LECTIONARY READINGS
First reading: Deuteronomy 30:10-14
Responsorial Psalm: 68(69):14, 17, 30-31, 33-34, 36-37
Second reading: Colossians 1:15-20
Gospel: Luke 10:25-37
Link to readings
The parable of the Good Samaritan, which forms the Gospel for today (Luke 10:25-37), is one of those parts of the New Testament concerning which we would have to say that, if it were lacking, Christianity would be something else. Here we encounter something truly distinctive of the teaching of Jesus.
The supplementary question from the lawyer, “And who is my neighbour?”, is hostile (“to test him”). Because Jesus has drawn the right response out of him and shown that he really knew the answer to his question about inheriting eternal life all along, the lawyer wants “to justify himself” – show that there really is a deeper question lurking there.
RADICAL RECONFIGURATION
And what an answer he gets! The parable, as Jesus tells it, radically reconfigures both his question and the concept “neighbour”. To see how it does this, let’s look at the parable in itself – that is, as Jesus probably told it, apart from the setting it has in Luke’s gospel. The passing-parade, so to speak, of travellers along the road sets up a pattern that builds up expectation in those who hear the story. Representatives of various classes of persons on a journey arrive at the place where the wounded traveller lies by the side of the road, see him there and respond.
In the first two cases – those of the religious functionaries, the priest and the Levite – the response is to pass by on the other side. They have to avoid contact with the dead or soon-to-be-dead that would prevent them carrying out their sacred duties. So, who do we expect the third traveller to be? Probably a Jewish layperson – someone who, unlike the others, will pick up the tab, so to speak, do the decent thing by a fellow citizen fallen on bad times. But, surprise! surprise! the third person who comes along is not a Jew at all but an enemy, an alien: a Samaritan. Surely, he will pass by on the other side! Or, more likely, see if there is anything left to rob, finish the man off, and hasten on his way.
SHATTERS PREJUDICE
Centuries of familiarity with the phrase “Good Samaritan” have dulled us to the oxymoron involved at the time of Jesus in putting those two words – “good” and “Samaritan” – together. For Jews Samaritans were not “good” but “bad” (cf. John 4:9).
When the story tells how this Samaritan is “moved with compassion” (“moved to the depths of his being” would be a more accurate translation of the Greek word) and when it goes on to describe how he doesn’t just administer first aid but piles on further help, even paying for long-term care out of his own pocket, it shatters long-established stereotyping and prejudice. Here, from this ethnic enemy, comes over-the-top goodness and humanity. The story forces the hearers to put together the previously opposed ideas “good” and “Samaritan”.
Something like what it would mean to us to say “good terrorist”, “good drug dealer”, and so on.
SEE THE PERSON
The story shows that the Samaritan does not see a conventional label – “Jew” – hanging round the neck of the wounded traveller. He has broken through the labels, on which old hostilities are pegged. He sees simply a fellow human being in need of help.
This vision lies at the heart of the idea of “neighbour” that Jesus is trying to transform. What does it really mean to be “a neighbour”? Before any action it has to do with attitude and with how I see another person. Do I see primarily an ethnic, cultural, social or occupational tag? Or do I go through all these surface things and see, first and foremost, and with compassion, a fellow human being? So, it is not only what the Samaritan does that is exemplary. It is where he starts from that constitutes the real challenge.
Moreover, in reply to the lawyer, Jesus has taken the concept “neighbour” and shifted it from being a tag that I may or may not apply to another, to being a quality or a vocation that I take upon myself and actively live out. As stated above, the whole frame of reference has shifted from, “Who is my neighbour?”, to “To whom can I/ought I be neighbour?” Just people like me? Or also people who are not like me, not “one of us” at all. The “way to eternal life” is to allow oneself to become in this way an active instrument of the boundary-breaking hospitality of God.
The First Reading, from Deuteronomy 30:10-14, admirably sets up the Gospel with its sense that we do not have to go far to fulfil what God wants. The “word is near” in the sense that it begins with the attitude I have to those around me. It is, first of all, “in my mouth, in my heart”.