A note from Pastor regarding his sermon:

This week’s Gospel reading is the familiar story of the Good Samaritan. It’s a story that is so well-known – and beloved – that many people even outside of the Christian faith know the story and at least one of the lessons it teaches: That we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, and that every person we encounter in life counts as our neighbor.

But there are often many layers of meaning in Jesus’ parables, and important things that can be missed when one only looks for the most immediate, most obvious, or most natural interpretation of the parables that Jesus teaches. Sometimes, these additional layers can be missed because we do not think carefully enough about which part of a parable is meant to represent us as faithful Christians. That certainly seems to be the case in the story of the Good Samaritan, and we might be surprised about all that God’s Word has to teach us in this story when we think carefully about this question: Where are you on the road to Jericho?