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If we listen carefully to Sunday’s readings we will hear
our relation to God very gently stated.
In the
First Reading
Moses explains how simple God's command is. I would like
to quote his words because they are beautiful. He says
that God’s command
is not too mysterious and remote for you. It is not up in
the sky, that you should say, ‘Who will go up in the sky
to get it for us and tell us of it, that we may carry it
out?’ Nor is it across the sea, that you should say, ‘Who
will cross the sea to get it for us and tell us of it,
that we may carry it out?’
The commandment of the Lord is very near to us, already in
our hearts and in our mouths. We have only to carry it
out.
But what is this commandment? Jesus points to the answer
in the Gospel.
There, a lawyer asks Jesus to boil the whole law down to a
single saying. Ever the teacher, Jesus asks the answer
from the man, who says by rote:
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.
Not bad. “You have answered correctly,” Jesus says; “Do
this and you will live.” But the man wants specifics. He
is digging. Who is my neighbor, he asks.
What would be your answer to this question? Who do you say
your neighbor is, in the sense that the bible means that
word?
Jesus gives the lawyer a parable to chew on. You know it,
the story we call “the good Samaritan.” An Israeli man is
mugged on the way down from Jerusalem to Jericho. The
robbers “beat him terribly,” an awful description. A
priest and a Levi each pass by the victim splayed out on
the road, and they look the other way.
I think of how many times I have turned away from poverty
stricken people. Do I give them help they beg for, or do I
simply admire the imaginative stories they tell me in
order to get money? What about you?
Then I think of the evening when I clumsied my shoulder
into a heavy fall from the icy curb right down onto the
pavement, full weight on solid cement. Two big men each
stopped their two cars right in the road and ran over to
help me up, guys in no way connected to the university
where I live and work.
They were like the Samaritan Jesus tells of. He did not
just walk by but helped the beaten man in a big way.
Notice, this Samaritan was from the same tribe whose towns
all rejected Jesus two Sundays ago. Can an enemy be your
neighbor? Can a stranger? How about an estranged member of
your family? Or, or …
The Samaritan “was moved with compassion at the sight” of
his supposed enemy. He poured oil and wine over his wounds
and bandaged them. He told an Innkeeper to “take care of
him,” and left money.
Jesus then asks his questioner which of the men was a
neighbor, the priest, the Levite or the Samaritan? “Go and
do likewise,” he says.
This is not “too mysterious or remote,” is it?
John Foley S. J.
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