READINGS

1. Luke 10:25-37

HOMILY

This is one of two parables unique to Luke which are told in the most brilliant and vivid storytelling detail, and which both of them - this one and the parable of the Prodigal Son - are almost definitive of what we know of and love as Christianity.

They've come to be absolutely key texts for our understanding of what our faith is about, and for very good reasons.

In both cases, it's curious though that the parable of the Good Samaritan is only told in Luke's Gospel.

And there may be good reasons for that.

The similar incident which occurs in Mark's Gospel comes towards the end of Mark's Gospel while Jesus is being questioned in the Temple.

And there, it's a scribe who comes up to Jesus and asks Jesus what is the most important of all the laws.

Jesus answers with very much the same answer as the lawyer gives here.

And it's the scribe who's happy with the answer and then goes on to fill that out and say: yes, that is true, this is more important than all the laws and all sacrifices.

In other words, it's where Mark does something which Matthew does in other places which indicates how key Jesus's teaching is about God wanting mercy not sacrifice.

And that's what loving God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength looks like.

It looks like loving mercy and not sacrifice.

So what I think St Luke has done is probably - and this may have come from Jesus himself, who knows but it's certainly the way of filling out Jesus's understanding of 'I want mercy and not sacrifice' and how that's lived out.

So let's just see how Luke does this.

So a lawyer stands up to test Jesus: Teacher, - he said - what must I do to inherit eternal life?

I always thought that this line is more important than it seems because he's not just saying 'what would they do to be a good boy or to grow up and be a fine adult or whatever it is' - no, he's asking him a legal question to do with inheriting eternal life.

That means joining in the life to come.

The life of God - of course, if you believe in God who is greater than anything, that is who's the source of all that is, in whose eyes we are small objects, before whom we are all small - then, of course, the life of God is something that's categorically different from what we know.

It's something vastly bigger and we're required to be stretched into it.

So inheriting the life of God is a pretty dynamic sense.

It's not just a 'very well, good' brownie points.

He's actually asking a serious, serious question in a monotheistic world: what must I do to inherit the future life, the coming upon us life, which would have been a good Jewish question.

Jesus said to him: What's written in the law, how do you read it? - Understanding that as a lawyer you're in the business of interpreting texts, putting texts together, seeing when they make sense together, how they interpret each other and so forth.

In other words, he's asking him a standard question in response to a legal opinion.

You put together different opinions putting together different elements of law and showing how they interpret each other.

So far so good. The lawyer who's clearly done his homework says: 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.

So the law has put together two bits of law: a bit of law from Deuteronomy or maybe from the Joshua version, which is about loving the Lord with all your word with all your heart with all your soul with all your strength with all your mind.

And then he's added a little bit from Leviticus: and you shall love your neighbour as yourself.

These two don't come together in the Hebrew scriptures, it was a deliberate act putting them together: putting together the love of God and love of self as the same thing.

And that's a very good answer from Jesus one of you, he's doing exactly the right thing: so you have given the right answer; do this and you will live.

You understand that love of God and love of neighbour are essentially the same thing.

But wanting to justify himself the lawyer asked Jesus: And who is my neighbour?

I don't exactly know what it means by wanting justify himself.

Was he underwhelmed that he'd received basically 'yes, what a splendid answer that is' or was he trying to push for something a little bit more from Jesus because, after all, there is an open question, because in the Book of Leviticus where we have the passage about loving the neighbour as yourself.

This is what Leviticus 19 verse 17 says:

"You shall not hate in your heart any one of your kin, you shall reprove your neighbour or you will incur guilt to yourself. 

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of the people but you shall love your neighbour as yourself. 

I am the Lord." 

Okay now all that's about your people.

So might the law be saying: well, okay, so is my neighbour just amongst my people?

Well, also another verse in the Book of Leviticus, but a few verses later says:

"When an alien resides with you in your land you shall not oppress. 

The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you. 

You shall love the alien as yourself for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. 

I am the Lord your God." 

So you shall love the alien as yourself. In other words, the tendency of the book of Leviticus is to universalise the notion of neighbour: it's not only your people, but even foreigners who are amongst you.

