5 PENTECOST, PROPER X - C - 19 LUKE 10: 25- 37
The lawyer’s question in today’s gospel, is one that many would ask if in the presence of Jesus. However, it is one that the church should be able to answer for those who dare to ask. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The Church, as the depository of truth, has been entrusted with the right answer.
Obviously, this lawyer had been sitting at the feet of Jesus as any disciple would along with all those who were merely curios about who this Jesus was and what he was all about. Jesus in his usual manner answers the lawyer’s question with a question.
Christ asks him what does the law say, in other words how do you interpret it? The lawyer responds by quoting Deuteronomy word for word giving the right answer. In the Old Testament (Lev. 18.5), keeping the law was essential to eternal life. Knowing the answer and doing it, however, are two different things. Jesus told him to “do it.”
However, that does not appear to satisfy him. He has yet another question. Who is my neighbor? He is looking for a definitive answer. Jesus gives it to him in the form of a parable we know so well as that of the “Good Samaritan,” a parable that only appears in Luke.
Who is my neighbor? Ask ten people today and you will most likely get a variety of answers.
I watched a disturbing video recently where a police officer was being dragged by a suspect’s vehicle. Traffic swerved around the moving vehicle with the officer precariously hanging on and continued on their way without stopping to assist him. Eventually the officer freed himself from the fleeing vehicle and fell onto the roadway.
Traffic continued to avoid him. Finally, a car did stop behind the injured officer who lay motionless in the roadway. The man who stopped called 911 and directed traffic around the downed officer until help arrived.
He put into action what Jesus was telling the lawyer to do. He was, we would say, a modern day “good Samaritan.” Makes you wonder who the others were that did not stop and better yet, why they did not stop.
The Jews of Jesus’ day were well versed in the commandments of God, especially the first one. They knew that their duty and obligation was to God above all else and that their neighbor came second. Their interpretation, for the most part, of “neighbor” was a fellow Jew.
They would not dream of touching a corpse for fear of being defiled. Therefore, in Jesus’ example, the priest and Levite pass by on the other side assuming the man was dead. For Jesus to use a Samaritan as an example of what to do was not only shocking but also unthinkable to his Jewish audience.
A Samaritan represented racial impurity and religious heresy to an Orthodox Jew. One can only imagine the reaction on the face of the inquisitive lawyer, himself a Jew, who got more than he asked for in Jesus’ response. But did he? Regardless, of his reaction, he gives the right answer. Jesus tells him to go “and do likewise.” In other words, be like the Samaritan.
He wanted to know what he had to do to inherit eternal life and Jesus told him plainly. However, the lawyer’s question and Jesus’ answer do not quite match up, and that is part of the point.
The lawyer wants to know who counts as neighbor. For him, God is the God of Israel, and neighbors are Jewish. For Jesus, Israel’s God is the God of grace for the whole world, and a neighbor is anyone in need. Now he knew who his neighbor was anyone in need regardless of race, culture, or religion.
How difficult is that to put into practice. Are there any more divisions amongst humanity today than in Jesus’ day? I doubt it. Jesus’ response to the lawyer’s question is just as relevant today, if not more so, than then. Just look at the world around us, and even our own society, and sadly the church.
Again, the difficulty arises in not knowing what to do but in doing it. Left to our own devices our definition of neighbor would be a narrow one. Without the grace of God moving us to act we would stay in our comfort zones much like those who avoided contact with the one in need in today’s parable.
This is not what God in Christ is calling us to do. We cannot say that we love God and chose to avoid those in need, especially if they differ from us. The “right answer” for all of us is to do it. Not out of a sense of legal obligation but for the love of God in response to His love for us.
One cannot escape the demands of the law by asking who, but respond to the divine command by seeking how to show love to those in need. Thus, the question is not “who is my neighbor?” but to whom can I show myself to be a neighbor thus fulfilling the law.
The basic message is that we are to love God first and our neighbor as our self. Wouldn’t it be easier if we had a list of who it is I have been called to love?
If only I could identify those persons. If only I knew their names, but I don’t. You don’t. Our love for one another is to be limitless, unconditional, and compassionate. No one is to be eliminated in advance.
The” who” is open-ended. If we love like the Samaritan loved, we will be compassionate and generous to each person upon whom we stumble. Neighborly love knows no limits. Jesus’ answer, in essence, is an example of God’s wide-reaching grace.
What is at stake here, then and now, is the question of whether we will use this God-given revelation of love and grace as a way of boosting our own sense of isolated security and purity, or whether we will see it as a call and challenge to extend that love and grace to the whole world.
Jesus not only gave the answer to the lawyer, but He lived it as an example of how we are to respond to the divine command. He was the very embodiment of God’s wide-reaching grace and love in His living and His dying,
He has left us the legacy of that love to share with all we meet, especially those in need. It is part of the inheritance of the New Life, which we are called upon to spend now in the Hope of attaining the fullness of the Promise of the Life to come. AMEN+
No comments:
Post a Comment