It was 8:47 a.m. The kids had already all arrived and were settled in at the Shalom Rainbow Preschool when a delivery truck turned out to be much more sinister—a car bomb. The sky was already thick with smoke, the ground still hot under the feet of first responders picking through the wreckage of twisted metal and burned cinderblock. Sirens wailed, some near, some far. A line of news vans trembled at the edge of the blast radius, their satellite dishes craned skyward like metal sunflowers. Camera crews jostled for angles. And then, silence fell. Sigmund Hubert, the photogenic, bombastic mayor, bedecked in a tailored navy suit, climbed a small riser—flanked by aides, framed by flags. His face was drawn tight. His voice didn’t shake, but it didn’t soar either. “We will get to the bottom of this,” he said. “We’re with the victims, believe me. We’re going to hold the people responsible—big accountability, nobody gets away with it. And let me be clear, folks, this is about justice, about unity, about healing together. Like my dad used always say, ‘We do what’s right, no matter what.’” And then, at the end—his voice softening, head nodding ever so slightly: “And of course, our thoughts and prayers are with the families.
Flashbulbs.
Applause.
And then he stepped down. An aide moved in and whispered in his ear. He nodded, got in a black SUV, and drove off. Behind him, behind the crowd of reporters and the rubbernecking crowd, a woman knelt in the rubble—hands scraped, her sleeve wet with someone else’s blood—as she tried to find her daughter’s shoe.
In a world awash with “thoughts and prayers,” Jesus asks us not just to think or to pray—but to become mercy. To embody compassion. Because the only kind of prayer that matters is the kind that gets blood on its hands. In the gospel today, a lawyer asks Jesus how to inherit eternal life. And like a good teacher, Jesus answers not with a rulebook or a lecture, but with a story. A story that begins with violence—but ends with kindness.
A man lies beaten on the side of the road. Stripped, robbed, left for dead. And two religious leaders walk by. Good men, perhaps. Upright men. Men who no doubt prayed, who likely had deep thoughts about justice and goodness and God. But when faced with the man in the ditch, they chose the far side of the road. Then a Samaritan comes along. Now, Samaritans weren’t just strangers—they were enemies. They were seen as outsiders, impure, heretical. If anyone in the story should have kept walking, it was this man.
But St. Luke today tells us he was moved with compassion. And in the Greek, that word is splagchnizomai. It’s a mouthful—but still fun to say. But it’s also a heartful, and a gutful. The word comes from splagchna—which means your inner organs. Your heart, your lungs, your stomach—sometimes most specifically the spleen. It’s where the ancient world believed your feelings lived. Where you thought. Where you reasoned. Where you ached.
So when it says this Samaritan was moved with compassion, it doesn’t mean he felt bad. It doesn’t mean he sighed or said a prayer under his breath. It means his whole body responded. His heart clenched. His gut turned. He couldn’t just walk by. Something inside him said, “You have to stop. You have to help. This man is your neighbor.”
It’s important to know that in the ancient world, the world before and during Jesus’ time, thinking wasn’t just done with the mind. The heart and the gut were where you made your choices. Where you sorted out right from wrong. That’s why this word splagchnizomai is so powerful. It means he didn’t just feel something. He thought something. He made a decision. A choice to love. He chooses to get close. To touch wounds. To kneel. To lift. To pour oil and wine. To bandage. To carry. To pay for care. To return and check in. That’s not pity. That’s not a moment of emotion. That’s mercy that moves. And that’s what Jesus is talking about when he says, “Go and do likewise.”
Hebrew has a word for this kind of active mercy. It’s davar. It’s usually translated as “word,” but it doesn’t just mean something spoken. It means a word that does something. A word that creates, that shapes, that fulfills, that judges. A word that lands like thunder and echoes in actions. Amos uses this word today in his prophecy—not as a speech to be admired, but as a doing word, a word that builds up or tears down, that measures, that enacts judgment in real time. “This is the word that the Lord showed me…” Amos says. “Now therefore hear the word of the Lord…”
When God says “Let there be light,” that’s davar, an utterance of God’s doing word. It doesn’t just float in the air. It happens. When the prophet Amos speaks judgment, it isn’t a suggestion—it’s an event, God’s event. His words don’t just carry meaning. They carry impact. As the prophet Isaiah puts it of the Word of the Lord: “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” God’s Word never returns empty.
So when we pray, when we speak, when we say “thoughts and prayers,” we’re putting words into the world. But what kind of words are they? Are they words that move us, change us, lead us toward our neighbor? Or are they just noise—words that rise like smoke and vanish? Jesus’ story challenges us to make our words matter. Not just in what we say, but in what we do because of them.
For the first Christians, the idea of prayer wasn’t limited to words whispered in quiet corners. Prayer was woven into action. To lift the poor was prayer. To visit the sick was prayer. To feed the hungry was prayer. That’s why the earliest Christians were known not for their eloquence—but for their mercy. They prayed with their hands. They prayed with their time. They prayed with their blood. Because they followed a Savior who didn’t just speak forgiveness—he became it for us. A Savior who didn’t just talk about love—he died for you. Jesus is God’s Word in flesh. God’s compassion with hands and feet and scars, stretched wide on a cross. And because we have been shown that kind of mercy—because we know what it is to be broken, to be healed, to be forgiven—we’re called to show mercy in return. We provide because we have received. We love because we have been loved. We offer mercy not from obligation, but from overflowing grace—a mercy that knows no bounds, because it comes from a God who has held nothing back, not even his own life.
And he tells us: “Go and do likewise.” What does that mean for us? It means discipleship isn’t a matter of having the right thoughts, or even the right prayers. It’s a matter of how those thoughts and prayers shape what we do when we meet someone in the ditch. It means we can’t walk past need and call it holiness. It means we’re most like Jesus not when we preach, but when we bind wounds. Not when we get everything right, but when we stop long enough to love someone who’s hurting. It means mercy is our calling card. Mercy is our liturgy. Mercy is the language we speak when words are no longer enough. Because mercy shown demands mercy given. And if our thoughts and prayers never leave the safety of our own minds and mouths, then they are no more than shadows pretending to be light.
We’ve heard too many empty phrases. Too many hollow prayers. Too many polite sentiments that never turn into action. We’ve made too many empty phrases, too many hollow prayers. In our politeness, we’ve failed in things left undone…But Jesus isn’t asking us for sentiment. He’s asking us for mercy. And not mercy as a feeling. Mercy as a movement. Mercy that sees pain and moves toward it. Mercy that costs. Mercy that returns. Mercy that bears the weight of another.
The world is tired of thoughts and prayers. It is aching for mercy that moves. And Christ isn’t calling his church—Christ isn’t calling us to wait behind microphones or podiums, to write op eds or stand seek out photo ops. He is calling us into the ditch. To bind the wounds. To be moved in our guts. To pour out oil and wine. To give our silver. To promise to come back. We cannot think rightly about suffering unless we feel it. And we cannot feel it unless we are willing to go there.
Discipleship begins not at the altar rail, but at the roadside. Not with silence and ceremony, but with a gut that aches for someone else’s pain—and moves. If our thoughts and prayers are to mean anything at all, they must end with mercy in motion, with love in action, with Christ in us, alive and reaching. Because mercy shown demands mercy given. And Jesus Christ, the Word who became flesh, became that kind of mercy for us. Now he says, “Go and do likewise.”
The Rev'd Daniel W. Spigelmyer, Jr. 