Meditation on Luke 10:25-37
First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY
Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford
July 13, 2025
Something caught my eye in the grass after filling my birdfeeders the other day. Something moved—gave a little jump but didn’t go far.
I assumed it would be one of the bold chipmunks or squirrels, anxious to be the first creature to reach the sunflower and safflower seeds or, the favorite in all seasons—the block of suet hanging from a shepherd’s crook.
And then I saw a swarm of green flies around the creature, and I thought, “Uh oh. Something’s wrong.”
I cautiously drew closer to a lump of black feathers belonging to a baby bird. I saw the red on its belly and realized that it was a robin, too young to leave its nest. I bent down to examine it without touching it and the creature let out a frightened, “Peep! Peep!”
This stirred the memory of a baby robin that dropped to my lawn last year after it was stolen from a nest by a grackle, who was mobbed by other birds. I tried and failed to protect that robin in the grass. It was eventually retaken by the grackle who returned for its prey.
The thought of a baby bird dying on my watch on Thursday, in my yard, just didn’t sit right with me. Human beings are not natural friends of wild birds, even those of us who try to be kind to them. They are wise to be frightened and shy around us. Many more die from injuries by vehicles, pet cats on the loose, and through the loss of habitat due to human activity, including pesticides and fertilizers poisoning their water and food sources, rather than being gobbled up by hungry birds.
I pulled on rubber gloves and, when I gently picked up the bird to lay it in a box, it immediately opened wide its beak in hunger, hoping that I was its parent. I drove with the box next to me on the front seat and the creature peep peeping all the way to Sweetbriar Nature Center.
The rehabber met me at the front desk, quickly examined the robin and said that it looked like it had been pecked. It was missing an eye and had fly eggs under its wings. “I will take it,” she said, and I murmured my thanks as she walked behind a door where I couldn’t follow.
I told the receptionist, then, how our church is a big supporter of the center through our programs, donations, and volunteers. I did a little name dropping. “Peg Holthusen is one of our members,” I said. “She volunteered at Sweetbriar for years.” Marie Smith, the executive director, always remembers her in the letters that we receive thanking us for our donations.
I reached in my wallet and left some money with my business card. It wasn’t a lot. It was all the cash I had with me. I thought about all the supplies that Sweetbriar uses for every injured wild animal’s care. That donation wasn’t going to go far.
But the receptionist smiled widely and told me that I could call to check on the baby bird in a few days. I left the center praying that the bird would live.
An expert in the law approaches Jesus in our gospel lesson in Luke today, seeking affirmation for the life that he is already leading. I heard once that a lawyer never asks a question in court that he doesn’t already know the answer to and has prepared her or his response. Do we have experts in the law here? Is that correct?
When the expert asks Jesus the kind of life that he should live as a faithful Jew, so that he may earn his reward and “inherit eternal life,” he already knows the answer is to follow the 10 Commandments, the sum of which is his answer to Jesus’s question, “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.” This answer comes right out of the Torah: Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18.
But when the law expert asks, “And who is my neighbor?” he is ready for Jesus to say that the neighbor he is commanded to love lives in his community—they share the same faith, history, culture, food, and language, common ancestry, way of life, and geography.
The story Jesus tells refutes this assumption and challenges us to see beyond the circle of people we know and love and feel comfortable with. It challenges us to become more aware of the moments when we fail to love a neighbor, near or far, and ask the Holy Spirit for help.
Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish New Testament scholar, provides wisdom for us who seek to live faithfully today. “The Good Samaritan has been appropriated by politicians and economists, hospitals and cafes,”[1] she says. “Its meaning has been reduced and romanticized to ‘if somebody is having a problem on the side of the road, stop and help.’ But parables are never simple,” and should be taken in their historical context.
“The New Testament’s treatment of lawyers usually is not complimentary… and this instance is no different. The lawyer addresses Jesus as ‘teacher,’ which does not fully encompass who Jesus’ followers believed he was. Not only does the lawyer already know the answer to his question, Levine said, but his question is a bad one. In addition, the lawyer is out to tempt Jesus — the verbs for ‘test’ and ‘tempt’ are the same. In essence, Levine said, the lawyer is in the same role as Satan was when he tempted Jesus in the desert.”[2]
Jesus says the lawyer’s reply to his question is correct. “Do this and you will live,” he says.
“But the lawyer wanted a single action to ensure him eternal life, and Jesus has given him a lifetime of work to do… When the lawyer asks, “Who is my neighbor?” what he is really asking is, “Who might I hate?”
In Jesus’s time, people walking the roads were vulnerable to being set upon not by Robin Hood like figures, but by “violent gang members.” The real question, Levine says, is “what do we do with a person who’s dying on the side of the road?”[3] The priest and Levite fail to love their neighbor and break the command of the Jewish Mishnah, which says that “even those in the cleanest, most ritually pure states are obligated to stop and attend to the corpse,” if, in fact, the victim was already dead.
“To go from priest to Levite to the fellow who stops, who was a Samaritan, is like going from Larry to Mo to Osama bin Laden,” Levine says. In Jesus’ historical context, Samaritans are the enemy. “It’s unthinkable,” she says, that there would be a so-called good or compassionate Samaritan.
The love of God and neighbor is a sort of compassion or “love that doesn’t require thought. It bypasses the intellect, and it gets us in the gut…You don’t even have to think about it. Your body, your visceral system, forces you to act.”
At the end of the parable, Jesus asks the man who was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers. The lawyer can’t bring himself to say the word “Samaritan,” so he says, “The one who showed him mercy.” This same Jesus tells his followers in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew that we are called to love our enemies and pray for them.
Every day, we have opportunities to show grace and mercy—to friends and family and our church family, to people we meet or pass by in our communities, schools, or places of work. The Lord gives us opportunities to witness to God’s love through our acts of compassion.
I have seen many occasions when our flock is moved to grace and mercy for neighbors near and far. I know that some of you have provided transportation for people to come church or go to the grocery store, or doctor’s appointments. I have watched you share food that you have provided or prepared; eat with someone who is lonely or grieving; bring food for the food pantry; give cookies to a homebound member; or called, visited or written to someone who is sick or injured. I know that you, in your own lives and ministries, are doing even more quietly to help your neighbors in need.
As Amy-Jill says, we have a lifetime of work to do!
And every day, we are blessed by the grace and mercy of others. We are blessed so much that we might take these blessings for granted. My prayer is that our eyes are opened to these unexpected acts of mercy and compassion that we receive so that we may be moved to gratitude to God and neighbor.
And may our hearts and minds be open to opportunities when we may show grace and mercy to others in need, and reveal the mercy of the Lord who says in His Word,
“Do this and you will live.”
Let us pray.
Creator God, open our eyes to your love, mercy, and compassion in this world so that we may be moved to gratitude daily and give you thanks. O Lord, the world is full of creatures sometimes difficult to love, including our own selves, at times. Help us, dear Lord, by the Holy Spirit, to show mercy and compassion to neighbors near and far so that we may truly live and bear witness to the love of your Son, in whose name we pray. Amen.
[1] Emily Perper, “Levine: Good Samaritan parable teaches compassion for the enemy,”
The Chautauquan Daily, https://chqdaily.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/levine-good-samaritan-parable-teaches-compassion-for-the-enemy/
[2] Perper, “Levine,” https://chqdaily.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/levine-good-samaritan-parable-teaches-compassion-for-the-enemy/.
Sharing God's Love and Grace 