Tuesday, July 28, 2026
The Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis explains how Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29–37) to illustrate God’s desire that no one be left alone in their hour of need.
Rabbi Jesus is talking to a religious leader—a lawyer—about what it means to be faithful. Together, they review the Jewish scriptures: The way to live right is to love God with everything you have and love your neighbor as yourself. Looking for a loophole, the lawyer wants to know who qualifies as a neighbor. Jesus answers by telling a story about a man who was robbed, beaten, and left for dead by a marauding gang. A priest and another religious man walked by and, seeing the man on the ground, they did nothing…. But a Samaritan—a mixed-race person considered in ancient times to be an impure enemy of the Jewish people—did not cross the street. Instead, he tended to the wounded man….
In using this story to answer his companion’s question about the definition of neighbor, Rabbi Jesus was getting to what he considered to be the essential laws—love God with all you have and love your neighbor as yourself…. If you want to know what love looks like, Rabbi Jesus is saying, here it is: Love crosses borders and boundaries; it makes new cultural rules; it cares for the stranger. Love turns strangers into friends. [1]
The religious scholar Jonathon Walton considers how Martin Luther King Jr. interpreted the Good Samaritan through a lens of love:
For Jesus, demonstrating our love for God by seeking the good of others—an ethic known as agape love—sums up the law and the teachings of the Hebrew prophets…. King held neither a romantic nor a friendly conception of love but rather an understanding of love expressed in intentional acts of care and compassion, which is at the core of the Hebrew Bible and the heart of the gospel message. King looked to the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) in his iconic “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” address.
Of course, the parable itself is about agape love, empathy, and identifying your neighbor in the unlikeliest of places…. Jesus subverts conventional wisdom and places empathy in the eyes of the one who would otherwise be considered a foreigner. Jesus wanted to make the point that the Samaritan could see as God sees. The Samaritan saw the victim through the lenses of love….
King’s retelling of this story models the ethical design of the parable. He demonstrates both an ethic of love and empathetic care without reducing one to the other. This is to say, we have the capacity and obligation to do what is right and to show concern for our neighbor whether we feel like it or not. When we strengthen our capacity to identify with others, and thus empathize with them, it is always easier to do right by them. Love and empathy, together, lead to justice.
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The God Who Seeks Us: You’re the Pearl!
A Homily for the Church of the Magdelen
| BRADLEY JERSAK. JUL 26 |
Lectionary Readings
Psalm 119:129-136
1 Kings 3:5-12
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33; 44-52
A quiet thread runs through our readings today—
like a river burrowing through soil,
like yeast working through dough,
like a mustard seed pushing upward toward the sun.
It is the thread of holy desire:
of God forming a people in
how to see, how to long, how to choose.
And at the heart of that thread we see Christ,
the Wisdom of God,
the Word made flesh,
the Treasure hidden in the field.
SOLOMON — SEEING
We begin with Solomon, the child king,
uncertain, nervous, overwhelmed?
Humbly aware of his insufficiency.
God visits him in a dream and says,
“Ask what I should give you.”
That question reveals hearts.
Solomon could have asked for wealth, fame, power.
He may have pondered victory over his rivals,
or the glory of building Yahweh’s first temple.
Instead, he asks for “a hearing heart”—
a heart tuned to the frequency of God’s wisdom.
Solomon knows—
without God’s own way of seeing,
even good intentions become crooked,
power corrupts, riches rust, and gold turns to idols,
temptations he would stumble over later,
and that harem… well.
But he does start well.
He asks for the gift that makes all other gifts meaningful:
the ability to see reality as God sees it.
This is where the golden thread begins:
with the wisdom of a hearing heart.
He didn’t seek to be clever or wily;
his desire was to be aligned with God.
A heart learning to want what God wants.
PSALM 119 — DESIRING
The Psalter takes us deeper into that interior landscape.
The psalmist delights in God’s decrees—
He sees God’s Law as the Lamp
that illumines our path through a fraught world.
“The unfolding of your words gives understanding.”
The psalmist has begun to breathe in the beauty of God’s way,
so that obedience became the natural rhythm of that love.
He is discovering that the commands of God are not burdens.
