The Innkeepers

A sermon for the 5th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 10
July 13, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: Luke 10:25-37

Cindy and Charlie were innkeepers. They didn’t know it, but they were. Friends from church, they were in my life as a child, from around age 7 when my single mother started going back to school until around age 12 when they moved to Oklahoma. But for those years they were innkeepers to my brother and me. We spent as much time with them–maybe more time–than we did at our own home while mom was in nursing school. When mom couldn’t be there, Cindy stepped in. She picked us up from school, made us breakfast burritos and dinners galore, let us help make banana pudding. She was the one who told me it was high time to start wearing deodorant. And because mom hadn’t met the man I call my dad yet, Charlie stepped in more than once, helping me make my pinewood derby car for Cub Scouts, or going to the dad-and-son events at school. He taught me how to operate a lawn mower, and how to rake leaves. That’s what the innkeepers do–they step into lives for a time. They bring their ministries of healing to the wounded, providing love and support. They may not know it, but they do the work of Jesus. That was Cindy and Charlie.

Today we read the familiar Parable of the Prodigal Son. Jesus tells it in response to a question about who we have to love as our neighbor. In this provocative story, Jesus takes a common enemy, someone everyone around him could have agreed to hate, and makes him good, the one who shows mercy, the neighbor to the wounded man on the road. The Samaritan, who would have been all too acquainted with insults and hatred, is the hero, and not the religious elite or the folks with everything figured out. Jesus tells the lawyer–and us–to go and do likewise. To be a neighbor to all, even when it is dangerous or inconvenient or whatever. To show mercy to all, even when we would rather pass by on the other side of the road. 

Whenever I read a parable, I ask two questions. First, where is Jesus–is there a good stand-in for him? Second, where am I–with whom can I identify in the story? If we apply those two questions to this parable, there are many answers. You’ve heard those sermons before. Don’t be like the priest or the Levite–be like the Good Samaritan. Or maybe you’ve experienced being beaten in the ditch of life, and the Good Samaritan has come to your aid. That’s the fun thing with parables like this one: We can turn it upside down, shake it around, and consider it from many angles. I’m going to try to give us another way to look at this familiar story today. 

Where is Jesus? Jesus is the Good Samaritan. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Jesus would identify with the one who is hated and reviled, ignored and cast out. Even today, when we want to see Jesus, we should look to the margins, to the vulnerable, to those with no helper or friend, to the persecuted and the oppressed. Never to the comfortable and powerful. It is Jesus who comes down the road of life and picks humankind up off the side of the road. When no one else would come to our aid, it was Jesus, the Son of God, who came among us, leaving heavenly splendor to take the form of a servant, and being found in human form, humbled himself. He picks us up, pours oil and wine into our wounds, starts us on the journey toward healing. And he has done this at an incredible cost: death on the cross. His stripes are for our healing; his death is for our life. 

Where are we? We can be any number of places in the parable. We can be the priest and the Levite who ignore the suffering around us. I hope we’re not. We can be–I would even say we all are–the person hurting in the ditch in need of a savior. If we don’t think that’s us, perhaps we are being called to a spiritual inventory, an accounting. But we are also that secondary character: the innkeeper. We, together as the Church, the Body of Christ, are the innkeepers in the world. Jesus, the Good Samaritan, has brought us the suffering ones in the world. He has put them in our laps. He has told us to take care of them. He has given us two denarii worth of gifts to make that happen. Whatever else we need he will make right at the end of the age when he comes again. 

The innkeepers continue the healing work of the Good Samaritan in the world. They are, in a sense, extensions of his presence and ministry. They continue to pour oil and wine; they continue to comfort and care; they continue to love and support and show grace. And they have been told not to worry about the cost, but to care for all who come to their doorstep. 

I don’t know how Charlie and Cindy started. Maybe my mother asked them if they could watch us once. My brother and their son were fast friends, so it was a good match. So we went again, and again, and again. We kept on showing up on their doorstep, and they kept bringing us in. They weren’t wealthy, and two extra mouths to feed must have been a burden. My mother couldn’t pay them. But they just kept on, because the Good Samaritan had commissioned them to continue his work in my family’s life. 

The Good Samaritan commissions us. We do his work as the homeless come to our church door. We do his work as children with no other home of worship come into our day school. We do his work in our families and among our friends. We do his work in our communities at places like the Food Bank, or CCMC, or the Resource Center, or Jackson House, or Samaritan Ministries. As the innkeepers, we do his work, and we don’t worry too much about the tab, because Jesus will make it right at the end of the age. We just seek to be faithful to him, to his kingdom, to his commission.

Sometimes we can think our work doesn’t matter. What is one small sandwich cut diagonally, or letting a child layer the vanilla wafers in the bowl for banana pudding, or a bedtime prayer as kids miss their mother, or a hug from a father figure to a child without one? These are small things–innkeeper things. What are these small things in the grand scheme of it all? These small actions don’t put your name on monuments or in the annals of history. But they do write them on the hearts of the wounded searching for the unconditional love of God. They do write them in heaven.

Fellow innkeepers: The merciful Good Samaritan has given us a charge, as individuals and as a church. In everything, be merciful. In everything, be a neighbor. In everything, show the love of God. In everything. And don’t worry about the cost. Jesus will make it right when he comes again in glory.