Who is My Neighbor?

From the Catholic Liturgy for the 15^th Sunday of Ordinary Time, July 14, 2019. Luke 10:25-37. Theme: Who Is My Neighbor?

The scholar in today’s Gospel is a man who knows all the right answers. That’s his job. In Judaism, he is called a scribe and was a professional in teaching about the law of God. This scribe must’ve been pretty darn sure of himself because St. Luke tells us that he is testing Jesus – not seeking a sincere answer -  and he is trying to justify his own way of thinking about God, life and religion. Jesus gives him an answer that must’ve slapped the poor guy upside the head and turned his smugness upside down because the hero of Jesus’ story is a Samaritan, the sworn enemies of the Jews of that time.

To better get the full impact of Jesus’ story, we need to know something about the relationships between Jews and Samaritans.   You see both groups despised each other as the result of what could be called a centuries old family feud.  In the beginning, they had been but one people descended from Abraham and ruled by the great King David.  Then, about 700 years before Jesus, their nation was invaded.  The upper and middle classes were brought out of the country and kept as slaves in what is today called Iraq.  The lower class that was left behind decided it was best to get along and began to intermarry with the occupying forces.  So, about 70 years later when the captive Jews returned home they were shocked to find out what those who had been left behind had done. And they literally hated them for it. Now called Samaritans, they were seen as traitors, religious heretics, and political enemies of the Jewish people. This animosity was so bad that Jews traveling from one end of Israel to the other would add days to their journey by going around Samaritan territory instead of taking the short cut through it. So, you can imagine the looks on the faces of the scribe and others who heard Jesus speak this parable of the Good Samaritan!

And to add insult to injury, Jesus went even further by making two models of Judaism the moral cowards of the story. Both a priest and a Levite, who would be similar to our priests and deacons of today, see the injured beaten man and they cross the street, they look the other way and go about their business. Jewish law forbids them to come into contact with blood or death if they wished to remain ritually clean and pure for worship. They put man-made laws above divine law to love one’s neighbor.  They used obedience to the law as an excuse to not have compassion on a needy human being.

And as he did with so many other misunderstandings about God and religion, Jesus is trying to set things straight. He has a lot to teach us today when law and faith come into conflict in our own nation. He wants us to understand that every human being in need is our neighbor who deserves our love and compassion in their suffering, no matter who they are or where they are from. Citizen status, political platforms or ethnic differences are never an excuse in the eyes of God and in the heart of Christ to ignore the needs and sufferings of another human being.  Jesus teaches us to look beyond these things which divide us and set us at odds with one another.  He calls us to see, to really see in the ones we consider outsiders, the image and likeness of God and to treat them with the dignity they deserve.  

I think that through this parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus is calling us to be honest and ask ourselves:  Do we have the proper perspective which puts the law at the service of the human person and not the other way around?    Are we – like the scribe – looking for excuses to justify our lack of compassion for the needy and reduce God’s commandment of love into something less than what it is meant to be?  Do we – like the priest and Levite – look the other way when we see human suffering and cross the street, so to speak, so that we can continue on undisturbed in our comfortable lives?

In today’s Gospel and every day, Jesus is calling us to become something far greater than we think we can become. He is asking us to go beyond ourselves, out of our comfort zones, and to love in a way that seems impossible if left to our own devices. But he doesn’t leave us to our own devices. He comes to us, comes to live inside us, comes to love within us and love others through us, by means of his Real Presence in the Eucharist that we receive. In this way, through our intimate union with Jesus, he makes it possible for us to love God wholeheartedly and to love our neighbor as he loves them. And this transformation within ourselves should be as incredible and amazing to us as a Samaritan being called “good” was to the Jews.