SUNDAY, JULY 10, 2022
FIFTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
First Reading: Deuteronomy 30:10-14
Second Reading: Colossians 1:15-20
Gospel: Luke 10:25-37
It is one thing to know something; it is entirely another thing to act on that knowledge. Indeed, it is a great feat of will to go from knowing to doing. Why? Knowing is safe and requires little or no risk. Knowing is comfortable, serene, and full of hope and promises, but knowing will take us nowhere unless we are willing to act on it. Doing, on the other hand, reveals who we are and what we stand for. Doing requires courage, strength and fortitude, because doing can get us into trouble.
The first reading today reflects the tension between knowing and doing. Moses implores the Israelites to take to heart the precepts of the Lord. It is near to you, in your mouth and in your hearts. You only have to carry it out. The priest and the Levite in the Gospel story knew what is good to do and that the man lying half-dead by the roadside could die if they did not save him. But knowing did not move them to act. Did excusing themselves and passing on the opposite side ease their minds and consciences? We cannot know for sure.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the best-known parables in the New Testament. It is found only in the Gospel of St. Luke. The context of this parable is the question a scholar of the law posed to Jesus. His intention was to trap Jesus. He was most probably saying to himself, what does this uneducated preacher know, and he calls him, a teacher, to flatter him and watch him make a fool of himself and put him to public ridicule. He asked him, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” but Jesus turned the table around. He asked him, “what is written in the law, how do you read it?” Quickly he replied, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” He replied to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.” To save his face, he continued, “And who is my neighbor?” In response, Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan.
The setting of the story is the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. During the time of Jesus, it was a notoriously dangerous road. Robbers and bandits frequently robbed and even killed their victims on this road. Jesus said a certain man was travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho. He fell into the hands of robbers who robbed and beat him, leaving him half-dead. He could be anyone. A priest passes by, sees him and passes on the opposite side. Next, a Levite passes by, sees him and passes on the opposite side. Then came a Samaritan, who sees him, has pity on him, stops and takes care of him.
The beautiful thing about this parable is that the two people who passed by without helping the half-dead man are people who could have been excused. The man beaten and left half-dead could not have been without blood all over his body. Both the priest and the Levite would have incurred ritual impurity by touching blood if they stopped to attend to the man. The Book of Numbers prescribes an elaborate ritual for purification that lasted 7 days. The Samaritan who helped him could have been excused if he did not help him. The man beaten and left half-dead is most probably a Jew. Jews despised the Samaritans and would not even accept Samaritan converts to Judaism.
The lesson of this parable is clear. For the first-century Jews, the scope of neighbor was narrow. Only a fellow Jew or a convert to Judaism is a neighbor. Jesus boldly widens the scope of neighbor and extends it to humanity as a whole. And He teaches us that love must be concrete and proactive. By using a priest and a Levite, and a Samaritan as dramatis personae in this parable, Jesus teaches us that no one is excused from being a neighbor to anyone in need. By asking the scholar of the law, who among these three showed himself a neighbor to the man who was half-dead, Jesus turned the table against the scholar and teaches him and indeed all of us that the right question to ask is not “who is my neighbor’” rather “whose neighbor can I be here and now.”
Throughout centuries the Samaritan is presented to us to admire and emulate. He saw and knew what was needed, and allowed compassion to move him to do what he could. He ministered to a man who perhaps would have despised and shunned him under ordinary circumstances.
Happy Sunday
Fr Chidi Onwuka M,Ss.Cc