![The steeple of the Memorial Church](/sites/g/files/omnuum7126/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2025-02/160725ChurchCalArt4.jpg?itok=rG9ZvXzh) # Fifth Sunday after Pentecost July 15, 2025 *By the Rev. Craig Kocher* *Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life, University Chaplain,* *Jessie Ball duPont Chair of the Chaplaincy, University of Richmond* *(The following is a transcript of the service audio, July 16, 2025)* ![Rev. Craig Kocher, Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life, University Chaplain, and Jessie Ball duPont Chair of the Chaplaincy, University of Richmond ](/sites/g/files/omnuum7126/files/2025-05/kocher-craig-lg.jpg) I greet you with grace and peace of Jesus Christ, and bring greetings to you from the University of Richmond, where I serve. This is also a modest homecoming for me. I spent the first two years of my life in Lexington, not far from here, while my dad had a first appointment here at Harvard. My parents are here this morning, and so it's special for us to be back in this place that is important to our family. I'm grateful to the Reverend Jones and the Reverend Potts for their invitation. Also, very mindful of the inscription, the memorial inscription on this pulpit of the Reverend Peter Gomes, who served here for so long. Reverend Gomes was a mentor to me early in my ministry, and in the fall of 2011, he accepted an invitation to give a public lecture at the University of Richmond. I believe it was his last public lecture before his death. So I'm grateful for him, grateful for the Reverend Jones, the Reverend Potts, and all those who serve in this place that has been an inspiration to many of us who work in ministries of higher education. Clarence Jordan founded an interracial Christian community in rural Georgia in the days of Jim Crow. He said that Jesus' parables are like a Trojan horse. You think Jesus is simply telling a little morality tale and then just as the listeners believe they know how the story ends, the horse pops open. Jesus drops the mic and everyone looks around in disbelief. Did he just say that? The parable of the Good Samaritan is among the most well-known and loved of Jesus' stories. The parable begins, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers." Stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. The Jerusalem to Jericho road was a dangerous road in ancient times, dropping 3,000 feet over 15 miles through a mountainous, deserted wilderness. Think of an ambush scene out of your favorite Hollywood depiction of the Wild West, and you may be getting to the picture that Jesus is painting here. The story is personal. One man's saga of brutality. But peer into that horse and at the hands of Jesus, this reflection becomes a larger commentary on the human condition. So much of human experience is getting beat up physically, spiritually, emotionally. Left for dead. Ponder for a moment the many places of violent conflict erupting in the world today, and how many people are in the ditch. Ponder for a moment the times when life has beaten you up after having received a test result from the hospital. The face of a termination letter. Bankruptcy court. We're in so many unexpected trials that come our way. Live long enough, and you will find yourself in a ditch you could never have imagined. And you will never forget those warm hands and hearts that helped you stand up again. Harvard Memorial Church · The Rev. Craig Kocher - July 13, 2025 | Sunday Sermon Martin Luther King Jr. preached on this parable in the last sermon he ever gave, the night before being murdered on the balcony of a Memphis hotel in 1968. Speaking to his friend and confidant, Andrew Young, King said this. "Andy, I think the Good Samaritan is a great individual. I, of course, like and respect the Good Samaritan, but I don't want to be a good Samaritan. You see Andy, I'm tired of picking people up along the Jericho Road. I'm tired of seeing people battered and bruised and bloody, injured and jumped on along the Jericho roads of life. This road is dangerous. I don't want to pick anyone else up along the Jericho road. I want to fix the Jericho road. I want to add street lights to the Jericho Road. Make the Jericho road safe passage for everybody." A man was going down the road, Jerusalem to Jericho. Turns out this man, who could be any person and every person since he is given no name, wasn't the only one traveling that day. Now, by chance, a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed on the other side. So likewise, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. Jesus does not offer comment or judgment on the decisions of the Levite and priest. In King's final sermon, he said, "Maybe they were going to a religious gathering. Maybe they were headed to organize the Jericho Road Improvement Association." We all have good reasons for moving on with our lives when faced with the heartache of another. In the 1970s, a study was done at Princeton Seminary. Seminarians were asked to attend a talk on the Good Samaritan. And researchers stage a wounded person in need of help in the pathway to the talk. Turns out, most of the