LAW OR LOVE?
15 Sunday in Year C: July 14th,
2029: Luke 10:25-37.
AIM: To show the meaning of the good Samaritan
parable for us today.
The story we have just heard is so
well known that its title, “The good Samaritan”, has entered into everyday
speech. Even people unfamiliar with the
New Testament know that “a good Samaritan” is someone who helps a person in
need.
Asked by “a scholar of the law” – a
man who has studied the Ten Commandments and the centuries of rabbinic
commentary on God’s law – about the conditions for eternal life, Jesus poses a
counter-question: “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” As a good
teacher, Jesus knew that people remember best the answers they have found
themselves. Answers given by the teacher cost the questioner nothing and are
easily forgotten. The man’s response combines two scriptural texts: the command
to love God completely in Deuteronomy 6:5 and the command to “love your
neighbor as yourself” from Leviticus 19:18. Jesus’ reply affirms this answer:
“You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.”
The man says he still has a
difficulty. It is not a moral difficulty — how to love God and neighbor.
His difficulty is intellectual: how far does his obligation extend? “And who is
my neighbor?” With his unique ability to read hearts and minds, Jesus perceives
the man’s real difficulty at once. By assuming that he has all the ability to
love that is required and needs only to know the limits to which he must extend
his love, the man has disclosed that his love is seriously deficient. Jesus recognizes that what the man really
needs is not instruction but conversion.
With great tact, and without allowing the man to feel
rebuked, Jesus tells a story.
The
seventeen-mile road from Jerusalem to Jericho leads, even today, through
trackless sand dunes with no sign of human habitation save the occasional
Bedouin tent. In Jesus’ day, robberies and muggings were frequent along this
lonely way. In the prevailing daytime heat a severely wounded man’s chances of
survival were slim without first aid. The victim in this story has been beaten
and stripped of his clothes. He has lost a great deal of blood and is in shock.
He lies unconscious, his condition critical. Jesus himself calls the man
“half-dead.”
The first two travelers to come by,
first a Jewish priest and then a Levite, are returning to Jericho, a town with
a large population of clergy, after their eight-day tour of duty at the Temple
in Jerusalem. Both “saw him [but] passed by on the opposite side.” We need not
assume that they were indifferent to the man’s fate. They might have feared that the muggers were
still lurking nearby, waiting to strike again. In that case it would be best
not to linger. Another motive for not stopping, especially if the man was dead,
was unwillingness to incur ritual impurity through touching a dead body.
In Jesus’ day, as in ours, people
were familiar with stories that had three characters. Following the appearance
of two clergy, therefore, Jesus’ hearers would have expected that the next
passerby would be a Jewish layman. As so often, however, Jesus surprises us.
When the next passerby turns out to be a Samaritan, Jesus’ hearers are shocked.
The hostility between Jews and Samaritans was notorious, something like that
between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq today. Shortly before the passage we are
considering, Samaritan villagers refuse to give Jesus lodging, because they
recognize him as a Jew, “on his way to Jerusalem” (Lk 9:53).
Devout Jews had a special aversion to
Samaritans because, though ethnically related to God’s people, they did not
recognize the Jewish prophets and did not observe God’s law. The actions of
this Samaritan show, however, that he is living the law’s spirit far better
than Jesus’ questioner with all his knowledge of the law’s letter. Like the
priest and Levite, the Samaritan “sees” the man. Unlike them, however, he is
“moved to compassion.”
The Samaritan gives the unconscious
victim first aid: oil for its soothing properties, wine as a disinfectant.
Taking him to the nearby inn, he remains with him overnight. Jesus makes this
clear by saying that the man gave the innkeeper two silver pieces “the next
day.” Commentators have calculated that this would pay for the man’s care for
twenty-four days. His injuries are obviously grave if he must remain so
long. Innkeepers in Jesus’ day had a
reputation like that of taxi drivers in some parts of the world today. Without
this generous payment, and the Samaritan’s promise that he would return to take
care of any further expenses, the victim would have been at the innkeeper’s
mercy.
As the story ends, Jesus has still
not answered the question, “And who is my neighbor?” Instead he has shown how a
true neighbor behaves. He remains tactful with his questioner. He might have
asked: “Which of these three most resembles yourself?” Such a question would
have put the man on the defensive, blocking the change of heart he needed.
Rather than confronting his questioner with a lesson difficult for him to
accept, Jesus invites the man to draw his own conclusion. “Which of these three, in your opinion, was
neighbor to the robbers’ victim?”
The answer is obvious: “The
Samaritan.” We see just how difficult it was for the man to state the obvious,
with its uncomfortable implications, in the fact that he cannot even utter the
name of the despised outsider. He resorts to a circumlocution: “The one who
treated him with mercy.”
Only when the man has himself stated
what no one hearing the story could fail to see, does Jesus confront him
directly: “Go and do likewise.” At last the man has his answer — though even
now only by implication. His neighbor, the one who has a claim on him — on his
time, his trouble, his purse — is anyone at all who is in need. The man had
asked about the limits of neighborly obligation. The parable says in effect:
‘there are no limits.’
That is breathtaking. It would
be breathtaking, that is, if the story’s sharp cutting edge had not been dulled
for us, like so much of Scripture, by familiarity. How, we ask, can Jesus make such a radical
demand? For one reason alone: because this is the way he, Jesus Christ, treats us.
Jesus is the despised outsider, hated and rejected by those who ought to
have known, recognized, and welcomed him.
Jesus is the one who finds us lying
bruised, battered, mortally wounded along life’s way. Without the help that he
alone can supply, our situation is hopeless. For no merits of our own, but
simply because of his infinite compassion, Jesus comes to our aid. Heedless of
the cost to himself, he binds up our wounds, pouring upon us the healing oil of
his forgiveness in the sacraments of baptism and penance, the exhilarating wine
of his love in his holy word and in the Eucharist. He entrusts us to the care
of his Church, promising to come again and again as often as may be necessary,
to tend to our every need. Because of this total generosity toward us in our
need, a readiness to help which caused Jesus to lay down his life for us, he is
able to say to us: “See how much I have done for you — look what I am doing for
you even now! Then go and do the same
for others.” The man who asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
is like many sincerely religious people. Wanting to do what is right, he
develops a spirit directly contrary to God’s law, even when he thinks he is
obeying the law. His question, “And who is my neighbor?” shows that he was
unable to get beyond the law’s details. To be cured, he needed to encounter the
Lawgiver.
His name is Jesus Christ.
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