Vicar Karla Leitzman Sermon for 6/22/25 World Refugee Sunday
Some of my most beloved and cherished childhood memories include the people who lived closest to me. When I was a child, the girls who lived next door to me and I loved to pull raspberries off of the bush and pop them in our mouths, and we also were known to rip asparagus out of the ground and eat them immediately, dirt and all. The neighbor on the other side was also a pretty constant fixture in my life growing up. When I got my first bee sting as a little kid, it was even she who heard me screaming first and right away ran over to help calm some of my hysteria.
I grew up in central Minnesota outside of several tiny towns, but unlike most of the other kids I went to school with who lived much farther out of town than I did and had no immediate neighbors, we lived on a road with several houses around us. When I first heard this gospel reading as a child, my first thoughts were of those on each side of my parents, and as is often the case, there was much held in common between mine and their families. All three houses were inhabited by white middle class occupants. Generally, we looked the same, held similar ish political views and all had some form of advanced education beyond a high school diploma.
It is generally pretty easy to associate the word neighbor with those who are like us, those who are near to us, those who think like us, look like us, vote like us, have similar life experiences to us. But, as this parable points out, those are not the only people we are called to see as our neighbor.
Biblical societies would have been highly tribal and tight knit. You kept close to your immediate communities, and there would have been hostility between communities. For example, in our gospel lesson of today, the Jews of Judah and Galilee would have been pitted deeply and significantly against the Samaritans. The Samaritans identified as being Jewish, but whose center of worship was not the temple or Jerusalem. To the Judean and Galilean Jews, Samaritans heretics and were the lowest of the low. They were thought to be the antithesis to temple centrality and deeply held values and beliefs of the time. In contrast, the priest and Levite, who walk right on by, would have been considered to be the epitome of good and righteous Jews.
Despite its prevalence, this parable can actually be one that makes preachers tense up a little bit. It is often thought to be a very straightforward story. I could truly come up here and reiterate, love the lord your god with all your heart, mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. The end. And don’t get me wrong, that would be a worthy sermon. Any sermon that shares the lesson that Jesus calls us to see everyone as our neighbor and to show mercy to those who need it is, indeed, a most excellent message. A notable thing is this is not a story of a Samaritan being the one needing help. Jesus could have told a story of a Judean or Galilean religious leader stopping to help the wounded Samaritan. The religious leaders of the time would have likely heard that story and recognized some shock value because they would know how subversive it would be for a Jew to stop and help a Samaritan, but the Jewish person in the story would get to be the protagonist and the hero.
Instead, Jesus shifts it all to emphasize this so-called enemy, the one who is thought to be unclean and unworthy, as the one who stops to help, thereby humanizing him. There is much to be found here about what it means to be in a community together. Where the religious leaders ignore the man who is in need of care, it is his supposed enemy who shows him mercy, and kindness, and nearness. And in doing so, the listener sees him as more than the worst things that are perceived about him. So, what makes the Good Samaritan good, so good in fact that this parable transcends so far beyond Christianity and religious teachings? I think one of the most significant reasons this Samaritan is thought to be good because he takes the time to really see and to discern the needs of the man in the ditch. And, he gets in the ditch with him.
This parable shows us that the kingdom of God is one that brings us closer to one another despite our differences. It was the Samaritan who sees the man in pain, who joins him in the ditch and discerns what he needs. In a world where we are given countless opportunities to be distant from one another, to keep others at arms’ length, this gospel reminds us that we are called for nearness with one another and that God comes near to us. Underneath the perceived simplicity of this story, is the crux of our faith and our shared calling to use the freedom that we have in Christ’s death and resurrection to freely and abundantly go out to love and serve the neighbor.
One of the reasons I really love the Gospel of Luke and it is because of stories and parables like the Good Samaritan. See, in Luke over and over again we are reminded that Jesus has a heart for the outcast, the stranger, the lowly, and that we are all called to share that heart. It is in the gospel of Luke that we hear the Magnificat and Mary’s song about the powerful being brought down and the lowly raised up. It is here, too, where we see that God chooses to come to a world that is fraught with pain and discord, coming to Earth in human form as a Palestinian outcast in a far removed town in a land brutally and forcefully occupied by Rome. In Luke, we get a picture of not only that Jesus is with refugees, but Jesus is a refugee himself as his family is forced to flee to Egypt for fear for their safety and wellbeing. The gospel of Luke, over and over again reminds us to look out for those who are overlooked, and therefore, the Samaritan, the outcast, the lowly, the vilified, is the one who stops and notices. God came to the mess, to the nearness of the proverbial ditch, and calls us to do the same. Throughout the bible, in both the old and new testaments, we are reminded to uplift the stranger, the alien. Because the world too often falls short in doing this, the countercultural messages of the gospel call us to repair the cracks and margins where the outsider is too often relegated.