They are invitations—open doors into life.
His heart is being shaped, slowly, lovingly, by the Word of the Lord.
Solomon shows us the human longing for wisdom.
The psalmist shows us the joy of receiving it.
ROMANS 8 — BEING FORMED
Paul in Romans 8 shows us the divine generosity that sustains it.
“We do not know how to pray as we ought,” Paul says.
No failure there; it is an honest confession of our human condition.
Of the limits of our faith.
Of how life is really, really hard.
But the Spirit meets us precisely there—
in our unknowing,
our weakness,
our sighs too deep for words.
The Holy Spirit intercedes within us,
reshaping our desires from the inside,
aligning our prayers with the heart of Christ.
And then Paul lifts our eyes to the horizon of hope:
“All things work together for good.”
“If God is for us, who can be against us.”
“Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
This is wisdom as belonging.
God does not simply teach us what to desire;
he binds us to himself so that our choosing is sustained by grace.
We are held.
We are carried.
We are kept.
CHRIST — THE TREASURE HIMSELF
But most of all,
the parables of our Lord Jesus shimmer with the poetry of the Kingdom.
The mustard seed—small enough to slip through your fingers—
becomes a tree where birds and squirrels
and children (cheery or weary) children find shelter.
The yeast disappears into the dough, yet everything rises.
The treasure hidden in a field, awaiting a buyer.
The pearl of great price, awaiting a seeker.
The net that gathers all kinds, even us.
These parables are about recognition.
In every one of them, something is recognized as precious.
A mustard seed. A measure of yeast.
A treasure buried in a field. A pearl beyond price.
Once its worth is seen, everything changes.
Everything else becomes negotiable.
The merchant or the farmer or the investor
who sacrifices everything
to buy the field
has seen the treasure,
knows its value.
Having recognized its worth, he sells everything
without reluctance or reservation.
This investment brings us joy.
This is freedom.
And here is the heart of the matter:
Christ is the treasure.
Christ is the wisdom.
Christ is the kingdom of God … in person.
He is the mustard seed planted in the soil of our humanity.
He is the yeast working through the dough of our community.
He is the pearl of great price, radiant with the beauty of God.
He is the net that gathers us—all of us—in mercy.
Solomon asked for wisdom;
Christ is the wisdom of God.
The psalmist delighted in the Word;
Christ is the Word made flesh.
The Spirit intercedes for us;
Christ prays for us, day and night, at the right hand of his Father.
This is why, for us,
Christ is more than an ancient prophet, sage, or rabbi
purveying wisdom and revelation, performing powerful miracles.
No. We confess that Jesus IS the Christ
IS the wisdom and the revelation and the power of God.
IS the Love of God from whom nothing can separate us.
IS the kingdom and the power and the glory of God
with us now and forever and ever!
THE DEEPER MYSTERY — YOU ARE THE PEARL
Perhaps the deepest mystery is this:
we may read these parables,
imagining ourselves selling everything
to buy the field
to find the Treasure
to dig up the pearl
But what if the kingdom of God is like this:
That Christ is the merchant,
His riches were the glory of heaven.
The field is this world.
And you are the treasure.
You are the pearl.
You are his heart’s desire.
And he sold everything, sacrificed everything,
he emptied himself to come down
to draw you from the earth
to clean you up
for the display of his splendor.
The mystery is a both/and:
Lover and beloved.
He is our treasure, and we are his.
We seek him, and he sought us.
And now we’ve found one another.
EUCHARIST — RECEIVING
Today, Christ comes to us as simply as a mustard seed,
as quietly as yeast hidden in dough,
as humbly as bread broken
and wine poured out.
Many who come to the Table see only bread and wine.
But faith is the gift of recognizing the Treasure hidden in plain sight.
We come to this table with no claim
to being wise enough,
holy enough,
or spiritual enough.
We come because Christ first desired us.
So we come.
We come with our questions and our weakness.
We come with our joys and our griefs.
We come with our longing for a listening heart.
We come and receive Christ,
the Wisdom of God,
the Word made flesh,
the Pearl of great price,
the Treasure hidden in the field.
As we receive Christ,
may our hearts recognize the Kingdom
already among us.
Amen.
