Worship on the Lord’s Day
10:00 am 13 July 2025
Online & Onsite (Mixed Presence) Gathering as a Worshipping Community
Led by Lynn Vaughan Music director: Binu Kapadia
Vocalist: Loretta Lee Elder: Jane de Caen Reader: Courtney Vaughan
We gather to worship God
Music prelude
Greeting
L: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
P: and also with you.
Lighting of the Christ candle
Welcome and announcements
Silent preparation for worship
Call to Worship
L: Turn to God with confidence and expectation.
P: In you, O God, we place our trust.
L: Ask God to show us the road to follow.
P: Lead us, O God, in your truth and teach us your way.
L: Seek hope in the Lord, who is our salvation.
P: All day long, we will put our hope in the God who saves us. We will worship God in faith, hope and trust.
Opening praise: Love the Lord your God
Prayers of adoration and confession
God of all beginnings, we come today with praise on our lips and in our hearts. We stand in awe of all you have created: the vast expanse of a starry night and the tiny beauty of a raindrop together reflect your glory.
You have blessed creation with life and meaning. Your love makes a beginning in us, too, O God, in each new life born into the world, in each new friendship formed, in each kindling attraction, in each kind word and act for neighbour or stranger. We praise you, O God, for your love moving in the world around us, lived out in Jesus and by the Spirit at work in us. All praise and glory belong to you, Source, Saviour, and Spirit of Love, one God, now and always.
God of loving kindness, Jesus called us to love you above all else, and our neighbour as ourselves. Yet we often fail to act in loving ways. We are distracted by our own needs, and forgetful of the needs of others. We let differences divide us and excuse ourselves from reaching out. Forgive us, O God. Create in us new hearts, so we can live and love faithfully in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Response: I waited, I waited on you, Lord
Assurance of God’s love
Friends, hear and believe the good news of the Gospel. In Jesus Christ, God’s generous love reaches out to embrace us. In Christ, we are forgiven and set free to begin again. Let us give thanks for God’s mercy and be at peace with God, with ourselves and each other.
Musical Offering: Precious Lord, take my hand and Great is Thy faithfulness Warren Garbutt & Jack Brown (Piano & Clarinet)
We listen for the voice of God
Children’s time
Response: Jesus loves me
Story: Enactment of the Parable of the Good Samaritan using plush toys
Prayer
The Lord’s Prayer (535)
Transition music
Song: Make me a channel of your peace ((740)
Today’s Message
Scripture reading: Colossians 1:1-14 & Luke 10: 25-37
Response: Thy word is a lamp unto my feet
Message: Who is my neighbour?
The parable of the Good Samaritan is such a familiar story, isn’t it? We all know it so well. We have acted it out in youth groups, and we have taught it, or heard it taught, at various stages throughout our lives. It’s a story that seems to have a very simple meaning – that we should love our neighbour, no matter who that is. We should love all people, even those who are different from us, and even those that we don’t like very much. Of course, that is true, and that is ONE meaning of this story.
But the truth is also that this is a sneaky story, as many of Jesus’ parables are. It has layers of meaning. Which is why we still read it, and talk about it, and preach about it. So today, I want to look at some of the layers of meaning in this particular parable. And I want to start with a question that many people have had about this story – If it is told to teach us to love all people, EVEN Samaritans, then why is the person lying in the ditch not the Samaritan? Why is the person helping the one in the ditch the Samaritan?
By telling the story in this way, Jesus is not directly answering the lawyer’s question about who is our neighbour. He is, but he isn’t. Because clearly, this story is about more than loving our neighbour, even if our neighbour is a Samaritan. So, let’s look at this story again today, and ponder some other things that Jesus is trying to teach us.
What Must I Do to Inherit Eternal Life?
The story begins with a lawyer standing up to test Jesus. Now, remember that a lawyer in biblical times was an expert in religious teaching, not in civil law. So, this religious expert asks Jesus a question about religion; the big question about religion, you might say: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Now, that’s not the only purpose of religion, but it is certainly one of the main ones. This life here on earth is so short. What comes next? And how do we get there?