seminarians walked past the hurting person on their way to a talk on the Good Samaritan. I suspect, as I crossed Harvard Square this morning on the way to preach, I'm the Good Samaritan, I did the same. We all do it. Maybe they just do it a little more at Princeton. But another man has business in Jericho as well. Jesus continues His story. A Samaritan, while traveling, came near him, and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. And so, he bandaged his wounds, administered the best medicine he had, and took him to an inn. He practiced what King called in that sermon, dangerous unselfishness. King said he decided not to be compassionate by proxy. Not to be compassionate by proxy. Famed civil rights attorney, Bryan Stevenson, says, "To confront the social challenges of our own day, we have to get up close." We have to be face-to-face, not proxy, but proximity. If the history of the world is the story of people who have been beaten and tossed aside, and if that history includes the stories of people from every time and every place who were afraid, in a hurry, or had other things to do, that same history has shining examples of women and men who chose the pathway of proximity. Who let compassion guide their feet and hands. Who made themselves available to God's mission in the world? People who acted with dangerous unselfishness. However, the Trojan horse of the story is not that the Samaritan chose to be compassionate. Many people are compassionate. Rather, the surprise is that Jesus lifts up the Samaritan as his example to drive home the deeper point. The Samaritan, hated enemies of the Jewish people of the time, were people of a different cultural background, ethnicity, and religious practice. The Samaritan, the example would've scandalized Jesus hearers and the lawyer who asks the question in the first place. "Wait, hold on. You want me to be like the Samaritan?" You see, the Jerusalem to Jericho road is not just a physical boundary; it's a spiritual boundary. It's not just a physical boundary; it's a social boundary. It's not just a physical boundary; it's a cultural boundary. It's not just a physical boundary; it's a political boundary. And Jesus is highlighting that. That loving God and loving our neighbors requires traversing all these boundaries of our lives, literally and metaphorically crossing to the other side. Father Greg Boyle says, "There are not good people and bad people in the kinship of God. There are only broken people in need of healing." Imagine if you will, the ethic of enemy love and reconciliation through all, running through all of Jesus' teachings. Prodding each of us to see the person or group of people that you least expect to be the hero of the story as the icon of the mercy to which Jesus calls us. This is not merely a morality tale of doing good in the world. Jesus is turning the social assumptions of the world upside down and calling for a revolution in the human heart. This past spring break, I took University of Richmond students to Northern Ireland on a pilgrimage to explore a horrific period of time called “the Troubles,” in which some 3,500 people were killed in political and religious violence there between the 1960s and the late 1990s, equivalent to 700,000 people if the same (percentage) were killed in the United States. Our hosts were a former IRA quartermaster and a former British soldier who had been stationed on the streets of Belfast. Two former enemies who wanted to kill each other 30 years ago, now the closest of friends. Helping each other out of a ditch of remorse and despair into the clear light of mercy and redemption. A revolution of the heart. But wait, there's still more to come out of the Trojan horse. Keep peeling back the layers, and more and more teachings emerge. The theologian, Roger Owens, says that if you ever encounter a painting, a classical painting of the Good Samaritan story, here's something you might notice. The Good Samaritan is always in these paintings depicted as Jesus. These artists know a truth, that while Jesus was telling us a story of how we should live, "Go and do likewise.", he was also telling the story of himself, telling the story about how we humans found ourselves by the side of the road, broken and beaten, weary and wounded, alone and afraid. And in Jesus, God walked the road that we walked, and God crossed the road to where we were, and bent down to bind our wounds and to give us life. And yet, this was a trap. Because what we did, is we took him and we stripped him, and we beat him, and we hung him on a cross, and we left him for dead by the side of a crossroads. Jesus, the Good Samaritan became the man in the ditch and he did it for us. That we might be forgiven and healed and transformed. That we might become part of His body, willing to act with proximate mercy. That his mission of compassion, and care, and hope, might be found along every road, throughout this world and across the centuries as it still does today, through each one of us. In the name of the living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. See also:- [ Sermon ](/archive/sermons) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)