Newman Centre at University of Toronto

The Good Samaritan

- 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C -

We can be very self-serving. Well, in fact today I mean that you can be very self-serving. We hear much today about the priesthood of all God's people - the fact that each of us is anointed, at baptism, to imitate Christ the Priest. We are all priests, in some sense. But you hear nothing of that when priests in Scripture are portrayed in a negative light. Oh no - then it's a different story. Then it's just me and Fr Pat and Fr Rob and Fr Ben and the hundreds of other priests who assist Fr Pat. Like in today's parable, when a priest sees a beaten man and walks away on the other side of the road. Then it's down to us guys up here in the sanctuary - not a whisper of priesthood of all the faithful. Well, I'm here today to tell you that we're not going to take it any more. No way. Enough is enough. Let's set the record straight. There are two bad-guys in this parable. Even if the first one, the priest who walks the other way, is to be identified only with those who are set apart full time for offering sacrifice, there's a second person who also walks past, the Levite. I've been checking up on him and the identikit picture I've come up with looks very much like all of you - which is scary. By the time of Jesus, Levites did many of the sorts of ministries in the Temple which you guys do at the Newman Centre. And so I say, woe to you, all musicians and Taizé prayer people, for the Levites were the instrumentalists. Woe to you choir members, for the Levites were the choristers and chanters. Woe to you, all you sacristans, for the Levites had charge of the sacred vessels. Woe to you, RCIA catechists, and faith and science groups, for the Levites were teachers of their religion. Woe to you, hospitality ministers, for the Levites were the door-keepers. Woe to you, Newman receptionists and business managers and finance-councillors, for the Levites were administrators. Woe to you, altar-servers, even those who bring up the offertory procession, for the Levites prepared what was to be sacrificed at the altar.

None of us can walk away lightly from this parable. We cannot bypass it on the other side of the road, behind us, ignored and unexplored. It is Jesus' response to a question about how we might inherit eternal life. The lawyer gives the initial answer to own question: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself." Jesus' acknowledges that this is correct. But the lawyer wants greater clarity, to get it right. Who is my neighbour?

Jesus' answer is to tell a story. It begins with a man walking along a road and being robbed, stripped, beaten and left half-dead. And then we hear of the responses of the priest and the Levite - that's you lot - to this man abandoned at the side of the road. Both the priest and the Levite - that's you lot - saw the man and passed over on the other side of the road. Why? We're not told. But if we're self-deluded enough to think that, of course, we would have stopped, let's put ourselves in their place and allow that there might be many prudent reasons not to stop. Or imagine what advise you'd give to your son or daughter or close friend who came across a beaten man on an isolated roadway notorious for its bandits. The priest and the Levite may have been afraid that the robbers were still around, ready to ambush anyone who stopped to help. Or, unsure if the man were still alive, they may have been concerned that they would be ritually impure if they touched a dead body, and so would not be able to perform their functions in the Temple. And this was no minor matter. Being defiled by touching a dead body meant a purification period of seven days [Num 19:11-13] before they'd be able to serve in the Temple again - meaning much inconvenience, not just for themselves but for others they served, and loss of income, not just for themselves, but for their family. Perhaps they just thought it wiser to go to the next town and get help. There could be many prudent reasons for not stopping.

But one person on that road throws prudence to the wind. Jesus' audience of peasants, not always sympathetic to the priestly class, to the Temple workers, to the Jerusalem big-city folk, might have appreciated his characterisation of the priest and the Levite - that's you lot. Perhaps they expected that the hero of the story would be a simple peasant like them, someone who, despite limited resources, would rescue the beaten man so that he would live happily ever after. But Jesus isn't one for people-pleasing, and in fact he ends the parable in a way that would shock, not just the lawyers and the priests and Levites - that's you lot - but every part of the Jewish audience. For the hero of the parable is a Samaritan - people seen by the Jews as heretics, people of low morals, outsiders, enemies. They were often treated with revulsion. In fact, in a worldview in which everyone was either a Jew or a Gentile, the Samaritans were seen as neither - as effectively non-persons.