But the way that the lawyer asks this question suggests that he believes that eternal life is his for the taking. He believes that there is something he can do to get eternal life; otherwise, he wouldn’t ask what it is that he must do. So, this question is one that most good Presbyterians would never even consider asking! What must we do?! There is nothing that we can do! There is only what God can do, and what God has done in Jesus Christ. This lawyer, by his very question, reveals a belief that eternal life is all about what we do, and not what God does. Jesus lets that go, for the moment. But we will come back to that.
Who Is My Neighbour?
Now, though, comes the question from the religious expert that directly leads to the Parable of the Good Samaritan. This lawyer knows that what he must do is to love the Lord, AND to love his neighbour. But to justify himself, he asks Jesus a follow-up question: “Who is my neighbour?” Or, to put it another way, “Who must I love?” If I am to love my neighbour, who is that? Who must I love? And who do I not have to love? Who is my neighbour, and who is not? And this is the question which Jesus answers with his story.
The story of a man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, a very dangerous journey in that time. He is robbed and left for dead and, by chance, a priest and then a Levite passed by, but they both ignored this poor man. Both of them are religious experts, and they did nothing. And then, a Samaritan passed by. It is important to remember that Samaritans and Jews did not get along, and their argument was primarily a religious one. They disagreed over holy sites, among other things. And a Samaritan is the last person that a Jew would expect help from, or vice versa. But, this Samaritan not only helps the person left for dead, but he goes above and beyond what might have been expected. They proved to be a good neighbour to this man in desperate need.
Again, this story has an obvious meaning, which is that our neighbour is anyone in need. And, we should love them no matter who they are, no matter the risk, and no matter how uncomfortable it makes us. We should even love our neighbour regardless of whether we think that person deserves our help. Those are all layers of meaning in this story.
Who Is the Lawyer in This Story? Who Are We?
But today, I want us to think about one other meaning, which reveals itself to us when we look at the story from the point of view of the religious expert, the lawyer asking the question. Who exactly is he in this story of the Good Samaritan? Who does Jesus want him to identify with? Who does Jesus want us to identify with? The priest or the Levite? The Samaritan? Or the man laying half dead in the ditch?
There is a Lutheran pastor and seminary professor, Mark Allen Powell, who shares an interesting story about teaching this parable. He is a professor at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Ohio. He points out that whenever he teaches this parable, the students there invariably identify with the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan. They feel challenged by this parable to be a neighbour to those in need, to learn from this Good Samaritan, and to do likewise. Okay.
But Dr. Powell said that he was surprised, when he taught this same parable at a Lutheran seminary in Africa, to discover that the people there did not identify with the priest, the Levite, or the Good Samaritan. They identified, instead, with the man who was beaten and robbed and left for dead on the side of the road. And the way that they understand this parable is that when we need help, we don’t always get to choose who helps us. We don’t get to choose our neighbour. This man on the side of the road was forced to receive help from the Samaritan, because the priest and the Levite ignored him. When we are desperate enough, we don’t worry about what our neighbour looks like. We are just grateful to be helped. Who is my neighbour? Maybe it is whoever is willing to help us. That can be a hard lesson for us Canadians, of course. We don’t like to think that we need help. We like to think that we are the helper, not the helpless.
So, who is the lawyer in this story? And who are we? Perhaps we are the one walking along who is called to help someone in need. But sometimes, we are the person in the ditch, left for dead. So, imagine for a moment being that person. And a priest comes along. Oh, thank you, Lord! But he passes by. And so does the Levite. And then, finally, a Samaritan comes along. Now, if you’re the man in the ditch, this is the worst possible person to help you. You might prefer to die in the ditch rather than be helped by this man. But you don’t have a choice. You’re half-dead, and there’s no avoiding it. This enemy of yours is moved with pity, and bandages your wounds, and puts you on his own animal and brings you to an inn. And this brings me to the question I began this message with: Why isn’t the person lying helpless in the ditch the Samaritan?
Who Is Jesus in this Story?
