Homily

Jesus wants to provoke those who are listening to him, especially this lawyer who wants to know who is his neighbor. Because the lawyer wants to go to heaven. And if he must love his neighbor in the way Jesus says, in order to get to heaven, he needs to know what kind of people he should be loving.

The first big surprise in this parable of Jesus is the shocking event of the beating and robbery of the man walking to Jericho. They even took his clothes. (See Bulletin icon for 24th Sunday above). They left him half dead on the side of the road. Now travel in the ancient world was pretty dangerous in many places. You weren’t jetting down I-5 at 80 miles an hour, but you were walking or you might be riding a donkey or a camel. It was not difficult for a small group of robbers to catch you and attack, and there were no police to help you. Traveling alone was the most dangerous, and both men in the parable are traveling alone.

The priests of Israel were held in high esteem among the people and they were supposed to be dedicated to the holiness of serving the Lord on behalf of the people. But this priest was either too afraid to go and see what had happened to this man, or if the man was dead, he might be afraid he would become ritually impure by contact with a corpse. He wasn’t going to take any chances. Maybe the guy isn’t even a Jew. Besides, those robbers might still be nearby. He wouldn’t even go over to the other side of the road to have a look. The same thing goes for the Levite who passes this poor man by, walking on the other side of the road. According to the spirit of the law, and especially because of their respected positions in Israel, they should have seen if they could do something. But they couldn’t be bothered. Too risky.

Who takes pity on this poor Jew, lying half dead? That no good Samaritan. It’s the hated enemy who shows himself to be a genuine man of compassion. And not a little compassion. He didn’t dial 911. He took care of it all himself. Knowing this man had been severely beaten, and that the same robbers who had done this could still be nearby, he should have been afraid for his own safety. Maybe he was. But in any case, he takes the risk and put the man on his donkey, gets him to an inn and even pays for his care.

Now let’s pay attention to what Jesus does with this parable. When Jesus told the lawyer that in order to gain eternal life, he must love the Lord His God with his whole heart and his whole soul and his whole strength and his whole mind and his neighbor as himself, the lawyer asks him “But who is my neighbor?’” Who are the people I must consider to be a neighbor, because I need to know which people you say I must love and which ones I don’t have to care about? What does the law say about that, Jesus?

Jesus does not answer his question about what kinds of persons the lawyer should love, and who deserves his attention. Instead, Jesus demands that he becomes a person who treats everyone, even if they might be a foreigner, or frightening, or badly beaten, or naked laying on the roadside, to treat everyone with compassion, even if he himself is scared to do so. “Go and do the same,” Jesus tells him. Even if you are risking your own life and your own goods, it’s not about who you should care for and who deserves your help. It’s not about what the law tells you to do. It’s about what God tells you to do. It’s about the Gospel, not about the rules of the law. Don’t even think about who is your neighbor—you must be the neighbor.

In our society today there is a lot of hostility between certain groups of people and Christian values are often thrown aside in these times of conflict, if they are even embraced at all. We find many people who will claim they are beaten and robbed and left on the roadside demanding that we must pick them up and take care of them. And not only take care of them, we must allow them to tell us how we should take care of them, and what we must do in order to make them healthy and happy once again.

That does not mean that we must do whatever they tell us we must do, because what they demand may actually be bad for them and for society and for the very good of their eternal souls, even if they don’t care about eternal life, as the lawyer said he did. But we must still love them as our neighbor, we must love them as ourselves. It might be a whole lot easier to put them on donkeys and pay for a week’s stay at the Holiday Inn, than to try and have a care for those who treat us badly and demand we care for them as they tell us how we have to care for them. I would not be surprised if Jesus had to overcome a dislike for this lawyer who was trying to get the best of him. The struggle for us is often not in deciding who are the good ones and who are the bad ones. Sometimes it may not be so clear. Sometimes that is very clear. But the real struggle is, whether they be good or bad, how am I going to be a neighbor to them, so that I can, and maybe they can too, gain eternal life, for the love of God? Let’s keep at it. Being a neighbor can be very difficult – but with the Lord’s help we can achieve it.