still, the teen fled with his car.

What disturbed him most wasn’t just the violence. It was the lack of remorse, even after compassion was offered. Pastor Kenneth shared his concern: “If they'll pistol whip a pastor, you know what they'll do to my members.”

The car was recovered within hours, and three suspects, ages 15, 16, and 19, were arrested. Yet to Pastor Kenneth, the teens were still his neighbors. In fact, he saw them as part of a sacred calling from God, rooted in his passion for youth ministry.

The Hidden Struggles of Our Neighbors

Our neighbors aren’t only those who are visibly hurting, like the wounded man in Luke 10. They also include those whose souls have been violated and left unattended: those whose past wounds have shaped them into perpetrators, like the robber in the story who disappears nameless and unaccounted for.

The hurt we’re called to respond to isn’t always confined to the present moment. What about the pain that lingers over time, quietly reshaping how people like the robber live in the world, in painful and destructive ways? What can we learn from such hidden and buried suffering?

Seattle, like many major cities, becomes a quiet refuge for campers when the sun goes down. While most have locked their doors, drawn their curtains, and settled in for the night, others remain on the sidewalks, bent awkwardly, slowed or slumped from overdose, barely moving. Some exchange fragments of conversation that seem meaningful only to them. Some sit silently in their tents, simply trying to survive until morning.

They are our neighbors too, the unseen, the overlooked, and the often demonized. When society stops seeing them as people created in the image of God, something vital is lost. God intended every life to flourish, yet that vision rarely appears in the pictures we take, the stories we tell, or even in the story we have for today in Luke 10.

The Consequences of Neglect

This world didn’t become what it is overnight. It’s the result of decades of dismissing the transformative power of the gospel.

Last month, my husband gifted me a super cute orchid in a lovely little pot. After two weeks, I noticed its leaves turning yellow and limp. The roots were wrapped in oversaturated soil. The only way to save it was to change the medium and replant it.

As I read Colossians and its imagery of gardening and fruitfulness, I thought of the roots of those campers wrapped in the wrong medium. They haven’t grown or flourished as God intended. Their pain has been overlooked and justified for far too long.

Of course, we can’t undo the past or fix those roots outright. But we can begin now, if we treat their pain as a warning and their lives as sacred. Jesus speaks of radical mercy in Luke 6:32–36, asking us to love beyond reciprocity:

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you?”

To love without expecting return; that is the gospel’s radical call. It’s a mercy that mirrors God’s generosity toward the undeserving and the unreachable.

The Future We Create

No one is born a drug addict, robber, or thief.

So what will the world look like 30, 50, or even 80 years from now if we keep neglecting the transformative power of the gospel that is essential to spiritual root health?

This story invites us to see our neighbors not only in their brokenness but in their ongoing breaking. To love our neighbors is to accept a holy invitation: to glimpse God’s love through the eyes of those who have been forgotten, feared, or dismissed as “bad people” who made bad choices.

We cannot afford to wait another 30, 50, or 80 years for change. The breaking is already happening. May we be bold enough to love those who can’t love us back. May we refuse the comfort of ‘sameness’ and embrace the messy mercy of neighborliness. For the gospel is not just for those who are well-rooted to hear but for those whose soil has never known peace.

Like my orchid, some leaves have grown weary and yellowed. May the church not wait until they are beyond hope to share the transformative power of the gospel.

The medium can be changed one at a time, just as peace is brought to one family at a time, as Jesus commanded. The roots can be tended, just as lives are nurtured through active participation in a faith community. And through the transformative power of the gospel, even what was fading can bloom again.

As St. Paul wrote to the Colossians, “we are rooted and built up in Christ, strengthened in the faith as we were taught” (Colossians 2:7). The life we nurture in others may remain hidden for years—thirty, fifty, even eighty—like treasure buried deep in the soil. But in Christ, even what’s unseen is being renewed.

When we receive Jesus’ peace, we become an extension of God’s kingdom. When we remain rooted, we anchor hope in the gospel. And when we replant what was fading, we participate in the Spirit’s work of restoration.

Received. Rooted. Replanted. This is the invitation extended to all our neighbors: expected and unexpected, named and unnamed, broken and breaking. And we, the church, trust that what is planted in mercy will flourish at their pace, just as God intends.

AMEN.