And to think about that, instead of looking at who the lawyer is in this story, or who we are in this story: think about who Jesus is in this story. If Jesus is anyone in this story, isn’t he the Good Samaritan? He’s not the priest or the Levite, who did nothing – but he’s the one who actually helps the man left for dead. He’s the one who risks his life doing so. Who becomes unclean doing so. And who doesn’t care, because it is the right thing to do. Jesus, when you think about it, is most like the Good Samaritan in this story.
So, let’s circle back to the question that started this whole conversation between Jesus and the lawyer: the question before the question of who is my neighbour – the question about how to inherit eternal life. To a religious expert who thinks that he knows what to do to obtain eternal life, Jesus tells the story of a man who can do absolutely nothing to save himself. A man lying in a ditch who is completely helpless. He can’t do anything to save himself. In fact, he ends up relying not on a priest or a Levite, but on an outsider, a Samaritan, to save him. He never would have accepted this offer of help if he thought that he could do something to save himself. He had to be completely desperate in order to accept the help of a Samaritan.
So, what will it take for this religious expert to realize that there is nothing that he can do to save himself, to earn eternal life? What will it take for him to realize that priests and Levites do not offer us eternal life, nor does obeying God’s law? Religion does not offer us eternal life. Religion cannot save us. Only Jesus, the outsider from Nazareth, can do that. Only Jesus can save that religious expert, or can save us, from the ditch in which we find ourselves.
Closing
I love this story, not because it is so familiar, but because it is so sneaky. I can imagine that lawyer walking away, thinking about this story, and what it means to love his neighbour. Feeling challenged to expand his notion of who his neighbour is. Feeling challenged to love without regard to the risk, or to who it is that needs his help. But then, sometime later, seeing the deeper meaning in this story. Realizing that he is not just the priest or the Levite or the Samaritan. But he is also the person in the ditch.
And so are we. All of us here today are that person in the ditch. Captive to sin. Helpless. Dying. In need of mercy. And Jesus is the one who alone can help us. This story turns out to be as much about being open to God’s mercy, as it is about helping a neighbour in need. And so, that makes it a very Presbyterian story. A story about the grace and mercy of our loving God, and about all the ways that we are called to extend that love to others. But before we can extend it, we need to receive it, and accept it, from the neighbour who stops to help us. And thanks be to God that our neighbour is none other than Jesus himself. Amen.
(Based on a sermon written by the Rev. James Laurence, First Lutheran Church of Albemarle, NC – used with permission)
Song: O for a world where everyone (730)
We respond to serve God: Our time of giving
Reflection on giving: God sent us Jesus Christ so that we would know God’s great generosity and compassion for us. May the gifts we offer God bear witness to the saving power of this extravagant love in our lives.
God of the Samaritan’s kindness, we offer our gifts in hope, trusting that you will bless them to bring such kindness to others in Jesus’ name. Make of us ‘good Samaritans’ with the courage to be generous to neighbours and strangers for Christ’s sake. Amen
Prayer of gratitude and for others and ourselves
God of abundant growth, as summer unfolds around us, we give you thanks for warm sunny days, for beauty in our gardens, crops growing in our fields, life swimming in oceans and lakes. Where the abundance of nature is at risk, we pray that your Spirit will work in and through us to restore the air, water and soil for the good of all creation.
God of peace and reconciliation, we thank you for the peace and freedom we enjoy and the many ways our lives are protected in this land. We remember before you those places torn apart by violence and hatred, those people who face discrimination daily, and anyone who feels unsafe this day or any day.
Inspire leaders in every country to lead with wisdom and mercy. Guide them in your ways of peace and justice.
God of creativity and community, we thank you for the many ways the Church can serve you in Jesus’ name.
Thank you for the unique voices that sing your praise and speak your comfort, all the hands that share in acts of service, all the prayers offered quietly for your will to be done. We pray for the Church and its many congregations as we seek to be faithful. Help us work together so that our unity bears witness to the possibilities for unity among diverse peoples everywhere. Amen
Song: What a friend we have in Jesus (746)
Sending out with God’s blessing
Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. And may the grace of our sibling and Saviour Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all, both this day and every day. Amen.
Response: Benediction (as you go)
Music postlude
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