Sunday, July 10, 2022
Once again, this coming week, God’s Word keeps us focused, this time on loving our neighbor.
The story of Ruth is touching and inspiring from beginning to end. In our Old Testament Lesson we hear that Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law, was a Jewish woman who had moved to Moab from Israel with her husband during a famine and they wound up settling there. Her two sons grew up and married local girls. Then both her boys and her husband died. Naomi was bereaved and at risk of impoverishment. She decided to head home to Bethlehem and told her two widow/daughters-in-law to go home and find new husbands. But Ruth wouldn’t go. She insisted on following Naomi back to Israel. She sought to cheer up, console and take care of her mother-in-law because she was grateful for having come to know the one true God, the Lord, the God of Israel. The rest of the story—not in our reading—tells how the Lord gave Ruth a wonderful husband and children and how Naomi once again found joy as a grandmother. Through that marriage to Boaz, Ruth would even become an ancestress to both King David and King Jesus. God cares for those who care for others. We love because He first loved us.
In our Epistle Lesson St. Paul speaks of the freeing nature of the Gospel. Because we are free from judgment through faith in Jesus, we are truly free—free not to indulge the sinful nature, but free to love God and live for Him, and free to generously love and serve others.
The famous story of the Good Samaritan serves as our appointed Gospel Lesson. Lawyers love to nail down the details. A young lawyer came to Jesus and wanted to know exactly what he must do to inherit eternal life. He understood all the commandments can be summed up by the word “love”: Love God and love your neighbor. Jesus told him, “Do this, and you will live.” “But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” That’s when Jesus answered by telling the story of the Samaritan who helped a stranger who was by nationality his enemy. Jesus wanted to teach the point that there is no limit to the love God expects us to show both friend and foe alike. This is Jesus’ way of driving home the law, namely that God expects us to be perfect.
But nobody’s perfect except Jesus. He’s our true ‘Good Samaritan.’ He loved us, His natural enemies, and did everything to save us. Now we, to use the lawyers correct word, inherit eternal life. It’s a gift given to us by the only one who could pay for it, Jesus. Now, as a result, we—even though we are sinners—want to and strive to love our neighbor as ourselves as a thank you to Jesus.
Our sermon this week will focus on the Gospel Lesson under the theme: “Love Like the Good Samaritan.”
This Sunday’s Lessons, Pentecost 5, July 10, 2022:
Ruth 1:1–19a
Galatians 5:1, 13–25
Luke 10:25–37