15th Sunday 2022
Deut 30:10-14; Colossians 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37
Familiarity breeds contempt, or so we are told. It may certainly breed indifference, a sense of déjà vu, a clouding of the listening and thinking faculties. There are some Gospel passages which can affect us in this way, and I would suggest that today’s parable of the Good Samaritan is one of them. “Oh, right! The Good Samaritan! Know that one. (Did I leave the oven on?)”
Yet God’s word speaks to us anew every time we hear it. Consequently we have to examine this Gospel passage closely, to open our minds to what God is saying to us TODAY.
Firstly, it is worth pointing out that all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) have accounts of Jesus being questioned about the Commandments. It was clearly an important issue for those who encountered Him. Why? Were they unsure of His orthodoxy, of whether He had the true faith?
In two of these accounts, Our Lord’s questioners are hostile. Both Luke and Matthew speak of a lawyer or a Pharisee “testing” Him, “seeking to disconcert Him”, as the Jerusalem Bible translation puts it. Only the scribe in St. Mark’s Gospel is without a hidden agenda, and becomes enthusiastic about His reply. How often today to people approach Jesus and His Church negatively, nit-picking, seeking to score points? If that is people’s approach, then we should be courteous in response, but not allow ourselves to be dragged into pointless discussions with those whose sole intention is to make mischief.
All the Gospels agree in having Jesus insist on the centrality of two commandments: firstly, love of God with all our ability; secondly, love of our neighbour as ourselves. That is not how the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, expresses it. The command to love our neighbour is taken from elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, from the Book of Leviticus, and it is not one of the Ten. It is clear from Our Lord’s teaching that we shouldn’t become entangled in the details of the Ten Commandments, but should focus on love of God and neighbour.
Only in St Luke is it the questioner, rather than Our Lord, who combines love of God and neighbour as the heart of the Law. Does this linking on the part of the lawyer indicate that it was already happening in Judaism, and that Jesus was expressing something which was already becoming understood among the Jewish people?
When we turn to the parable itself, we see that it is upside down: we need to stand on our heads to read it. In answer to the question “Who is my neighbour?”, we might have expected Jesus to reply that everyone is my neighbour, even the despised Samaritans, heretics as they were, and that Jews must love and help even them. That would have been shocking enough. It would have meant that people must love those who are hostile to them: that the people of Ukraine must somehow love the Russian invader; the Uighurs must somehow love the brutal elements in the Chinese government.
It does indicate all this, but it goes much further, depicting, not a generous Jew helping a Samaritan, but a Jew who is in need receiving help from a Samaritan. Thus, a Samaritan is held up as an example of how Jews, and everyone else, should behave, not a concept which Our Lord’s listeners would have found easy to accept. Not only are we required to love, as ourselves, those whom we might regard as outsiders, but we are to accept that their behaviour, their attitudes, their love, may be better than our own. Imagine in today’s world, a Hindu in India being told the parable of the Good Muslim, a Pakistani Muslim hearing the parable of the Good Hindu, Palestinians the parable of the Good Israeli, and vice versa.
This is a parable which demands, not only that, in showing love, we move out of our own comfort zone, but that, in receiving love, we must accept some unpalatable truths. All of this is demanded of us by God’s Commandments.
