Scripture: Micah 6:8; James 2:14–17; Luke 10:25–37

A few weeks ago, we began this series on Walking Faithfully by talking about lament. We learned that faithfulness is not pretending everything is fine. Faithfulness is bringing our questions honestly before God. The following week, we reflected on silence—those seasons when prayers seem unanswered and heaven seems distant. We considered the possibility that God’s silence is not the same thing as God’s absence and that waiting and tending go hand in hand. Last week, we spoke about frenzy: the temptation to believe everything depends upon us, and Christ’s invitation to live from trust rather than anxious striving.

If you have been keeping track, this series has already taken us through lament, then silence, then frenzy. At this point you would be forgiven for wondering whether “Walking Faithfully” is secretly a support group. Today we are headed for a ditch on the side of the road. I promise we do not stay there.

Today we come to another difficult question: How do we live faithfully when the world itself seems broken? Not an abstract world. This world. The world in which we wake each morning, love our families, read the news, pay our bills, offer our prayers, and wonder what the future may hold.

We see brokenness in grief and illness, in fractured relationships, and in loneliness that touches lives that appear full from the outside. But we also feel it in the broader life of our nation and our world. Many of us are no longer certain whom to trust or how to separate truth from distortion. We hear different accounts of the same event, each presented with absolute confidence, and we wonder whether truth itself has become something people simply choose according to what they already believe.

Having just completed a book about George Washington and the rescuing of the Constitution in the 1700s, I have learned that political disagreement has always been part of our national life. Far too often, our disagreements move beyond honest debate into suspicion and contempt where whole groups of people are dismissed as foolish, dangerous, immoral, or unworthy of being heard. We no longer listen to each other. I heard someone explain it this way: while once we all used to stand in a room and yell at one another, we now stand in separate rooms hearing how the ones in other rooms are the enemy. That should give us pause. We are a broken world. And that is before we even get to the family group chat.

And there are countless practical cracks in our world. Some work two or three jobs and still wonder whether they will ever afford a home, receive the healthcare they need, or for that matter, the food they need, or ever build financial security. The workforce is changing faster than many can adjust, and we are told that AI will eventually eliminate 70% of the current workforce. I have not yet met the robot willing to substitute teach a middle school English class on a Friday afternoon. Until one shows up, I remain cautiously optimistic about at least one corner of the job market.

We worry about war and shifting alliances, global instability, the strain upon the earth, oil consumption and maintaining fresh water. We worry about the world our children and grandchildren will inherit. Even when our own lives are relatively secure, we sense how fragile that security can be.

And beneath these concerns lies a deeper question: Are we still capable of being a people together? Can we disagree without despising one another? Can truth matter more than winning? Can strength be used to protect the vulnerable rather than simply to preserve itself? Can a nation seek not only what is prosperous and powerful, but what is just, and merciful, and humane? Can we do it, or are we just too broken?

If God is good, why is the world so broken? Oh—there is that “Why?” question again. It is an important question. History can help us understand it. Thoughtful study can help us recognize the forces that shape nations and communities. Wisdom may even help us avoid repeating some of the mistakes that have brought us to this moment.

But there is something that comes before explanation. Anyone who has ever worked in emergency medicine knows there is a time for investigation, and there is a time for triage. There will be reports to write. Questions to answer. Lessons to learn. But while someone is bleeding, the first calling is not explanation. It is mercy.

That is where Jesus takes us. When Jesus tells the story we know as the Good Samaritan, he does not begin with a philosophy of suffering. He tells us: a man has been beaten. Robbed. Left half dead beside the road. He never tells us why the attack happened. He never explains evil. He never solves the mystery of suffering. He asks us to watch what faithful people do next.

A priest sees the man and passes by. A Levite sees him and passes by. A Samaritan comes near, and everything changes. The Samaritan sees. Stops. Kneels. Binds the wounds. Pours on oil and wine. Lifts the man and brings him to shelter. Pays for his care. Compassion is not merely something the Samaritan feels. Compassion is his time. Touch. Risk. Inconvenience. Effort. Generosity. He does not fix the whole world. He does not make violence disappear. He does not make the road permanently safe. He simply refuses to let the brokenness before him have the final word.

I think that may be one of the most important lessons this parable has to teach us. Faithfulness is not measured by whether we can heal everything that is wrong with the world. Faithfulness is measured by whether we are willing to love the person God places before us. We have all played the priest or the Levite once or twice—not on the Jericho road, but in a hallway, when we suddenly remembered something urgent in the opposite direction.

That is the first movement of faithful living. Notice before you try to explain. Compassion begins with seeing. Seeing the lonely neighbor. Seeing the grieving friend. Seeing the exhausted caregiver. Seeing the child who feels forgotten. Seeing the family living one emergency away from disaster. Seeing the person in need before seeing the story we have already told ourselves about them. Seeing the person whose burden is so calloused it has become almost invisible. And perhaps, in this divided moment, seeing the humanity of the person with whom we disagree. Because every act of compassion begins with someone who was willing to stop long enough to truly see. That may be one of the hardest acts of faithfulness required of us.