You are to love them as yourself, you are to treat them the same.

A very very stern commandment and one which of course most of our countries have forgotten is the very strictest law of the Lord.

But that's what it seems the lawyer wanted interpretation with.

Should this be read in a universalising way?

How am I to detect my neighbour?

How do I know what limits to put on anything if my neighbour is potentially anybody?

Because you naturally want to distinguish between when you've got something right and when you've got something wrong.

And it's here that Jesus turns the whole thing around.

"A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers who stripped and beat him and went away leaving him half dead". 

Going down from Jerusalem to Jericho means going away from the Temple, so it's not specifically going towards somewhere where they would need to be preparing directly for the cult.

Jerusalem to Jericho is a steep downhill road.

Jericho is close to the Dead Sea.

You go way down below sea level to get to Jericho.

So they strip him and beat him and went away leaving him half dead.

And there's a Greek word hēmithanē. It means quite literally halfway. It's a very exact term.

Now that it's quite important that this person is half dead, can't be determined obviously whether he's alive or not probably without touching him.

Now by chance, a priest was going down that road and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.

By chance. Everything in this Gospel is accidental, it happened that by chance this that, nothing is preordained, there's no if you like grand scheme of things being fulfilled in some way. No, it's just things happening, damn things happening one after another.

Someone's got beaten up, a priest is going down the road.

When he sees him he passes by on the other side.

If I were a priest at the time I would probably have done exactly the same thing because the risk of my touching a corpse which would have left me impure and thus unable to function as a priest for weeks.

The risk to not earn money and not feed my family was very high.

We easily despise the priest. I think it's quite important that, for the first listeners of this story, it would have probably made sense why the priest passed by.

We're used to saying: oh the priest is obviously the bad guy. Yep, we priests are bad guys, we better get used to it, but the point here is that the priest was supposed not to touch a corpse.

And they wouldn't know whether this was a corpse or not without touching him.

Likewise Levite. Levite is in pretty much the same position as regards the need for ritual purity and the ability to earn his keep dependent on that, looking after his family.

So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, pass by on the other side.

But a Samaritan, while travelling, came near him and when he saw him he was moved with pity.

Well, the Samaritan was the then equivalent of the detested other, the unbearable other, the person who in your narrative could not possibly be a good person.

You think of whatever your world is divided into, who the good is, who the bad is; it's the sort of person who most irritates you, the person you find it most difficult to attribute good motives to.

You can imagine that whatever side of whatever racial or national divide you are, or gender or whatever think of - any dispute, - it's the one about whom good things could not possibly be imagined.

It's the narcissism of small differences: those who are most like you and therefore most utterly repulsive to you - this is the one who is coming along at this point.

That's what the Samaritans were for Jews and vice versa - people who had strong views about each other and tried to make each other's life difficult and impossible under given circumstances.

So the Samaritan comes along.

When he saws him, he was moved with pity.

And this is obviously the key verse in the Gospel, the key word in the Gospel: he was moved with pity.

His viscera came out esplanchnisthē this the viscera moved, he was gut-wrenched literally.

And of course what was he gut-wrenched at? He was gut-wrenched at seeing a neighbour as himself.

He didn't see an object to be avoided so that I can look after my family, he saw that could be me there, my neighbour as myself.

He saw himself in the rejected, the thrown out one.

And of course the irony is of course that that's how God saw godself in the sacrificed one.

Why the Levites and the priests have to keep themselves pure?

Well so they could offer the sacrifice.

And what was the sacrifice which was usually indicated by goat's entrails?

That was God's portion of the sacrifice. That was God showing God's compassion with human beings by adopting the form of a human sacrificial victim.

So the irony is that the Samaritan has seen the neighborhood himself which of course is how God sees human sacrificial victim - with deep deep pity.

So he goes to him, bandaged his wounds having poured oil and wine on them - oil to smooth down the beaten bits, the bruises; and wine which was the best disinfectant they had at the time - killed the germs, killed any infections that were growing.

Then he put him on his own animal.