At Global Refuge, the new public facing name of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, we have been working for eighty five years to welcome all of our global neighbors who long for new beginnings. We began in 1939 as a group of American Lutherans worked to help Lutherans in Eastern Europe flee to the United States amidst an increasingly precarious setting at the start of World War II. We were there in the 50s as thousands of Cuban refugees arrived in Miami and beyond, and we were called upon yet again after the fall of Saigon in the mid 70s to resettle thousands of families from South East Asia. I would wager that there are those of you here this morning who were part of congregations that sponsored families of boat people and that some of you are likely even still in contact with those families today. We know together that meaningful welcome is more than what a government or agency can provide. We need partners, like all of you, to amplify and share Christ’s beautiful welcome and accompaniment.
Today, the neighbors we welcome together come from all over the world. We are no longer responding to one crisis at a time but overlapping crises, requiring us to be nimble and culturally responsive in ways I am not sure those first partners in the late 30s could have even comprehended. And, we remain rooted in our Lutheran call to accompany and to walk with all who look for new beginnings, seeing all of these people as our neighbors. Our job is not to wave a magic wand and try to fix these challenging situations, but we are called to walk with newcomers, to get in the ditch, to help them learn a new language, to help them complete their behind the wheel hours so they can get a drivers’ license, to help them navigate the unfamiliarity of an American grocery store. We are called to accompany and to be with them in the long welcome, not just an immediate quick fix.
There’s a quote from pastor and activist Sandra Van Opsta; that it fitting: “God’s people are knocking on our doors, asking us to let them help us be the church God always intended us to be…we must pay attention to immigrants- not for their conversion, but for ours.” Where it can be so tempting to cling to our tribal tendencies, like those early biblical societies, to see those the most like us as our neighbors, God always intended for us to be more than that. The things that separate us from one another and create harm and pain amongst us, are not of God.
I will close with a sweet story from one of my good friends who lives in North Minneapolis. Her new neighbors next door to her are an Afghan family who have recently been resettled. They are a fairly large family, two parents and six children. They came over to introduce themselves to my friend and they were very confused and alarmed to discover that she is in her mid thirties and lives alone in her house with her dog, which is exactly how she likes it. In their cultural context, it is strange that a woman of her age would live alone, unmarried and without children. So, most evenings, they bring her dinner. They bring plates of food and sometimes invite her to join them at their house. My friend could view her neighbors as the outsiders, those who need help, and instead, they are the ones going out of their way to accompany her and make her feel welcome and appreciated. They are sharing what they have with her, living out a call of sharing abundance and goodness. Being the body of Christ means many things, including identifying when we are the ones who are called to share resources and help and when it is time to receive them.
This morning and this week, I invite us all to go and do likewise like Jesus tells us in the gospel. When we are the ones in the ditch to have the courage to ask someone to come down into it with us. When we are the ones with capacity to help, to be open to the ditches we can climb down into, especially when it makes us nervous or uncomfortable. To go and show mercy and to be humble enough to both share and receive God’s love and abundance with one another. Whether we are showing care to our neighbors who very alike to us, or our neighbors who could not be more different than us, may we remember they are all dearly loved children of God. Because love thy neighbor doesn’t only mean the neighbors who are most like us, but all of God’s people.
Let us pray,
O God of Community, we thank you for all of the ways you draw near to us. Through your Holy spirit, move within and through us to honor that nearness by drawing close to one another. Where there is discord and division, work through us to work for reconciliation. Where there is pain, help us to hold that pain as our own and to accompany all who struggle. When we see those who are different from us, may we see your face reflected in your dearly beloved children. Be with all who flee their homes and all that is familiar in search of newness and opportunities. Make our arms strong so we may open them in welcome.
We ask all of this through your son, the one who fulfilled your promise of goodness and mercy, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.