It is this despised, enemy non-person who comes along. Far from passing by on the other side, he doesn't just help, but surpasses every limitation to the sort of help he might be expected to give. He gets more and more involved. He could have just gone to get help. He could have checked to see if the man was alive, and then gone to get help. He could have given immediate care, made sure the airways were open and all that, and then gone to get help. He could have bandaged the wounds, poured his oil and wine on them and then gone to get help. He could have taken him to the inn and, having done his part, left him in someone else's hands. He could have cared for him that night, paid the bill and then left him there. He could have left extra money for further care, and moved on. But even at this point, he leaves his commitment open-ended - promising to return and repay any further debt - giving a blank cheque.

At the end of the parable, Jesus transforms the lawyer's question, "Who is my neighbour?" into his own question, "Who behaved as a neighbour?" And the answer is clear - this despised enemy non-person, the one who made himself a neighbour. Made himself a neighbour, even to one of those who despised him, by getting involved, by reaching out, by expending his time and energy and resources, in the moment, for a period afterwards, and into the future. The one who did what all of us, I imagine, would find difficult to do, except perhaps on rare occasions when given the opportunity and the grace to love in this way. And that is one point of this parable - that it is impossible for us to live like this. The lawyer wants a neat command to obey perfectly so that he can enter into life. In reply, Jesus gives him a model of loving which can never be perfectly fulfilled. I cannot simply check it off my list of things I've got done, along with other things on my daily to-do list. Today I said my prayers, brushed my teeth, teased Fr Pat, loved my neighbour as myself in the same way the Good Samaritan did, ate my vegetables and did my homework. This command, like the command to love God is open-ended, always a work in progress. The Samaritan shows all of us, no matter how Mother Theresa-esque we are, that we are always far from being perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.

Of course, Jesus does not want us to leave this parable throwing our hands up in despair. In fact, he tells us with the lawyer, to go and do the same. Three things can help us here. Firstly, to recognise that for us, in our earthly labours, it will always be a matter of progress, not perfection. Once I let go of wanting to get it perfectly right, I am freed to begin to progress. The Samaritan became more and more of a neighbour with each barrier to the limits of his concern which he broke down. I can progress, become more and more of a neighbour, with each decision to reach out, to move beyond my comfort zone, to love until it hurts.

Secondly, we begin this journey of progress where the Samaritan did. He saw the man and was moved with compassion. We hear of no such movement in the hearts of the priest and the Levite - that's you lot. Compassion is where it starts for the Good Samaritan. And compassion is a grace, something I can pray for. It is a grace that often comes through my own experiences of suffering - experiences of grief, experiences of myself being beaten down, experiences of chronic sickness or mental illnes, experiences of being, like the Samaritan, on the edge, thought of as a non-person. These experiences needn't lead to compassion - they can lose all value by being turned into resentment and hardness and bitterness. But, with God's healing grace, they can lead to a wonderful compassion, a compassion by which I grow, slowly but surely, day by day, into a Good Samaritan, or at least a gooder one. Progress, not perfection.

And finally, we need to recognise that ultimately Jesus alone is the Good Samaritan. He comes into a world beaten and bruised - for all our pretensions, a world only half-living. He comes as the living image of the invisible God of Israel [Col 1.15], the compassionate One proclaimed in the Jewish credal statement: "The Lord, the Lord, a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness." [Ex 34:6-7] Jesus binds our wounds and anoints them with his love, in the way the God of Israel promises [Ezek 34.16; Ps 147.3]. And like the Samaritan, He leaves open-ended the price he is willing to pay for our healing. That price is infinite. For in the course of his helping us, he himself is ambushed and beaten and left, not half-dead, but fully dead. In the cross, Christ made himself neighbour to all, source of life and healing for all, reconciling all things in himself by the blood of his cross [Col 1.20]. In Him is our hope of progress towards the perfection which will only be ours in the end, in His kingodm, for ever and ever. Amen.