Jesus makes the hero of this story a Samaritan. That matters. Generations of suspicion and hostility separate the Jews and the Samaritans. Jesus places compassion in the hands of someone his listeners might have been taught to blame. The outsider becomes the neighbor.

Jesus does not ask us to love only the neighbor who thinks as we do, worships as we do, speaks as we do, understands the world as we do. He simply says, “Love your neighbor.” This does not mean our convictions do not matter. It does not mean our truth does not matter. It does not mean every idea is equally wise or every action equally just. There are certainly times when faithfulness requires us to speak plainly, challenge falsehood, and resist what harms others. But Christians must not allow conviction to become contempt. We cannot defend human dignity while denying the dignity of those who oppose us. We cannot heal a divided nation by becoming more skillful at despising one another.

Micah tells us another way: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Kindness binds the wound before us. Justice asks what must change so fewer people are wounded tomorrow. Humility reminds us we do not see everything clearly and cannot repair everything alone. Faithfulness requires all three.

This is not only true in our personal lives. It is also true in our public life. Christians do not stop being disciples when we enter public life. Our concern for the hungry, the sick, the stranger, the poor, the prisoner, and the oppressed cannot end at the doors of our homes or our church. The policies we support, the institutions we shape, the words we repeat, and the kind of nation we seek to become are also matters of neighbor-love. We must not be satisfied asking, “What benefits me?” We must also ask, “What becomes of my neighbor?” What becomes of the child who is hungry? The elderly person choosing between food and medicine? The worker whose wages cannot keep pace with the cost of living? The family unable to find safe housing? Those who are frightened, displaced, forgotten, or without influence?

Faithful Christians may disagree about the wisest policies or the best path forward. But our choices must still be brought under the searching light of the gospel. Does this honor human dignity? Does it tell the truth? Does it protect the vulnerable? Does it promote the common good? Does it make peace? Does it treat even opponents as human beings? These questions belong to anyone who seeks to follow Christ.

James reminds us that faith cannot remain only in our words. It is not enough to offer a blessing to someone who lacks food, clothing, or the necessities of life while doing nothing to meet their need. James is reminding us that living faith takes visible form. Faith becomes making a meal. Faith becomes helping the unhoused. Faith becomes time and attention. Faith becomes generosity, advocacy, companionship, and care. Faith does not ask only, “What do I believe?” Faith also asks, “How shall I respond?”

That question can feel overwhelming when the needs are so large and the wounds are so deep. What difference can I possibly make? It is easy to be stalled, believing that because I cannot do everything, there is little point in doing anything. But the kingdom of God rarely begins with solving everything. It often begins with seeing one person. Taking one step. Offering one act of mercy.

Perhaps faithfulness is just three simple movements: first, see; second, act; and third, trust. And little by little, such acts bear witness to another kingdom—a kingdom not built through fear, contempt, domination, or despair, but through justice, mercy, humility, and love. Changes you never requested and could not control. That is the world our children and grandchildren are inheriting.

And it is worth pausing here, because this morning we have three young people in this room who are living proof that the story is not only about brokenness. Grahm, Anna Belle, Gabriel—will you let me speak to you directly for a moment? Today you are receiving your God and Family Award. That award is not really about a badge or a certificate. It is a recognition that you have already been walking this road of faith—learning what it means to love God, love your family, and love your neighbor, long before anyone asked you to sit through a sermon about it.

I want you to hear something clearly. You did not choose the world you were born into—the noise, the division, the uncertainty about what the future holds. Like the man on the road to Jericho, you found yourselves on a path you did not lay out for yourselves. But here is what I believe with everything in me: you are not only inheriting a broken world. You are the hope of what this world can still become.

You may remember the glow stick from earlier this morning. It cannot light up the whole town. It cannot even light up this whole sanctuary. But it can help us see the next step. That is what faith looks like—for all of us, and I already see it growing in each of you. You do not have to fix everything. None of us do. You only have to be the kind of people who stop, who see, who kneel down beside whoever is hurting, and do what you can with what you have. Faithfulness has never required us to heal the whole world—only to love the person right in front of us.

So here is my charge to you, on this day your church family celebrates you: keep the faith. When the world feels heavy—and some days, it will—remember that the kingdom of God has never been built by people who waited for the world to make sense first. It has been built by ordinary people who decided to see, and act, and trust, one faithful step at a time. We believe in you. We are counting on you. And we will be walking this road right beside you.

We follow a Savior who did not remain distant from human suffering. Jesus entered it. He knew grief, rejection, betrayal, political violence, and public humiliation. The cross tells us that God does not watch suffering from a safe distance. God is here in the brokenness. God is in the wound. God is with us in the ditch. And resurrection tells us that brokenness does not have the final word. Brokenness does not end the story.

So how do we live faithfully in a broken world? We tend to her wounds—offering what we can, entrusting God with what we cannot, recognizing that even the smallest act matters, and trusting that God has not abandoned her. And neither shall we.

Amen and Amen.

Final sermon coming soon.