So again no consideration of whether that would cause some sort of impurity to his animal or not; brought him to an inn and took care of him.

So he himself takes him to in and looks after him in the inn.

The next day he takes out two denarii, which is several days wages, and gives them to the innkeeper and says: Take care of him, and when I come back I will repay you whatever more you spend.

In other words I am now making a pledge here to you that I will be good for the care of this person.

I'm going to take responsibility for them until they get better. I will repay you whatever more you spend.

Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?

So notice that the question which Jesus answers is not actually the question which the lawer asks him.

He asked him, who is my neighbour. And Jesus puts the question at the end of who turned out to be neighbourly towards someone.

In other words, the definition of neighbour is not best thought of as to whom am I limited or to whom I'm obligated as a minimum in order to be a decent person.

It is better seen as what is it like actually to create neighbourliness in an ongoing and sustained way for someone?

That's what being a neighbour is. The neighbour starts from the other, not from you wondering how that other fits into your life.

It's the other who alters your life - that is the key thing.

Jesus has answered the question about inheriting eternal life here.

And the really interesting thing is that the Samaritan who's obviously the model for this one he's been taken by surprise, he's come across somebody lying alone, he has been moved by him.

He has given of himself in caring for him and he's prepared to give himself even more.

He's so excited to be found to be doing these things and actually found something real in life - looking after this person and actually being prepared to run the risk of picking up the hospital bill at the end, which could be very considerable.

He's ready to give himself that because he's discovered what it's like to share the life of God.

It's better to give yourself away even if you don't really know where that will take you.

That's what it looks like - to inherit the life of God creating neighbourliness, giving yourself away even in ways that you can't control, being prepared as it were to put yourself at risk in order to do that he has discovered what it is like to inherit eternal life - that means, on the inside of the life of God.

So Jesus asks this question to the lawyer who says - and it's difficult to tell whether he's just being lawerly exact or whether he doesn't want to say the word the Samaritan - because the lawyer answers when he's asked, which do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers - the lawyer says the one who showed him mercy.

Mercy, not sacrifice.

The one who showed him mercy, that was the one who created neighbourliness.

So yes obviously the lawyer doesn't want to admit that it was one of them, bastards, who's the good guy in this story.

But the whole point of this story is that we have been able to retell it and retell it and retell it in every conceivable different generation according to who are annoying, irritating other to whom we cannot attribute good is.

And we can imagine them learning to rescue us, creating neighbourliness for us and saying: ah, that's eternal life, which then may prepare us to be able to recognize others in situations of extremity, and so enter into eternal life.

It's the surprise and the excitement and the joy of discovering the life of God in mercy and not in sacrifice.

SUMMARY

I want mercy and not sacrifice.

Laywer: What must I do to inherit eternal life?

Jesus: What does the text says?

Laywer: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all you mind and your neighbour as yourself.

Love of God and love of neighbour are essentially the same thing.

Is my neighbour just amongst my people? We must universalize the notion of neighbour.

Jesus: parable of the Good Samaritan.

The samaritan came gut-wrenched at seeing a neighbour as himself. He didn't see an object to be avoided so that I can look after my family, he saw that could be me there, my neighbour as myself. He saw himself in the rejected, the thrown out one.

The irony is that that's how God saw godself in the sacrificed one (the human sacrificial victim) - with deep pity.

The definition of neighbour is not best thought of as to whom am I limited or to whom I'm obligated as a minimum in order to be decent person.

Is what it is like actually to create neighbourliness in an ongoing and sustained way for someone.

The neighbour starts from the other, not from you wondering how that other fits into your life. It's the other who alters your life.

He's discovered what it is like to share (inherit) the life of God.

It's better to give yourself away even if you don't really know where that will take you.

Creating neighbourliness, giving yourself away even in ways that you can't control, being prepared as it were to put yourself at risk in order to do that.

The one who showed mercy (not sacrifice) us the one who showed neighbourliness.

That's eternal life, which then may prepare us to be able to recognize others in situations of extremity, and so enter into eternal life.

It's the surprise and the excitement and the joy of discovering the life of God in mercy and not in sacrifice.