Sermon for The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, August 30, 2026.
Jesus is the Good Samaritan. Today’s gospel reading is the parable of the good Samaritan, and Jesus tells it in answer to a man who was an expert in God’s Law. He wanted to know how to “inherit eternal life” (Lk 10:25). He asked his question to test Jesus, and when our Lord’s answer was in keeping with the Word of God, we’re told he tried to justify himself. The “Christian” didn’t like Jesus’ answer.
This is very similar to what has happened among us recently. The true Word of God was spoken, but some in the congregation don’t want to hear it.
“Nothing you’ve said is wrong, Pastor, it’s just that what you’re saying is disrupting our lives.” It’s not what you want to hear. “It’s not even how you said it, but that you said it publicly.” This is a desire to justify one’s self (Lk 10:29). We all do it, to lesser and greater degrees, each and every day. Not a single one of us can escape the guilt of trying to justify our sinful desires. The Law condemns us all.
And so, we all need to be brought back to the cross of Christ. That’s where our Lord has had compassion on us. That’s where He bound up our wounds (sins), pouring over us the anointing oil of the waters of Baptism pouring into our mouths the wine of His Supper.
Christ’s crucifixion is what the parable of the Good Samaritan is all about. True love of neighbor. Not lip service love. Not affirm everyone wants to hear love. True love. And the true point of the parable is that we don’t love our neighbors. When we see they’re in need, that they’ve been spiritually robbed by false teachers, such as I have shown is the case in the American Evangelical churches in Lovell and Cowley, or that they’ve been left for dead by the evils of yoga or Mormonism, for example… when we see their need, that if they’re not helped they will die the eternal death, do we do anything to help them?
No. Because we don’t love our neighbors. The ones I just mentioned, or the ones who are stripped and beaten by any number of other sinful situations. Instead, our primary concern is to keep the semblance peace. False peace. Temporary and fleeting peace.
And so, what do we do?
We act like the priest and the Levite in Jesus’ parable. We’re good upstanding Christians, after all. We have our reputations to consider. It would be too disruptive to help our deceived neighbors. Our lives would get disrupted. So, we pass by on the other side of the road. We see our Mormon neighbor living by lies that will condemn him to hell for all eternity, but we’d rather maintain our friendship with him than tend to his wounds. We see our family member being led astray by a “cowboy preacher” who in the past 36 years of preaching in the name of Jesus has never been ordained, confirming that Jeremiah 23:21 is a warning that we still need to heed. “I did not send the prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied.” And we just let them lie there where they’re spiritually stripped and beaten every week.
Why don’t we help them? Our Neighbors are in a bad state, in desperate need of help, and yet we justify our desire to do nothing. We don’t help them because we don’t actually “love the Lord [our] God with all [our] heart and with all our soul and with all [our] strength and will all [our] mind, and [because you don’t love] ‘your neighbor as yourself’” (Luke 10:27-28).
If we did love God and love our neighbor, we would live. That’s what Jesus told the Biblical expert who was trying to justify himself. The good, upstanding Christian who wants to hear the Word of God but not do it. You know, Sunday morning Christians.
We don’t help our neighbors for the same reason we can’t help ourselves: We’re sinners. Like our neighbors, we need help. You need Jesus, the Good Samaritan, to come to you and bind up your wounds. You need Him to anoint you with Baptism and to nurture you back to health with the bread and wine that are His Body and Blood of the Eucharist. And this is exactly what He has done for you. He went to the cross to die for you, to care for you, taking your sins upon Himself, so that you wouldn’t need to justify your sinful desires.
Christ has already justified you.
He gave His body to cover your nakedness. To clothe you in His righteousness. He brought you into the inn that is His Church, where He told the innkeeper, your pastor, to take care of you, not with anything of his own, but with the resources Christ Himself supplies. He has covered the cost of tending to your sins. He’s footing the bill, paying for it with His own precious blood. Having brought us here. Having healed us and clothed us with Himself, He has gone, and we’re awaiting His return.
Christian, Christ has shown you mercy. He lived for you and died for you, because unlike us, He truly loves His Father and He truly loves His neighbor. Thanks be to God that He bore the cost for our sins, and for healing us in Baptism and Communion, for thinking more about our well-being than His own, more about our lives than His own. For all of this, Christian, having received all of this love from the Son of God, it’s our joyful duty to respond to His Father—our Father—with thanks and praise, serving and obeying Him (SC, Creed, I). Jesus has made it so that you may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness (SC, Creed, II). Which is why Jesus concludes His parable by saying that having received God’s mercy, “You [are to] go, and do likewise.” (Lk 10:37).
Amen!
Rev. Tyrel Bramwell 
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